[PORTOLAN CHART] DE OLIVA, Placido (active 1575-1615); MARTI...

Hammer

€14,000

[PORTOLAN CHART] DE OLIVA, Placido (active 1575-1615); MARTINES, Joan (active 1556-1590) (attributed to). Portolan Atlas of the Mediterranean. Messina, c.1575-1590.
An important portolan atlas of the Messina school, charting the Mediterranean basin across three consecutive sheets: the first encompassing the western Mediterranean, the second centred on Sicily and extending across the Italian peninsula and the North African coast, and the third covering the eastern Mediterranean, the Levant and the Black Sea.

The atlas is distinguished by a rich decorative programme of city views, allegorical figures, elaborate cartouches and compass roses, placing it firmly within the Majorcan cartographic tradition rather than the generally more restrained idiom of Italian chartmaking. It bears close affinities with surviving works of the Messina school, which flourished particularly around the Rubeus/Russo and De Oliva families, both of Balearic origin, as well as Joan Martines, himself associated with the Russo circle. A number of features point specifically towards the De Oliva workshop, a prolific dynasty from which at least sixteen cartographers are documented between 1538 and 1673. Certain details bring the present manuscript particularly close to the work of Placido de Oliva: the dragon depicted off the African coast, the allegory of Golgotha near Jerusalem, the distinctive lettering of the coastal place-names, and the treatment of the principal cities. Especially compelling is the representation of Genoa, where the Lanterna is depicted with projecting structures closely comparable to those in an atlas by Placido now in the Library of Congress (G5672.M4P5 158).

The richly ornamented cartouches and, above all, the conception of the charts as an atlas in codex form find closer parallels, however, in the work of Joan Martines, notably in examples preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional de España (GMG/103 and VITR/4/20). The combination of these features suggests a collaborative production, probably executed within the De Oliva workshop and possibly with the participation of Martines himself. Such collaboration is independently attested by the four-chart portolan atlas preserved at Chatsworth (DEV/011740), dated 1562 and jointly signed by Joan Martines and Bartolomeo de Oliva (c.1530-1580). The losses and defects to the vellum, concentrated chiefly in the areas most exposed to handling, may be consistent with the atlas having seen practical use. A scarceand evocative survival of the flourishing Messinese school of Majorcan-derived cartography in the second half of the sixteenth century.

Vellum manuscript atlas (263 × 181 mm), comprising 3 nautical charts decorated with 8 compass roses, 2 ornamental cartouches, 6 city views, a dragon, an allegory of Golgotha and two trees; unsigned and undated (defects and losses). (1)