 was primarily, if not exclusively a maker of atlases, all quite elaborate and very expensive in their day. While depending on navigation and the voyages of discovery for their content, his charts should not be considered as navigational works per se. His work displays such a distinctive style that besides the twenty-five signed atlases, it is possible to attribute the present work and fifty-two other unsigned atlases to him as well. These seventy-eight works comprise an amazing total of seven hundred and forty-six charts. But while the overwhelming preponderance of Agnese's output was in the form of atlases, there is some evidence that he produced a few individual charts as well.

The present atlas, which is not recorded in the census of Agnese portolans published by Henry Wagner in 1931, nor in Pflederer's census of 2009 (although added to its corrigenda in 2011), fits within a group of atlases, all produced between 1545 and 1555. Using Wagner's classification system, which was based on cartographic details, this atlas would probably belong to Type 3-"A", 'post Californian', but with the new chart of Scotland and the land map of Scandinavia.

If only surviving examples of his work are counted, Agnese's output would have averaged twenty-five charts a year between 1535 and 1564. Despite the lack of any supporting documentary evidence, it is generally accepted that, rather than working on his own, Agnese must have operated an atelier in Venice in order to achieve this high output. It is easy to imagine a production process in which one person prepared the sheets of vellum, another drew the coastal outlines, another entered the placenames, and so on. 

 binding and remains in its original order. It contains the more or less standard preliminary pages found in most Agnese atlases, including a table of the declination of the sun, an armillary sphere, and a circular zodiacal calendar.



s 1, 2, and 3: The World
The preamble is followed by a set of three consecutive charts representing the entire world. The first sheet covers the Pacific Ocean and adjacent coasts, including the peninsula of California after the discoveries of Francisco de Ulloa and Marcos de Niza in 1539, which first appeared in the Agnese atlas of 1542. Other features of this chart include a gilt Sumatra, a red-coloured Sea of Cortez, a vignette of Mexico City in the midst of a lake, and the Grand Banks off the east coast of North America. Also notable is the missing coastline on the west coast of South America from about 18° to 45° and on the west coast of North America above 35°. 

The representation of the world continues with the next sheet, which centres on the Atlantic Ocean and its coasts. Notable on this chart is the outline of Africa, which is quite accurate and enriched with many placenames along the coastline. This sheet continued virtually without changes over the entire range of Agnese's atlases.

The third sheet in this representation of the world covers the Indian Ocean and its coastline including the east coast of Africa, Arabia, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. Noteworthy on this chart are the eight cherubs representing the major winds, each labelled in Italian with the name of the compass direction. All three of these charts include simple, unadorned latitude and longitude scales. The latitudes are organized in the normal system increasing from zero at the equator, but longitudes are marked in four ranges of 90° each. The four points of zero longitude are near the Canary Islands, the western Indian Ocean, Mexico City, and the Moluccas Islands.



 4: Northwest Europe
A somewhat atypical sheet, a portolan-styled landmass, follows the three-chart world. It covers the British Isles and the northwest part of continental Europe. Agnese first included this map in an atlas dedicated to Henry VIII sometime after 1545, now preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library. Although there are some waters represented (the Baltic and North Seas, part of the Adriatic, and the Bay of Biscay) the map remains land focused. It is also more heavily decorated than are any of the sea charts in this atlas, with town vignettes, rivers, lakes, mountains, and forests covering the land. A distinctive feature, that offers a guide to dating the atlas, is the representation of Scotland as a peninsula rather than an island. This treatment of Scotland is significant in that it did not appear until about 1552.



 5: Iberia and North Africa
A version of this chart appears in most of Agnese's atlases from about 1539 to 1564. It covers the western Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coasts of Spain, Portugal, and Africa down to approximately Cape Bojador, and includes the Balearics, Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores. The interior of Iberia is decorated with mountain ranges, rivers, and dozens of town vignettes, and the 

 Mountains are prominently pictured in Africa. This chart, which is primarily a sea chart, is unusual in that several cities of the interior are depicted and named, including Toledo, Burgos, Cordoba, and Pamplona.



s 6, 7, and 8: The Mediterranean
Following Iberia and North Africa is a set of three charts covering the Mediterranean Sea, west, central, and east. If assembled into a single chart, this set would be very much the archetypical portolan chart of the area. Among the features of the standard form of the Mediterranean Sea chart are the white cross against the red background of Rhodes (even though the Knights Hospitaller were evicted from Rhodes some decades earlier) and the highlighting of key ports in red ink (including most of the coastal towns of Italy). As usual, the Red Sea is coloured.




 9: The Black and Marmara Seas
This chart reflects the importance to Venice of its trade with the East. In a form similar to 

 3, the eight principal winds are depicted by cherubs, but here their names are given in Italian (Tramontana, Grego, Sirocho, Ostro, etc.). Even after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Venice maintained its historical trading privileges with the city, which is represented on this chart by the single town vignette.



 10: Aegean and Marmara Seas
Drawn on a scale about twice as great as the previous four charts, and oriented with North to the left. Rhodes displays the same white-on-red cross as seen on 

 8. Fourteen Aegean isles are heightened in gilt, making this one of the most striking sheets in the atlas.



 11: Scandinavia
The land map of Scandinavia is unlike any other sheet in the atlas. It is copied from the magnificent map of Olaus Magnus printed from nine woodblocks in Venice in 1539. The sea is coloured blue and the land is yellow and its coverage includes Scandinavia, Iceland, the Baltics, and Russia, as well as Scotland, England, Ireland, and Greenland on the margins. It is heavily decorated with sea monsters, seated monarchs, and numerous town vignettes. This map is important for dating the atlas in that other maps of this type first appear in the atlas Wagner lists as 'XL', which he estimates to be drawn about 1545. This is the only non-portolan style map in the present atlas. In other Agnese atlases, many more maps (up to a dozen or so) of this general type may be found from around 1553 onwards.



 12: The World
The oval world map is also useful for dating purposes because of two features: the unnamed strait separating ‘Terra de Bachalaos’ from the rest of North America and the courses of two voyages, Magellan's circumnavigation and the route to Peru from Spain. This map contains twelve windheads, each named in Latin; the landmasses are green and two seas, the Red Sea and the Sea of Cortez, are coloured red. This map is centred on the Canary Islands and exhibits a grid of latitude and longitude. Although there are some curious cartographic features such as the peninsula of Norway continuing to the North Pole and the Verranzzano strait in North America, its function is primarily decorative. The oval world map from the Agnese atlas in the Library of Congress (1544) does not contain the strait.



 13: Ptolemaic World
The final map is referred to by Wagner (1937) as the ‘Eastern hemisphere, derived from Ptolemy’. Its type first appeared in an Agnese atlas of circa 1548. The map covers the northern part of the eastern hemisphere centred on the Persian Gulf down to the source of the Nile near the equator. The landmasses are coloured green and the oceans and seas are left uncoloured. The geography is essentially Ptolemaic but the projection is hemispherical. Exactly what Agnese had in mind by including this map is unclear, but it may be an illustration to assist with the information he reproduces in the final leaves of the atlas. 

All of the charts and maps in the present atlas are oriented with North to the top of the sheet, except for chart 7, the central Mediterranean, on which North is to the right and chart 10, the Aegean, on which North is to the left.  

Text:
Following the thirteen charts and maps, there is a page of Latin text explaining the understanding of the ancients. For example, it presents an estimate of the length of a degree of latitude at about 57 miles and states that if there are 360 degrees in a great circle, then the circumference of the earth must be 20,400 miles. Using a good estimate for the mathematical constant ‘π’ the text then calculates the diameter of the earth and finally the distance from the surface to the centre of the earth. There is also a table of cosmographical distances and diameters of celestial bodies, for example, the distance from the centre of the earth to the planets. 

Compass:
A thirty-two-point compass rose is set into the lower board of the atlas. This is a distinctive feature of numerous atlases signed by, or attributed to, Agnese. 

 (c. 1500–1564) was the most prolific of all portolan atlas makers, a man ‘whose personality and output dominated the cartography of the sixteenth century’ (Astengo 2007). Although Agnese's atlases found their way into the libraries of emperors, kings, cardinals, and dukes, virtually nothing is known of his life. From his inscription on the relatively few atlases he signed, it is apparent that he was born in Genoa, probably near the end of the fifteenth century or early in the sixteenth century. It appears, however, that all his atlases were produced in the Republic of Venice, beginning around 1535. 

In Agnese's day, Genoa and Venice were independent rival states, though Genoa's fortunes had been on the wane for some time in relation to Venice, now at the height of its maritime power in the eastern Mediterranean. The exact circumstances of Agnese's abandonment of his home city for its principal rival Venice are not known, but it must have been a significant move. Between 1536 and 1564, Agnese specialized in highly prized and beautifully decorated manuscript atlases on vellum for high-ranking officials and wealthy merchants. His patrons included Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Phillip II of Spain, and Henry VIII of England.

This exquisite portolan atlas illuminated on vellum is one of the jewels of the Sunderland Collection. In its original binding, it contains a delicately drawn diagram of the zodiac, thirteen detail-rich double-page maps, and a thirty-two-point compass inset into the lower board. It was created by 

, a luxury mapmaker who produced highly prized and beautifully decorated manuscript atlases for elite patrons, including Emperor Charles V, Phillip II of Spain, and Henry VIII of England. This manuscript has its own distinguished provenance from the collection of the eminent cartographic historian Henry Harrisse.

The oldest surviving portolan chart, made around 1285, is the ‘Carta Pisana’ named after the city where it was discovered. The early charts are relatively plain and functional, everyday tools for mariners that were used in conjunction with a ‘portolano’ or pilot book, containing written sailing directions and information about coastal hazards, ports, and anchorages. The form changed little over the next two hundred years; however, with the emergence of the printed chart in the late fifteenth century, the portolan began to lose its function as a navigational tool. It is at this time that the portolan transformed to a practical tool to a luxury work of art.

To reflect their new status these portolan charts are often astonishingly beautiful artefacts, embellished in gold and silver, and rich in both ornament and detail. One of the new art forms greatest exponents was 

. The production of portolans as art would continue to flourish up until the eighteenth century, gradually falling out of fashion, and being replaced by the printed sea atlas.

Although the portolan evolved over the centuries, all charts bear a few defining characteristics. Typically, they are drawn on vellum, although a few charts were made on high quality paper. All portolan charts display a distinctive network of intersecting directional lines, called rhumb lines, that radiate out from particular points on the chart to indicate compass points. Furthermore, most portolan charts incorporate one or more decorative compass roses. Coastal place names are written on the landside of the coastline, and perpendicular to it, so as not to interfere with the marking of sailing courses. In general, there is minimal detail within the interior of the landmasses.

World map with windheads

Compass Rose

Armillary Sphere

Zodiac

Tropics

Atlantic

Indian Ocean

Europe

Iberia

Western Mediterranean 

Italy 

Eastern Mediterranean 

Black Sea

Aegean 

Scandinavia 

The ancient known world

Compass embedded in cover

A previously unrecorded example of this exceptionally rare and exquisitely bound illuminated manuscript atlas: the Harrisse 

Original binding commissioned by the mapmaker’s workshop in contemporary Venetian gold-tooled reddish-brown morocco over wooden boards; the covers panelled with gilt fillets into two frames, the inner one with four small gilt rosettes at the corners and the central compartment with a lozenge- shaped ornament, with four brass hand clasps; 32-point compass rose drawn inset under mica to lower board.

Illuminated manuscript on vellum on 17 leaves; the leaves are pasted together back to back and form 13 double-page charts; place names in Latin, Italian, and Spanish in a small humanistic minuscule, names of countries in square capitals, mostly in ink, now brown, possibly faded from original black, names of principal ports in red; 13 double- page maps within a single-line gilt frame (folio dimensions: 255 × 360 mm, dimensions of the gilt frame: 193 × 291mm); coastlines outlined in blue and green ink, islands mostly in green or gold wash; rhumb lines in alternating red and green ink; the lines of the equator and tropics indicated in gold ink; the nine sea charts each contain a small 32-point compass rose in gold and coloured ink, but the land map of Scandinavia, the land map of Northern Europe, the oval mappa mundi and the hemispherical map of Europe, Africa, and Asia contain no compass roses; an austere scale bar in the distinctive Agnese style is found in the corners of the nine sea charts; preceding the charts on facing pages is a table of the declination of the sun, an armillary sphere and a two-page zodiacal diagram; following the last map on two facing pages is a short treatise in Latin on cosmographical dimensions.

Portolan Atlas by Agnese