Joseph Brook Yates (1780–1855) was a West India Merchant, reformer, antiquary and collector who acquired a number of important manuscript works. He was one of the earliest members of the Athenaeum Library (as attested to by his grandson’s note on the flyleaf), a library created by Liverpool merchants who opposed the institution of slavery. It was his bequest of ten manuscripts to his grandson (of which this portolan must have been one) which inspired Henry Yates Thomson to become the greatest collector of illuminated manuscripts of his generation. His donation of this marvellous atlas “In memory of Joseph Brooks Yates” to the library in its Centenary year would have been particularly fitting. The bulk of Thomson’s collection were acquired by the British Library either by donation or purchase and although only fifty-two books, they are considered “some of the finest illuminated manuscripts in the world” (British Library Collections).

Henry Yates Thompson (1838–1938), was born into affluence in 1838, and is principally remembered as the greatest manuscript collector of his generation. As a young man, he distinguished himself academically first at Harrow, and then as a prize-winning undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating with a degree in Classics, in 1863 Thompson travelled to America where he watched at first-hand the progress of the American Civil War. After witnessing Ulysses S. Grant overseeing the battle of Chatanooga, he wrote in his diary ‘If the battle had been a pageant got up for my benefit I could not have had it better.’ Subsequent expeditions took him around Europe, the Middle East and to Asia. On his return to England he devoted himself to politics with a zeal unmatched by success, standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate three times. During this period, he was for six years private secretary to Lord Spencer, Viceroy of Ireland.

In 1878, he married Elizabeth Murray Smith, daughter of George Smith, founder of the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ and the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’. Smith gave the Gazette to his new son-in-law, which Thompson converted from Conservative to Liberal in sympathy. Henry and Elizabeth Yates Thompson lived in London at 19 Portman Square, and had a country house in Buckinghamshire. They lived comfortably, were generous with their money, and were involved in politics, the arts, and social causes. In 1892 Thompson sold the Gazette, having endured a certain amount of awkwardness as its proprietor during the editorship of the controversial W.T. Stead. Perhaps coincidentally, it was at about this time that Thompson began increasingly to devote his energy and money to building an unrivalled collection of illuminated manuscripts. Thompson’s collection of illuminated manuscripts all began with the bequest of ten manuscripts from his maternal grandfather, Joseph Yates Brooks (1780–1856), when Thompson was eighteen (British Library Collections).

The maps in this atlas, depicting most of the then known world, bear a very high degree of similarity to Giacomo Gastaldi's wall world map of c. 1561–1562, itself extremely rare, with the only institutional example known being at the British Library. The depiction in particular of the theory of the north-west passage, with the ‘Streto di Anian’ balancing the Straits of Magellan, and the illustration of the western seaboard of North America is quite remarkable. Gastaldi's map was published in Venice, so it seems likely that Vicus (and the da Mosto family) had access to it.



 1: The Pacific Ocean
Showing the west coast of North America, California as a peninsula, the Bering Straits, north-eastern Siberia and China, Japan, the Philippine Islands, the Moluccan Islands, and the southern continent ‘Terra Incognita’.



 2: The Americas
Showing the whole of South America, the Straits of Magellan and the southern land of ‘Tera del Fu[e]go’, the Isthmus of Panama, Gulf of Mexico and Central America, Yucatan as a peninsula, the West Indies, and the eastern coastline of North America.



 3: The Indian Ocean
Showing the Horn of Africa, Madagascar, the Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, India, Bay of Bengal, the Malay Peninsula, Southeast Asia, the South China Sea, the Indonesian archipelago, and the southern continent ‘Ter[r]a d'Vista’.



 4: Southern Africa
Showing the western seaboard from São Tomé at the equator (this depicted with a red and black dotted line), Cape of Good Hope and a small portion of the continent's east coast.



 5: Western Africa
The most magnificent chart in the atlas, highly decorated with large arms of the Da Mosto family in the Atlantic Ocean, showing the coastline explored by Alvise da Cadamosto.



 6: The Mediterranean and the Black Sea
Finished to a higher degree than the other maps, with a large perspective view of St. Marks Piazza symbolising Venice.



 7: Western Europe
Showing the British Isles with Great Britain depicted as two separate islands with England and Scotland joined by a bridge, Ireland with the mythical island of Brasil off its western coast, the Low Countries, France, the Iberian Peninsula, part of North Africa, and the Azores (with another fictional island named Brasil). A large coat of arms of Philip II of Spain (who was also Philip I of Portugal) adorns the Iberian Peninsula.

This lavish portolan atlas was commissioned by the da Mosto family in celebration of their most illustrious ancestor, Alvise da Cadamosto (c. 1428–1483), a Venetian under the patronage of Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator, who discovered the Cape Verde Islands, described the Canary Islands, and the Senegal-Gambia-Geba area, in his posthumously published narrative of 1507. He was also the first recorded European to go far enough south to describe the Southern Cross. This would explain the dramatic prominence of the da Mosto arms on chart five which shows the coastline of West Africa.

The Ca' da Mosto Palace, the oldest palazzo on the Grand Canal, where Alviseda Cadamosto was born in about 1428, was the family’s home until 1603. The atlas was most likely to have been commissioned by Chiara da Mosto, who amassed one of Venice’s largest fortunes. Unfortunately for the da Mostos, she fell out with her late husband’s family, and on her death in 1606, she left everything to a distant nephew from an earlier marriage, Leonardo Dona, who promptly used his windfall to have himself elected Doge.

This exquisite portolan atlas was commissioned by the da Mosto family of Venice, descendants of the great explorer Alvise da Cadamosto. Cadamosto was a Venetian trader who ‘discovered’ the Cape Verde Islands and described the Canary Islands as well as the Senegal- Gambia-Geba region. The artist of this atlas, Johannes Maria Vicus, was hitherto unknown; he has signed and dated the first chart. The volume comprises fourteen vellum leaves, containing seven portolan charts executed in colour and heightened with silver and gold. The maps have been mounted on nineteenth-century paper, and the binding is from the same period. 



 atlases are some of the rarest and most sought-after of all early cartographic works of art. Often produced as singular documents in manuscript form, portolan charts are fundamental witnesses to early maritime exploration. This atlas is especially rare, depicting the entire world rather than the typical focus on the Mediterranean and Western Europe.

Alvise da Cadamosto (c. 1428–1483) was a Venetian trader and explorer who discovered the Cape Verde Islands, described the Canary Islands, and the Senegal-Gambia-Geba area. He was born at the Ca' da Mosto, a palazzo on the Grand Canal of Venice from which his name derives.

Cadamosto sailed aboard Venetian galleys to North Africa, Crete, Alexandria, and Flanders between 1445 and 1452. On returning to Venice in 1454 he found his father banished and his family in financial distress. Later that year on a trading voyage between Venice and Flanders he was becalmed off the Portuguese coast.

Hearing of Cadamosto’s knowledge of the spice trade, Prince Henry the Navigator offered him a Portuguese caravel for a trading venture down the western African coast, with the right to keep half of the products with which he returned.

Cadamosto, in a caravel of some seventy modern tons, left for Lagos in March 1455. He called at the Madeira and Canary Islands, then travelled along the African coast. In his reports, he observed that the Senegal River divided the arid Saharan region from the fertile, forested areas to the south. Beyond the Senegal, Cadamosto encountered two caravels, one under the command of the Genoan Antoniotto Usodimare, and the three vessels proceeded together past Cape Verde to the mouth of the Gambia River. In the estuary of the Gambia, Cadamosto sketched the Southern Cross, the first record of its sighting by a European, and he referred to the height of the Pole Star as a fraction of a lance-length above the skyline; this notation suggests that navigators were not yet measuring latitude in degrees.

In 1456, Cadamosto and Usodimare, with license from Prince Henry, equipped two caravels which, with a third provided by the prince, set out for the Gambia. Beyond Cape Blanco the vessels encountered a gale, and Cadamosto, steering as close to the wind as possible, headed out to sea. Off Cape Verde an island came into view which he named Boa Vista. A shore party observed an island to the north (Sal) and two to the south (Maio and San Tiago), and Cadamosto visited the latter. Other islands of the archipelago were observed to the west.

Cadamosto sailed sixty miles up the Gambia and traded with a friendly chief until fever forced the vessels from the river. He named and charted several capes and rivers as far as the Rio Grande (Geba), which may have already been reached by Diogo Gomes; but he was the first to describe the Bissagos Archipelago.

Cadamosto's narrative, written in the 1460s but not published until 1507, gave valuable information about the caravan routes of the interior, from Mali via Ouadane to Morocco, from Mali via Timbuktu to Gao eastward, and from Timbuktu via Taghaza to Morocco and Tunis, and also described the trade, especially in gold and salt. G. R. Crone (1937) commented that Cadamosto's ‘is the first original account to have survived of a voyage into the regions opened up by European enterprise at the dawn of modern overseas expansion and reflects the spirit of open-minded enquiry characteristic of the new age’. He died in Venice in about 1488.


Portolan chart of the Mediterrean Sea

Portolan chart of Southeast Asia showing China and Japan

Portolan chart of South America 

Portolan chart of the Indian Ocean showing India and the edge of China

Portolan chart of the Atlantic Ocean, Equator, and South Africa

Portolan chart of the Atlantic Ocean and North Africa

Portolan chart of the North Atlantic, showing England, Spain and Ireland 

One of the most remarkable pieces of mapmaking to appear on the market for a number of years: a magnificent and extremely rare portolan world atlas, with an exceptional range of maps of outstanding beauty, commissioned by the distinguished da Mosto family of Venice, who are descended from one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Exploration, Alvise da Cadamosto (1432–1488), from a hitherto unknown artist, Johannes Maria Vicus, signed and dated by him on the first chart.

Also from the distinguished libraries of Joseph Brooks Yates, his grandson Henry Yates Thompson, and by donation from him, to the Athenaeum Library in Liverpool.

Late 19th century red morocco by Joseph Darby and Stephen Would, British Museum (pencilled note to flyleaf dated 1877), panelled covers with gilt fillet borders, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges.

Illuminated manuscript on vellum on 14 leaves; 7 double-page charts on bifolia, all the charts with a gilt border between two black fillets with stylised fleur-de-lis corner-pieces in black outline with gold wash on a red background (dimensions of frame c. 370 × 523 mm); coastlines in green or red, islands mostly in red or gold wash, mountains appear as stylised green rounded mounds, rivers are in brown; rhumb lines in red, brown and green, compass roses appear at least once on every map in gold and red, mileage scales on most of the maps indicated by small circles and dots; the maps mounted onto 19th century thick paper with red edges, and the bifolia attached to linen stubs. 