Robert Dudley
Back to people overviewRobert Dudley was an English explorer, cartographer, and one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite courtiers. At the age of twenty-one, Dudley led an expedition to the Orinoco River and Guiana.
Forced to flee England due to political rivalry, in 1606, Dudley arrived in Florence at the court of Grand Duke Ferdinand II. He served the Medici family for the rest of his life as a civil engineer, naval architect, and geographer. Dudley’s greatest work was a maritime encyclopaedia, Dell'Arcano del Mare (1647).
This astonishing set of books provided information on navigation, drawing scaled maps, and sailing a navy fleet. Using the Mercator projection, the books contained a beautiful sea atlas and maps of Latin America.
