Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado

Portugal plays a special role in the history of cartography. Since the beginning of the 16th century, Portuguese explorers set out into every land and sea in the world and opened up virtually unknown regions. In the course of this pioneering work, Portugal developed probably the most important cartography school of the European Renaissance. Since the 16th century, some of the most important geographical charts arose here, which served as the cornerstone for our modern geography and navigation. Fernão Vaz Dourado, one of the most famous and esteemed cartographers of his time, recorded in his world atlas all of the geographic findings of his time and designed it in the most beautiful and artistically appealing manner.

Who was Fernão Vaz Dourado?

Fernão Vaz Dourado was a Portuguese cartographer, whose work is positioned in the last phase of handwritten cartography. His maps depicted continents and lands very realistically and in great detail, which is extremely impressive for a time without modern technical resources. Each of his individual large-format maps impresses through its unusual quality and beauty. Experts consider him to be probably the greatest cartographer of the Renaissance.

Geographic Templates

The Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado was produced taking into account the most modern geographic facts and rules of its time of creation. Its maps serve not only as practical resources for the journey by land and water – they were absolute masterpieces of medieval book art. After the discovery of the book printing, the painting-like maps were reproduced in every region of Europe. New maps were made using them as a basis, which broadened the impressive findings. Originally, this world atlas consisted of 20 vellum maps. However, two of the maps were stolen in 1851 and remain missing to this day. The remainder of the 18 sheets of the valuable atlas are housed in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo in Lisbon.