A Special Collections Exhibition
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The Composite Atlases |
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World
map from a Lafreri atlas,
c. 1550
During
the 1550s and 1560s, many of the maps produced by the cartographers of the day
were collected together by purchasers to form what are sometimes called
“Italian atlases made to order,” or “Lafreri atlases.” These volumes
were collections of maps, each one of them likely to be different in size, which
offered the geographical coverage in which the purchaser was interested.
The University of Texas at Austin possesse two such Lafreri atlases, and
our plate comes from one of them. It shows a world map of 1566 by Giovanni
Cimerlino; this was often the first map of a Lafreri atlas. Our detail shows the
north polar areas, as a pendant to the south polar regions shown on exhibit 6.
© Special Collections Division
The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries
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