Russia (“Magna Tartaria”) is drawn with a quite detailed river network and with its northern coast bordering on a “mare congelatum”. Laso also draws three small mythical islands (Brasil, Maidas, Verde), all with very geometric and conventional shapes. I do brasill, a mythical island with circular shape.In the Atlantic, aside from the already familiar archipelagos, the author includes the island of Frislanda, which pops up in many maps of this time in spite of its doubtful existence. A third, oblique scale of latitudes, is found near North America, a typically Portuguese feature that is found in all others maps of the region by Laso. Two latitude scales on the vertical edges indicate this map is no longer a classic portolan but what is modernly called a “latitude chart”. First of all it shows newly discovered lands, such as Labrador and Newfoundland. Four bars give the scale in two different units: “leguas d’españa” and “milhas de levante”.īut outside of that region, the map is of a quite different type. Now looking at the content of the map, if one looks only at the Mediterranean basin the image is typical of medieval portolan charts, with rhumb lines, toponyms written perpendicular to the coastline and the usual counter-clockwise tilt. The provenance of this map is not known, only that is was purchased by the KBR in Malines, Belgium in 1900. Cortesao and Mota inferred the other maps to be earlier, based on the evolution of the shape of certain lands. Only the atlas is dated, from 1590 (this atlas is now at the Maritime Museum of Rotterdam, after having been acquired in Spain in 1916). Another one held at the BNF has been attributed to him. Bartolome Laso’s signature on the KBR chart.įour other works signed by Laso are extant, one atlas and three single maps. A Dutch document of 1592 mentions Lasso as “cosmographer and master of navigation to the King of Spain”, which does not mean he had moved to Spain but is just the result of the incorporation of Portugal to the Spanish crown in 1580. He spent his career in Lisbon, where his charts where reportedly appreciated by pilots. These authors noted that in May 1564, Laso (also spelled Laço or Lasso) already was sufficiently skilled to make sailing charts and astrolabes and compasses. The only study of this mapmaker so far was carried out by Armando Cortesao and Avelino Teixeira da Mota in volume 3 of their monumental Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica. It is a manuscript Portuguese map of the North Atlantic and the Euro-Mediterranean basin, undated and signed by Bartolome Laso. The Royal Library of Brussels (KBR) does not hold many early marine charts but it does have one that is very interesting. Click here for a high-resolution scan at the KBR website.
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