Fernão Vaz Dourado (c. 1520 in
Goa
Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...
– c. 1580 in
Portuguese India
The State of India ( pt, Estado da Índia), also referred as the Portuguese State of India (''Estado Português da Índia'', EPI) or simply Portuguese India (), was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a se ...
) was a
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
cartographer
Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an im ...
of the sixteenth century, belonging to the third period of the old Portuguese nautical cartography, which is characterised by the abandonment of
Ptolemaic Ptolemaic is the adjective formed from the name Ptolemy, and may refer to:
Pertaining to the Ptolemaic dynasty
* Ptolemaic dynasty, the Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter
* Ptolemaic Kingdom
Pertaining ...
influence in the representation of
the Orient
The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...
and introduction of better accuracy in the depiction of lands and continents. Little is known about this historical figure.
The known works of Dourado are of an extraordinary quality and beauty. He is considered one of the best cartographers of the time. Most of his manuscript charts are of relatively large scale and are included in nautical atlases. The following six atlas from the period 1568-1580 are known:
* 1568 - 20 manuscript sheets on parchment, dedicated to D. Luís de Ataíde (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid)
* 1570 - 20 manuscript sheets on parchment (Huntington Library, San Marino, USA)
* 1571 - 20 manuscript sheets on parchment, from which 2 (the frontispiece and the Eastern Mediterranean) were stolen in 1851 (
Torre do Tombo
The National Archive of Torre do Tombo ( pt, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, ) is the Portuguese national archive located in the civil parish of Alvalade, in the municipality of central-northern Lisbon. Established in 1378, it was renamed the ...
, Lisbon).
* c. 1576 - 20 manuscript sheets on parchment (
Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
The (Portuguese for ''National Library of Portugal'') is the Portuguese national library, fulfilling the function of legal deposit and copyright.
History
The library was created by Decree of 29 February 1796, under the name of Royal Public L ...
, Lisbon)
* 1575 - 21 manuscript sheets on parchment (British Library, London)
* 1580 - 20 manuscript sheets on parchment (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon)
The plates of all the atlases are reproduced, mainly in monochrome in ''Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica''.
The 1571 atlas was reproduced in colour, with a reconstructed frontispiece, and, inexplicably, with the Eastern Mediterranean plate from the 1576 atlas included without any explanation, in "Atlas de Fernao Vaz Dourado : reprodcao fidelissima do exemplar do Torre do Tombo, datado de Goa, 1571", Porto: Livraria Civilizacao, 1948.
The 1571 atlas was again reproduced in colour, in a boxed set of 18 loose sheets, as "Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado", Barcelona:
M. Moleiro Editor M. Moleiro Editor is a publishing house specialising in high-quality facsimile reproductions of codex, codices, maps and illuminated manuscripts. Founded in Barcelona in 1991, the firm has reproduced many masterpieces from the history of illuminatio ...
, S.A., 2012.
The 1568 atlas contains the first large-scale charts of Ceylon (
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
) and
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, later copied by many other cartographers.
His chart of the northwestern coast of
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, displayed above is executed using the so-called "plain chart model", where observed
latitudes
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...
and
magnetic
Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particle ...
directions were plotted directly into the plane, with a constant scale, as if the Earth were flat. Until the adoption of the
Mercator projection
The Mercator projection () is a cylindrical map projection presented by Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It became the standard map projection for navigation because it is unique in representing north as up and sou ...
charting method, this was the most advanced charting method in Europe.
References
* Fialho, João Ramalho (2007) – ''Navegações Portuguesas: Fernão Vaz Dourado''.
* Cortesão A. and Mota, Teixeira da (1987)– ''Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica''. Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda, Lisboa (in Portuguese and English).
Gallery
Image:Fernão Vaz Dourado 1570-1.jpg, Atlas of 1570 (Huntington Library, San Marino, USA)
Image:Fernão Vaz Dourado 1575-1.jpg, Atlas of 1575 (British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
, London)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dourado, Fernao Vaz
1520s births
1580s deaths
Portuguese cartographers
16th-century Portuguese people
16th-century cartographers