Golden Nautical Atlas of Joan Martines Facsimile Edition

The Golden Nautical Atlas is a compact, richly illuminated portolan atlas created by Joan Martines in 1570 and now held by the Biblioteca Nacional de España. Comprised of a small suite of hand-coloured charts on parchment, it blends a world map with a conventional portolan decomposition of the Atlantic and Mediterranean littorals — a concise but visually sumptuous example of late-Renaissance nautical cartography.

Contents and physical description

The Golden Nautical Atlas contains five double-page maps (including a mapamundi) executed on vellum/parchment and painted in colour; the surviving descriptive records list the plates as: a world map, the north-west African coast (from Espartel to Cape Verde), the European Atlantic coast and western Mediterranean, the central Mediterranean, and the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.

The atlas is small in format relative to Martines’s larger works. Its decorative programme follows portolan conventions (rhumb-line networks, coastal toponymy, limited inland detail) while showing a high level of illumination and the skilled hand associated with Martines’s workshop.

The author Joan Martines: life and cartographic career

Joan (or Ioan/Joan) Martines was a professional cosmographer and chartmaker who worked in Messina (and later in Naples) under Habsburg Spanish patronage. He is known for several portolan atlases and single-sheet charts; later in his career he is associated with royal service to Philip II and with the synthesis of Majorcan and Dutch cartographic traits in his output.

Historical and cartographic context

The Golden Nautical Atlas sits at the intersection of two important cartographic traditions. Portolan charts — born in the medieval Mediterranean for practical coastal navigation — retained coastal focus and precise toponymy; by the 16th century they were being refined by influences from northern Europe, the printing press, and imperial navigation needs. Martines’s work reflects this environment: clearly practical (coastal detail, rhumb networks) but also made for elite patrons who valued aesthetic finish and authoritative world-views.

The 1570 date places the Golden Nautical Atlas after the great age of discovery had broadened European geographical horizons, yet still within the Mediterranean-centred navigational culture that produced the portolan form. For these reasons scholars treat Martines’s atlases as evidence both of navigational practice and of the visual politics of Habsburg cartography.

Style, decoration and cartographic features

Although compact, the Golden Nautical Atlas displays features typical of high-quality portolans: finely inked coastlines, dense coastal toponymy, compass or “rhumb” line networks, pictorial elements (compass roses, cartouches, occasionally wind-heads or ships). Martines’s use of colour and metallic highlights of gold and silver is particularly evident in this Atlas; stylistically his hand is often compared to Majorcan manuscript traditions but with an increasingly international sensibility in the mid- to late-16th century.

Significance and scholarly value

The Golden Nautical Atlas matters for several overlapping research agendas: the technical history of Mediterranean navigation and portolan production; the study of how royal and mercantile patronage shaped cartographic output in Habsburg Spain; and the material culture of manuscripts that combine practical charting with visual luxury.