Booth Shares Title

This illuminated atlas with color maps was preciously preserved for centuries before being exhumed from the archives of the French Defense Ministry’s Historical Service. It is a work of art and an exceptional testimony to the savoir-faire of cartographers from the middle of the 16th century. Written and illustrated only fi fty years prior to the discovery of the Americas for Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of the French navy under Henri II, this atlas is the work of Guillaume Le Testu, an experienced navigator from Le Havre. He participated in the fi rst colonization expeditions in Latin America and shared the exploits of the well-known corsair Francis Drake. The fi rst section of the book is richly illustrated with full color reproductions of extracts from 16th- century atlases, cosmographies, and paintings. The accompanying texts: - situate the work of Le Testu in the historical context of the Great Voyages of Discovery, - reveal the life of the intrepid Guillaume Le Testu, “Royal Pilot”, adventurer, and cartographer. - analyse the representation of the world for the men of the Renaissance, including the fantasized beasts, leviathans, animals and curious varieties of the human race, supposedly encountered in the world. The maps of the Universal Cosmography reproduced in facsimile, in the second part of the book, are then assembled together to reconstruct the globe and continents as they were mapped by Le Testu.