La vera descrittione della navigatione di tutta l’Europpa, et parte dell’Africa et dell’Asia..

La vera descrittione della navigatione di tutta l’Europpa, et parte dell’Africa et dell’Asia, quali confinano con essa. Fatta con ogni diligentia dall’eccellente Cosmografo signor Giacomo Home[n] Portoghese; nella quale, ancorche sia opera minutissima, si vegono però tutte l’Isole, Golfi, Porti, Scogli secchie, et altre cose necessarie alla buona navigazione. Hora di nuovo revista et emendata.

Etching and engraving, on two sheets joined, 485 x 743; Imprint: In Roma: ex typis Antonÿ Lafreri, MDLXXII.

Magnificient example, printed on contemporary laid paper with "Paschal Lamb with straight standard" (Woodward, pp. 45-47, nn. 46-50, date from 1556 to 1570), in excellent condition.

Bar scale on map given in “Scala de Miglia Italiani” (1000 units [= 196 cm]). Latitudinal lines along left margin. Decorative cartouche, two compass roses for the orientation with north at the top, rhumb lines.
Woodward “The nautical chart of Europe and Mediterranean is perhaps Forlani’s best-known engraving on account of its claim to be the earliest printed version of a portolan chart of the Mediterranean, as Forlani himself notes. Forlani also tells us that he based the chart on a ʿdescrittione dell’Europa, et parte dell’Africa, et dell’Asia, secondo l’uso de navigantiʾ by Giacomo (=Diego) Homen…” (Imago Mundi, 44, 1992, p. 53)”.

Published three years later the 1569 Venetian edition by Paolo Forlani, this lafrerian edition is different in the extension at west: here the Canary Islands are no longer represented.

The chart is specifically mentioned by Ortelius in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, and after the first edition was reissued several times.

Diogo Homem (1521–1576) was a Portuguese cartographer, son of Lopo Homem and member of a family of cartographers. He was one of the most prolific Portuguese cartographers. Extant are 11 separate charts made by him between 1557 and 1576; 7 atlases of Europe and the Mediterranean, with a total of 52 sheets, drawn between 1559 and 1574; and 5 universal atlases from 1558 to 1568, with 81 sheets, amounting to a total of 144 charts. The charts by Diogo Homem concentrate almost exclusively on coastlines. There seems to have been considerable evolution in his production, from an initial period (1557/58) during which he limited himself to copying others until his final years (1569–76), during which
he improved his own charts, especially in the eastern Mediterranean.

The documents discovered shed some light on the places where Diogo Homem worked, but little is known about the period between the beginning of his known activity as a cartographer, in 1547, and 1568, the date of the first work he did in Venice, a city where he must have lived between 1568 and 1576, and possibly earlier.

In 1544, Diogo Homem was condemned to exile by King João III for the murder of a man. His father intervened to commute his punishment on the condition that Diogo remain in Portugal. It is known, however, that soon after that he went to England, where he lived in 1557 and 1558. There is no information on his presence in Portugal after 1547, the year of his pardon.

Bibliografia: S. Bifolco - F. Ronca, Cartografia e topografia italiana del XVI secolo. Catalogo ragionato delle opere e stampa, Roma, 2018, pp. 704-705, tav. 236 I/III; cfr. F. Borroni Salvadori, Carte Piante e Stampe Storiche delle raccolte Lafreriane della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, Roma 1980, n. 16; R. V. Tooley, Maps in Italian Atlases of the Sixteenth Century, being a comparative list of the Italian maps issued by Lafreri, Forlani, Duchetti, Bertelli and others, found in atlases, in “Imago Mundi” III, pp. 12-47, 1939, n. 35.