A great many of the maps, often based on large wall maps of cities, provinces, states and countries that were produced by mapmakers of the regions depicted, were issued by Giacomo Gastaldi, but it is Antonio Lafreri, better known for his prints and as a map seller than as a publisher, whose name is now used to describe these Italian maps.
These were issued separately or bound up as atlases – the probable origin of the maps in the New Bond Street sale. Illustrated here is a map of Britanniae compiled by George Lily, an English catholic living in exile in Rome. Published by Michele Tramezini in Rome in 1546, it served as the model for virtually all maps of Britain until superseded by Mercator’s wall-map of 1564.
This example sold for £64,000.
Buyer’s premium: 17/5/15/10 per cent
The very model of a British map...
UK: THE Travel sale held by Sotheby’s on December 14 included a fine collection of what are known as ‘Lafreri-School’ maps, the product of a remarkable flowering of cartographic arts that took place in Rome and Venice, c.1540-70.
