Anonymous Chart of Sebastião Lopes Year: 1989 Reproduction (16th Century Original) Call Number: MAP-1989-04 Sebastião Lopes was a 16th-century Portuguese cartographer who played a key role in the Age of Exploration, contributing to Portugal’s dominance in maritime exploration. Lopes’s cartographic work is notable for its meticulous attention to detail, particularly the depiction of coastlines, shipping routes, and major navigation points. This is a typical Portolan chart, usually drawn on tanned parchment, focusing on depicting nautical information such as ports, islands, bays, coastlines, etc. The colorful compass roses are not only exquisite decorative elements of the map, but also serve as basic directions and connect various direction points to help sailors draw navigation aids. The exquisite sailing ship in the picture is the Carrack, a famous ocean-going sailing ship in the Age of Exploration. Its huge size, sophisticated hull design and advanced sails were enough to support Portuguese navigators in their feat of sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, crossing the Indian Ocean and conducting international trade between Goa, Macao and Nagasaki. 48 05
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