Pretty Portolan

Among at least 25 new manuscripts online in the past week at the Vatican Library is a 16th-century portolan chart attributed to the Mallorcan mapmaker Joan Martines. This may not be the oldest of such charts, but in its bright colors it is a thing of beauty and it was evidently never used for actual seafaring but kept as a work of art.

Below is the Aegean Sea with Rhodes at right and Crete below. The coloration makes you want to fly there this minute:

1. Reg.lat.83 , Gerson
2. Reg.lat.169 , 5th Lateran Council
3. Reg.lat.320
4. Reg.lat.353
5. Reg.lat.382
6. Urb.lat.426 , Livy: Ab urbe condita, a 15th-century manuscript (upload is not working yet)
7. Urb.lat.1708 , an arithmetic handbook (the fly-leaves are palimpsests)
   
   
   
   
8. Urb.lat.1710 , portolan (above)
9. Vat.gr.586 , 12th century manuscript of John Chrysostom
10. Vat.gr.920.pt.2 , book of Greek plays, Sophocles, etc., 14th century, from fol 175r onwards
11. Vat.gr.1007 , Plutarch, a fairly important manuscript source
12. Vat.gr.1296.pt.1 , manuscript S of the Suda, the famed Byzantine encyclopedia, copied 1205
13. Vat.gr.1296.pt.2
14. Vat.gr.1296.pt.3
15. Vat.gr.1533 , Four Gospels, with fine canon tables:
    
16. Vat.lat.1138 , William Durand
17. Vat.lat.1143 , ditto
18. Vat.lat.1267 , an 11th-century grab-bag of Chrysostom, Augustine, Isidore and other authors: presumably a scholar's own anthology
19. Vat.lat.1277 , Chrysostom and Augustine
20. Vat.lat.1327 , texts from synods, Byzantine period, in Latin translation
21. Vat.lat.1333 , 15th century compilation of councils
22. Vat.lat.1387 , 14th-century Bottoni, Glossa (compare below)
    
23. Vat.lat.1390, Bernardo Bottoni's Glossa ordinaria in Decretalium Gregorii libros I-V cum glossulis (1266). A very beautiful 14th-century copy with elaborate mise-en-page. The arbor juris below (discussed by Hermann Schadt in his Darstellungen) is just one of the fine illuminations.
    
24. Vat.lat.1411 , 14th-century manuscript of Digests of Justinian with some fantastic action filled illuminations like this:
    
25. Vat.lat.11559 , Lucan, De bello civili Pharsalia

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 109. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.