Painting the World: A Manuscript Atlas 1571 (Goa) 1 volume of 18 folios, coloured maps on parchment; 53 × 40,4 cm Torre do Tombo National Archive of Portugal PT/TT/CRT/165 Fernão Vaz Dourado ( c . 1520 - c . 1580) was a Portuguese cartographer who worked in Goa, India. Not much is known about his biography, but it is very likely that he was born and lived there. Goa was a meeting point for all the peoples, cultures and products circulating in the Indian Ocean. The item shown here is one of the sheets of an Atlas (depicting western Europe and part of North Africa) produced by Fernão Vaz Dourado, in 1571. The Atlas is a superb cartographic document, one of the finest and most beautiful examples of 16th century manuscript cartography. The Atlas is composed of eighteen illuminated folios, in high quality parchment, exquisitely painted by professional hands. Fifteen of these folios are charts of different parts of the surface of the Earth and its oceans, while the other three contai...