fl.1560 - 1574
For a short time round the middle of the sixteenth century, in the period between the publication of Munster's Geographia (1540) and Cosmographia (1544) in Basle and the Ortelius Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in Antwerp (1570), the increasing demand for sheet maps was met by engravers and publishers in Rome and Venice, of whom the above-named were the most active.
It became the practice in those cities to issue in one volume maps by various cartographers, the maps varying in shape and size but being bound in uniform style and usually arranged in standard 'Ptolemaic' order.
The collections, of which no two are quite alike, were probably made up to individual requirements and are now exceedingly rare. They have become known generically as Lafreri Atlases from Lafreri's imprint in a number of them but similar collections were issued by other publishers.
Dictionary of map makers
An illustrated list of makers of maps, charts and globes from the earliest time of cartography to present.
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