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FORLANI, Paolo
By David Bannister
Oct 30, 2005, 12:58

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.

Paolo Forlani was a cartographer and engraver who worked in Venice between 1560 and circa 1571.  The majority of his output was published under the imprint of other publishers, such as Giovanni Francesco Camocio, Ferrando Bertelli and Bolognini Zaltieri. 

In a pioneering study, David Woodward (4), by identifying Forlani's engraving style through various stages of development, has attributed a large number of previously unidentified maps to his hand, and provided a clearer picture of some of the publishing arrangements of the period.