Bibliothèque nationale de France département Cartes et plans, GE DD-683 (5 RES) ark:/12148/btv1b55002607s

Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55002607s/f1.item

On this chart of land and sea, Portuguese ships dominate the ocean, and Brazil appears from the Equator to 40° S. The chart combines a stylize coastlines with many toponyms (place names) along the Atlantic with a view of Brazil that emphasizes its forests, birds, animals, Native peoples, and extensive stands of the valuable Brazilwood tree. The Guanabara Bay is placed quite accurately, right above the Tropic of Capricorn. The chart is today part of a larger set of maps, known as the Atlas Miller. This atlas was assembled from a series of maps in the nineteenth century, and it was attributed to Lopo Homen,. However, the individual charts are so clearly in another style that Cortesão, Mota, and Marques believed them to be the work of Pedro and Jorge Reinel. Pedro Reinel served as the mestre de cartas e agulhas de marear [master chart and compass maker] to the Portuguese Kings João II and Manuel I. Pedro’s son Jorge Reinel was also a skilled chartmaker. Shortly after these charts must have been finished, Jorge Reinel was in Seville making a world map for Magellan. His father, Pedro, went to Seville to finish his son’s maps and to bring him back to Portugal. [3]

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[3] See Cortesão, Mota, and Marques, Portugaliae monumenta cartographica, I: 55-61.

 

The bay has its distinctive balloon-like appearance with its narrow entrance. It appears due west of Cabo Frio, which is at 23° S on the latitude scale of the chart. Red dots inside the Guanabara Bay suggest its many islands, and two major rivers empty into its northern shore. Its coastline is stylized, as is the rest of the coastline of Brazil. The name Rio de Janeiro appears twice: once in black script (today fated to brown) and again in red. As chartmakers used red to highlight the most important names, this suggests that the toponym in red might have been added later.