Arcano del mare

Robert Dudley was an English nobleman, navigator, and cartographer who spent much of his later life in exile in Florence under Medici patronage. His Dell’Arcano del Mare, first published in 1646–47, was reissued in 1661 under the shortened title Arcano del Mare. The atlas was the first printed sea atlas by an Englishman and one of the earliest printed sea atlases to use Mercator’s projection consistently.

This engraved title page introduces Tomo Secondo, or vol. 2, of the 1661 edition of Arcano del Mare. The second edition reorganised the original three-volume Dell’Arcano del Mare into two uniformly sized folio volumes. The title page was printed in Florence by Giuseppe Cocchini, at the instance of Jacopo Bagnoni and Antonio Francesco Lucini. Lucini, who engraved the charts for Dudley’s atlas, was central to the distinctive visual character of the publication.

At the centre is a celestial diagram in the form of Ursa Minor, identified above as “Orsa Minore.” The constellation is marked with seven labelled stars, and associated with the astronomical work of Giovanni Antonio Magini, whose tables and writings were important to mathematical geography and navigation. Near the tail, the label F. Stella Guida identifies the guiding star, while G. Magini, Polo Fixo marks the Pole Star, Polaris, the fixed point in the northern sky used for determining latitude at sea.

The title page links astronomy directly to navigation. By placing Ursa Minor and Polaris at the opening of Tomo Secondo, Dudley and Lucini present celestial observation as fundamental to the maritime science developed in the volume. The image is restrained compared with more elaborate allegorical atlas title pages, but its emphasis on the Pole Star makes it a precise visual statement about guidance, measurement, and the mathematical foundations of navigation.