Dibujar para el deleite, el prestigio y el poder. Dos atlas «perdidos» de la Monarquía Hispánica del siglo XVII

Abstract

This article deals with Leonardo de Ferrari and Lorenzo Possi, two Italian cartographers in the service of the Spanish monarchy, and the atlases they made in 1655 and 1687, respectively. Both works belong to the so-called “lost cartography” of the Spanish monarchy, which is undergoing an important recovery, and are contextualized by means of a survey of the range achieved by cartography in the world of the Spanish Habsburgs, mostly in the seventeenth century. The article compares the authors’ lives and then covers the preparation of both works and their formal aspect and contents, as the atlases were highly esteemed instruments for political as well as aesthetical and social reasons. Through both examples, the article explores the relations between political power, the cartographers and the maps.