[PORTOLANO] DE OLIVA, Placid (active 1575-1615); MARTINES, Joan (active 1556-1590) (attributed). Portalian atlas of the Mediterranean. Messina, ca. 1575-1590. Important Portolano atlas of the Messinese school, in which the Mediterranean basin is represented through three consecutive maps: the first dedicated to the western Mediterranean, the second to the Italian peninsula and the North African coasts, with Sicily in the center, and the third to the eastern Mediterranean, to the Levant and the Black Sea. The rich accessory iconographic apparatus, consisting of city views, allegorical figures, ornamental cartoons and wind roses, brings the work back to the Mallorcan cartographic tradition, rather than the Italian one, usually more sober and essential. The atlas has in fact close affinity with the surviving specimens of the Messinese production, developed mainly around the Rubeus/Russian and De Oliva families, both of Balearic origin, and the figure of Joan Martines, linked to the environment of the Russians. Many elements refer in particular to the production of the De Oliva family, of which are documented, between 1538 and 1673, at least sixteen cartographers. Some details seem to bring the manuscript closer to the work of Placido de Oliva: the dragon depicted off the African coast, the allegory of Golgotha near Jerusalem, the spelling of coastal toponyms and the close resemblance in the representation of the cities. Particularly significant is the comparison with the view of Genoa, in which the Lanterna is depicted with adjective structures, also present in a specimen of Placido preserved at the Library of Congress (G5672.M4P5 158). The elaborately adorned cartoons and the concept of the atlas in the form of a book find more stringent comparisons in the production of Joan Martines, as in the specimens preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional de España (GMG/103 and VITR/4/20). These characteristics therefore suggest a work performed with several hands, probably in the context of the De Oliva workshop and with the possible intervention of Martines. A collaboration between the latter and the De Oliva family is documented by the Portalian atlas of four cards preserved in Chatsworth (DEV/011740), dated 1562 and signed jointly by Joan Martines and Bartolomeo de Oliva (ca. 1530-1580). The gaps and defects of the support, concentrated mainly in the areas most subject to manipulation, could be compatible with an effective use of the atlas. Rare testimony of the flourishing Messianic cartographic activity of Majorcan tradition in the second half of the sixteenth century. Parchment code (263 × 181 mm), consisting of 3 nautical charts decorated with 8 wind roses, 2 ornamental cartoons, 6 city views, a dragon, an allegory of Golgotha and two trees; not signed or dated (defects and gaps). (1)