Portolan chart by Mateo Prunes

We can see abundant decorative details, such as different ribbons, flags, and coats of arms; large compass roses indicating the cardinal points are also included. Important cities in Europe, Africa, and the Near East are portrayed with flags indicating their sovereignty. Thus, Granada in southern Spain is marked with the flag of Castile, and a large flag with the Lion of Saint Mark rises from the city of Venice, depicted very large to indicate its importance. At the left edge of the chart, a depiction of the Virgin and Child is included, something common in nautical charts made in Majorca at the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Under the Virgin, an inscription indicates the authorship and date of the work: Matheus Prunes in civitate majoricarum 1563 (“Mateo Prunes in the city of the Majorcans, 1563”).

Two large ships are shown sailing west in the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps indicating the importance of the Atlantic at this time of the first voyages to America from southern Europe. At the bottom left corner of the chart, we can see the Canary Islands and Madeira. Matteo Prunes was a member of a renowned family of cartographers living and working in Majorca in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a time when the famous Majorcan school of cartography was in decline. Several members of the family are known, namely Juan, Bautista, Matteo, Vicente, Juan Bautista, and Pere Joan, among whom Matteo seems to have been the most prolific mapmaker. This chart is one of his thirteen surviving charts and is displayed in the Museo Naval in Madrid, which acquired it in 1926.