Catalan Atlas Cartographic Tradition

Timeline

1. 1300–1370Mallorca · Balearic IslandsMeasured Mediterranean merchant routes and compass bearing records gradually hardened into standards for portolan chart making; cartographer communities around Mallorca and Barcelona absorbed Arabic-Jewish astronomical-geographical literature, forming the technical prelude to the Catalan school of cartography.
2. 1375Mallorca · Catalan cultural sphereAbraham Cresques completed a six-panel atlas for the heir to the Aragonese throne, covering Europe, Asia and Africa with accurate coastlines and a wind-rose network, accompanied by cosmological illustrations and exotic figure scenes, the pinnacle of the tradition.
3. 1380–1400Barcelona · CataloniaCatalan-style portolan charts circulated among Iberian courts and Mediterranean commercial cities; cartographers continued the paradigm of pairing portolan and cosmological maps, providing a direct model for 15th-century Portuguese and Genoese cartographic traditions.
4. 1400–1500Iberian Peninsula · Iberian PeninsulaWith Portuguese exploration along the African coast and the revival of Ptolemaic geography, the Catalan tradition gradually merged with new Italian-Portuguese sea charts; its wind-rose network and coastal drawing techniques remained visible in early Atlantic portolan charts.