Robert Dudley’s Arcano del mare (Secrets of the Seas) (1646-1647) is thought to be the first printed sea atlas. Comprised of large-scale engraved maps and numerous charts with volvelles, the multi-volume book seeks to comprehensively document the world and demonstrate mastery over the seas. Created at the court of the Medici in Florence by the son of the more renowned Robert Dudley (1st Earl of Leicester), Dudley sought to legitimize himself through his navigational studies and knowledge of ship building. Though he made few voyages himself, he gained credibility via the Arcano. This paper will introduce Dudley’s obscure career and the complex atlas itself, exploring several diverse editions. Through close analysis of text and image in the Arcano, the study demonstrates the significance of the section devoted to Brazil, which contains maps that are the only ones in the atlas to include human figures and a cartouche with the Medici coat-of-arms. Fraught with contradiction, the text and images on the maps both preserve and celebrate these lands and people while also denigrating them. Ultimately, the study questions Dudley’s sources and motivations for depicting South America and argues that these images were recycled years after Medici incursions in the Americas were possible.
Lia Markey is the Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at Chicago’s Newberry Library. Dr. Markey’s research examines cross-cultural exchange between Italy and the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, collecting history, and early modern prints and drawings. She has published Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (2016) and a co-edited volume The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750 (2017). Her edited volume, Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s “Nova Reperta” (forthcoming 2020), will complement the Newberry Library’s spring 2020 exhibition by the same title. She currently participates in the Getty Connecting Art Histories Research Group, “Spanish Italy and the Iberian New World.”
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