Antoine du Pérac Lafréry (1512-77) was a French engraver who settled in Rome, probably in the early 1540s, where he became a celebrated publisher of maps. Lafréry assembled and bound collections of maps from various sources, which he sold under the title <em>Tavole moderne di geografia...di diversi autori raccolte et messe secondo l’ordine di Tolemeo</em> (Modern geographical maps...from various authors, collected and organized according to Ptolemy’s geographical order). This work dates from around 1575, a few years after Abraham Ortelius, working in Antwerp, published the first modern atlas. Copies of Lafréry’s <em>Tavole</em> are extremely rare, and differ with regard to the numbers and kinds of maps included. This set of maps from the Library of Congress consists of 17 loose sheets from atlases sold by Lafréry. Some of the maps are in Italian, others in Latin. Included are maps of the world, the European continent, Northern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, Poland, Spain, the Italian Peninsula, and Malta. The 1565 map of Malta is particularly significant, as it is a contemporaneous treatment of one of the great events of the 16th century: the unsuccessful siege of Malta by an Ottoman armada in May-September 1565.
Gastaldi, Giacomo (1500?-1565?)
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