{"id":91943,"date":"2017-05-12T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T10:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oncubamagazine.com\/?p=91943"},"modified":"2017-05-07T18:40:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T22:40:59","slug":"first-modern-atlas-of-the-world-returned-to-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/styles-trends\/places\/first-modern-atlas-of-the-world-returned-to-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"First modern atlas of the world returned to Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first modern atlas, of which there are only three copies in the world, belongs to the collections of the National Library of Cuba (BNC). But it has not always remained there. In the 1990s an expert in valuable works stole it from the institution and sold it to the Boston Athenaeum.<\/em> Now, two decades later, the copy has been returned to the island.<\/p>\n

The atlas published on May 20, 1570 in Belgium collects for the first time maps of America, the Antilles and Cuba. For Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, outstanding historian and director of the National Library, one of the document\u2019s greatest values is the location of Cuba in the Antillean, American and world geography.<\/p>\n

It is a collection of 53 maps with their corresponding texts made and engraved in copper plates that show how the world looked at that time. \u201cAmerica appears here very disfigured, which is logical if we take into account that it is made following the description of navigators. But at least thanks to Ortelius the island of Cuba is included in an atlas, although drawn much smaller than Santo Domingo, typical of 1570,\u201d says Torres Cuevas.<\/p>\n

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Its author, the erudite and geographer Abraham Ortelius, made other versions after 1570 where he introduces other maps. The atlas grew in each one of its 31 editions. Originally in Latin \u2013 like this copy \u2013 it was published in seven different languages: Dutch in 1571, German in 1572, French in 1572, Spanish in 1588, English in 1606 and Italian in 1608.<\/p>\n

The Ortelius Atlas was stolen from the National Library at some time between 1990 and 1993, a period in which many works of art were lost in Cuba. Everything indicates that Boston antique dealer David L. O\u2019Neill acquired it in an auction and in late 1993 sold it for a high price to the Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most valuable private libraries of the United States.<\/p>\n

When did the Athenaeum find out that the atlas had been stolen and how did it identify that it belonged to the Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed National Library? These were some of the questions asked by Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas during the initial exchange with the U.S. institution.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the summer of 1999 the Atlas was sent to the Documents Conservation Center in northeast Boston and on December 14 of that year Mrs. Deborah Wender, head of the conservation center, reported that after a rigorous inspection they had detected that two of stamps of the owners of the Atlas had been mutilated. One of them could be deciphered. It identified that the work belonged to Havana\u2019s Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed National Library. And, on the other hand, no other sign existed that the work had been liberated from its collections. These are reasons given by the Documentation Center to not work with the book. Because of a question of ethics the institution does not process stolen books,\u201d says Torres Cuevas.<\/p>\n