Title of the volume: Nuovo atlante portatile ovvero metodo facile per apprendere in breve la geografia con un esatto trattato della Sfera che fa vedere il moto degli astri, i vari sistemi del mondo e l’uso dei globi ec. Opera arricchita di XXIV carte miniate per uso delle Scuole d’Italia, e di ogni genere di persone (New Portable Atlas or Easy Method to Learn Geography Quickly with an Exact Treatise on the Sphere Showing the Motion of Stars, the Various World Systems and the Use of Globes etc. Work Enriched with XXIV Colored Maps for Use in Italian Schools and for All Kinds of People)
Date: 1777 (first edition, Geography Library); 1785 (second edition, Morbiato Collection)
Author: Christiaan Andreas Sepp (1712-1775)
Printer: Giammaria Bassaglia

Publisher and place of publication: Giammaria Bassaglia, Venice
Plate execution technique: Watercolored chalcography
Language: Italian
Location: Geography Library, ATL PRE 7 (1); Geography Library, Morbiato Collection, MORB. 19
Notes on the volume: The two volumes constitute the first (Library copy) and second (Morbiato Collection copy, lacking frontispiece) editions of the Nuovo atlante portatile (New Portable Atlas) printed in Venice by Giammaria Bassaglia in 1777 and 1785 respectively. A third edition was published there in 1796 by Giacomo Storti. The atlas derives from the work Geographische Oefening by the designer and engraver Christiaan Andreas Sepp (1712-1775), particularly known for his engravings dedicated to the plant and animal world. Of the 22 miniature maps in his small atlas, he was simultaneously the designer and engraver. The text was first printed in Dutch in 1758 in Amsterdam, where Sepp lived, by Frans Houttuyn. In 1760, he sold Sepp’s copperplates to Jan Herman Schneider, with the right to publish a French edition: this came to light that same year with the title Atlas des enfans [sic] and knew great success with six official editions, in addition to many pirate editions. Among the pirate editions, both the one published by Bartholomew Vlam in Amsterdam in 1772 and the one published in Lyon by Bruyset in 1774 falsely attribute the original maps to the famous French cartographer Guillaume Delisle. The Bassaglia edition reproduces this false attribution. The work constitutes an early example of a school atlas, proposing a new method for teaching geography to children: first, data is reduced to avoid information overload; then, each map is accompanied by a chapter of questions and answers that guides the student in reading the map, thus supporting learning through the dual direction, visual and textual; this interdependence between map and text is accentuated by the fact that geographical elements are identified on the maps through a symbolic system of numbers and letters that are explained in the text. In the preface to the Venetian edition by Bassaglia, the desire to be simpler and clearer than the original work is expressed, choosing “a plain style, and a language for children” (from the Preface); it also lists a series of choices considered improvements, related to both content and the order in which it is treated. Like the Atlas des enfans, the volume also contains a short treatise on the use of globes accompanied by two plates, bringing the total number of illustrations to 24 compared to Sepp’s 22.