Photographer Page

Dagli Orti

Two centaur guards greet Dante and Virgil in the seventh circle, where the violent are condemned to immersion in boiling blood for eternity, in a late 15th-century codex.

The 1589 publication of "A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Frances [sic] Drake’s West Indian Voyage" is a chronicle of Drake’s great expedition of 1585-86 and features illustrated maps created by Italian cartographer Giovanni Battista Boazio. One map shows Drake’s fleet in front of Santo Domingo (today in the Dominican Republic). Boazio incorporated distinctive creatures from the Americas, including a sea turtle and a caiman. 16th-century color engraving based on original map by G.B. Boazio

A king hunts from a chariot, as depicted on a golden plate from Ugarit, a Syrian kingdom with close ties to the Hittites. 15th or 14th Century B.C., Louvre Museum, Paris

Barbarossa's fleet at the allied French port of Toulon in 1543. This contemporary miniature was painted by the famed artist Matrakçi Nasuh.