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valuable contribution to our historic cartography. The manuscripts include a large number of cartographic documents which were taken to Scandinavia at the end of the 17th century by Swedish diplomat Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld. In 1690, he was in Madrid taking part in one of the most important public auctions held in the court of the Austrias in the 17th century. It was organised to sell off the fabulous assets of Gaspar de Haro y Guzm�n, Marquis of Heliche and El Carpio, who had died two years earlier in the city of Naples. Sparwenfeld bought veritable bibliographical and documental jewels from the Haro family�s collection, which travelled to Sweden that very same year. The material has remained there ever since, under the custody of different institutions. In 1805, the cartographic documents were transferred to the recently created Royal Military Archives in Stockholm.
The previous owner, Gaspar de Haro, was a renowned art collector and cartography enthusiast who had accumulated a large number of items, as shown by the inventory of his goods that was completed upon his death. Part of the maps which once belonged to the Marquis and are now part of the Swedish archive have been published with the sponsorship of the Regional Government of Extremadura; now, however, we are publishing all the cartographic material referring to the Iberian Peninsula that was taken to Sweden by Sparwenfeld. The rest of the manuscript plans included in this publication reached Sweden at a later date by unknown means and for unknown reasons. |