1509 Waldseemuller

The images here (Figures 1 and 2) are from Lehigh's 1509 copy of Waldseemuller's Cosmographie introductio.  For an overview of Waldseemuller, see this article from Smithsonian Magazine, which offers these notes about the 1507 edition of "Introduction to Cosmography". "The author of the Introduction to Cosmo­graphy laid out the organization of the cosmos as it had been described for more than 1,000 years: the Earth sat motionless at the center, surrounded by a set of giant revolving concentric spheres." Also, "with no fanfare, near the end of ... [this] minor Latin treatise on cosmography ["the study of the known world and its place in the cosmos"],... [the] author briefly stepped out of obscurity to give America its name—and then disappeared again. "

Waldseemuller created the version of a wall map described here, according to which it has the first known mention of America. Near the top of this map is an illustration of Ptolemy facing Vespucci. Scroll down to read the comments at #5 here.

According to Van Duzer, ”Waldseemüller’s use of both Ptolemy and Vespucci as sources—of both ancient and modern authorities—is indicated in the portraits of them at the top of the 1507 map.”

This juxtaposition symbolizes the advances in understanding of the world--the dramatic extension of Ptolemy's geographical understanding occurring at the time.  

Another version of Waldseemuller's maps includes one with "gores", which are strips that can be wrapped around a sphere to create a globe depicting the earth's geography.

Yet another version is the 1516 "Carta Marina". Again, from Van Duzer:

     “In his Carta marina Waldseemüller abandoned the Ptolemaic model, and instead adopted the model of nautical charts or portolan charts. The origin of nautical charts is unclear, but the earliest surviving examples date to the late thirteenth century. In essence they are practical tools for navigation, usually hand-drawn on parchment, with the emphasis on coastal features and place names; rather than being marked with latitude and longitude, they have a system of rhumb lines that radiate out in the standard compass directions (or directions of the traditional winds) from points organized in one or two large circles. In addition to the relatively plain nautical charts used for navigation, others were elaborately decorated with cities, kings, animals, flags, and compass roses, and had descriptive texts added to them. This was the type of map that Waldseemüller chose as the model for his 1516 map, and in fact we know the specific map he used: the nautical chart by Nicolo de Caverio of Genoa, made c. 1503 … .“

“The change from Waldseemüller’s following Ptolemy to repudiating him is dramatic, and illustrates a dichotomy of Renaissance culture: on the one hand, admiration for the methods of enquiry and systems of knowledge of the ancients, and on the other, recognition that new investigations or explorations could produce results superior to those of the ancients…. In a long introductory text in the lower left corner of the Carta marina, Waldseemüller discusses his earlier map (certainly the 1507 map), and his reasons for creating a new one. He concedes that a map with ancient place names, like his earlier map, is of limited utility, since it is difficult to recognize modern places according to their ancient names, and also remarks that recent explorers have detected various errors in the geographical writings of the ancients, particularly in Ptolemy’s Geography.” 

In that last sentence, concerning Renaissance culture's attitude toward classical writings, we have an echo of Sylvanus 1511, in this exhibition.