The globe is of pasteboard covered with whiting and parchment,
and has a diameter of 507 mm. The author followed
Ptolemy not only in Asia, but also in the Mediterranean. He
did not avail himself of the materials available in his day.
Not even the coasts of western Africa are laid down correctly,
although the author claimed to have taken part in one of the
Portuguese expeditions. The ocean separating Europe from
Asia is assumed as being only 126° wide, in accordance with
Toscanelli’s ideas of 1474. Very inadequate use has been made
of the travels of Marco Polo, Nicolo de’ Conti, and of others
in the east.[1] On the other hand, the globe is made gay with
flags and other decorations, the work of George Glockendon,
a well-known illuminator of the time.
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| Fig. 26. |
The maritime discoveries and surveys of that age of great discoveries were laid down upon so-called “plane-charts,” that is, charts having merely equidistant parallels indicated upon them, together with the equator, the tropics and polar circles, or, in a more advanced stage, meridians also. The astrolabe quadrant or cross-staff enabled the mariner to determine his latitude with a certain amount of accuracy, but for his longitude he was dependent upon dead reckoning, for although various methods for determining a longitude were known, the available astronomical ephemerides were not trustworthy, and errors of 30° in longitude were by no means rare. It was only after the publication of Kepler’s Rudolphine Table (1626) that more exact results could be obtained. A further difficulty arose in connexion with the variation of the compass, which induced Pedro Reinel to introduce two scales of latitude on his map of the northern Atlantic (1504; fig. 27).
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| Fig. 27. |
The chart of the world by Juan de la Cosa, the companion of Columbus, is the earliest extant which depicts the discoveries in the new world (1500), Nicolaus de Canerio, a Genoese, and the map which Alberto Cantino caused to be drawn at Lisbon for Hercules d’Este of Ferrara (1502), illustrating in addition the recent discoveries of the Portuguese in the East. Other cosmographers of distinction were Pedro Reinel (1504–1542), Nuno Garcia de Toreno (1520), to whom we are indebted for 21 charts, illustrating Magellan’s voyage, Diogo Ribero (maps of the world 1527, 1529),[2] Alonzo de Santa Cruz, of Seville, whose Isolario general includes charts of all parts of the world (1541), John Rotz or Rut (1542), Sebastian Cabot (1544), as also Nicolas Desliens, Pierre Desceliers, G. Breton and V. Vallard, all of Arques, near Dieppe, whose charts were compiled between 1541 and 1554.
Of the many general maps of the world or of particular countries, a large number illustrate such works as G. Reisch’s Margarita philosophica (1163), the cosmographies of Peter Apianus or Bienewitz (1520, 1522, 1530), Seb. Münster (1544), J. Honter (1546) and Gulielmus Postel (1561) or the Geographia of Livio Sanuto (1588); others, and these the more numerous and important, supplement the original maps of several editions of Ptolemy. Thus the Roman edition of 1507, edited by Marcus Benaventura and Joa Cota, contains 6 modern maps, and to these was added in 1508 Joh. Ruysch’s famous map of the world on a modified conical projection. The next edition published at Venice in 1511 contained a heart-shaped world by Bernhard Sylvanus. The Strassburg Ptolemy of 1513 has a supplement of as many as 20 modern maps by Martin Waldseemüller or Ilacomilus, several among which are copied from Portuguese originals. Waldseemüller was one of the most distinguished cartographers of his day. He was born at Radolfzell in Baden in 1470, was associated with Ringmann at the gymnasium of
