1486 Claudius Ptolemy/ Nicolaus Germanus Map of the Ancient World

This is a beautiful example, in rich original color, of the world map of the 1486 Ulm Ptolemy: regarded as the most beautiful, printed world map of the 15th century. The present example is one of the finest to appear on the market in recent years. It appeared in the first edition of Ptolemy printed north of the Alps, and as such it provided the foundation for the revolution in geographical knowledge that occurred in the opening years of the 16th century. The 'world' as depicted here is mainly the Oikumene, the inhabited world as it was known to 2nd century Romans. It covers the 'Old World' from the islands of the Atlantic Ocean (both real and legendary) to Indochina, and from the Arctic to the Tropic of Capricorn. But this was also the first printed world map to depart from a purely Ptolemaic model, offering more contemporaneous knowledge: the early depiction of Scandinavia and Iceland.

The First Woodcut Ptolemy

The Ulm Ptolemy was the first such work to be printed from woodblocks: the early Italian Ptolemies were printed from copperplates. The printer of the 1482 edition, Lienhart Holle, went into ruinous debt producing the book. In addition to the superb woodcut maps, the text of the work utilized one of the largest typefaces employed in an incunable. Remarkably, this world map is the first printed map to be signed by its creator. The woodcut artist, or formschneider, has, in the upper border, left the inscription Insculptum est per Johannē Schnitzer de Armsheim 'Engraved by Johann Schnitzer de Armsheim.' (Schnitzer, German for Cutter, is just as likely to be a family name as the man's trade.) It is presumed that he executed the other woodcuts that populated the Ulm Ptolemy, but those are not so signed. Johann's name appears on no other works, and no other maps have been attributed to him.

Johann of Armsheim's map, surrounded by aeoli and clouds, is the most appealing printed world map of the fifteenth century: not only due to its composition and decoration, but due to its being the only world map of the period to consistently receive hand coloring at the time of publication. The palette of this example is consistent with that which we have seen for examples of the 1486 edition of the work.

The source for the Ulm Ptolemy - and indeed, for all but one of the fifteenth-century printed Ptolemies - was Donnus Nicolaus Germanus (c. 1420 – c. 1490) whose manuscript translations were instrumental in spreading knowledge of it out of Italy. He introduced several innovations to the ancient work, for example including the earliest printed map of the Holy Land and the first specific map of Scandinavia. But his most important role appears to have been as disseminator of Ptolemy's work. Barring the 1482 Florence Ptolemy, all printed Geographia of the fifteenth century were copied from Nicolaus Germanus' manuscripts.

The World According to Ptolemy

The first edition of the Ulm Ptolemy was printed ten years before the first published European crossings of the Atlantic Ocean and the bulk of its information is drawn from more than thirteen hundred years before. What is remarkable, then, is not that there is much in the map that is in error. Rather, it reflects an astonishing level of detail that is verifiably correct, and recognizable. The map shows a roughly conic projection of part of the globe reaching as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn. Europe can be seen in the upper left. Below it, a familiar North Africa continues into a massive continent, expanding to fill the lower part of the map. The African interior is dominated by two great river systems, the Niger, extending from the Atlantic, and the Nile. The southern extreme of Africa continues into a massive landform entirely surrounding the Indian Ocean and ultimately connecting with Asia beyond the Malay Peninsula (a territory called India Extra Gangem, India beyond the Ganges). Within the enclosed Indian Ocean, Arabia and the Persian Gulf are recognizable. Taprobana, in the midst of this great sea, is most probably the island of Ceylon or modern-day Sri Lanka. It appeared on Ptolemaic maps greatly exaggerated in size due to its significance to the classical spice trade.

Islands in the Atlantic

Ancient European experience with the Atlantic Ocean was not limited to the coastline, and this is reflected in Ptolemy's work. There are numerous islands noted here that pepper the western extreme of this map. In some cases these are semi-legendary locations preserved in the histories predating Ptolemy, and in some cases they are more concrete references.

The Tin Islands

Tin mines were important resources in the ancient world, and their location was generally kept secret by those who knew it. Ancient Greeks would assign the location of such features to remote parts of the world: hence, the Kassiterides or 'Tin Islands' appear at the most westward extreme of the Oikumene: in the Atlantic off the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula. These islands were placed there as early as Strabo (64 BC - 24 CE) and Ptolemy accepted Strabo's report. Here they are named 'Caterides.'

Other islands appear off the Iberian coast. The Berlengas archipelago - named 'Londobris' by Ptolemy - also appears here as 'Landobries.' The islands were known to the Phoenecians, and there are Roman era ruins on the main island. Ptolemy's information here probably derived from Strabo's reports of about a century prior. Gadra appears as well at the mouth of the Strait of Gibraltar. This is the island of Cadiz. Further south off the coast of Africa, other islands appear: Pena, Mora, Erthia, Autolala, and the Fortunate Isles. The idea of the existence of islands in this part of the world goes back to the ancient Greeks, and would persist in European thought, and were later connected to actual islands such as the Canaries and the Azores. Ptolemy accepted their presence as fact and used the Fortunate Isles as his primary meridian at the westernmost extreme of his mapping of the known world.

The First Appearance of Scandinavia

Ptolemy's geographical model did not reach north of 63 degrees north. For the 2nd century Alexandrian, those areas were utterly unknown, beyond the remotest hinterlands of the north. One of Nicolaus Germanus' innovations to this map was the inclusion, north of this point above Europe, of the first appearance of Scandinavia, Iceland, and possibly even Greenland. Hence, as per Nordenskiöld, 'printed ten years before the first voyage of Columbus, a map is given embracing no only the North of the Old World, but also that part of the New World (Greenland) which, half a millennium before Columbus, was discovered by the Scandinavians.'

Mare Indicum, Mare Prasodum

Among the most striking aspects of the Ptolemaic Oikumene is the representation of the Indian Ocean as a landlocked sea. Beginning at around twenty degrees south, the entire projection is dominated by a landmass running off the edges of the map. It is identified as Terra incognita secundum Ptholomeum, or 'Unknown land according to Ptolemy.' Beginning at the Promontorium Prassum - the furthest point south on the east coast of Africa which Ptolemy had named - the coastline is shown to turn directly to the east. At Ptolemy's 180th degree of longitude, the coast turns sharply to the north, until it connects to the Asian mainland in the vicinity of China, fully encompassing the Malay Peninsula. The northern part of the body of water thus enclosed is named the Indian Ocean (Mare Indicum) and the southern part is here named Mare Prasodum. The body of water between the Malay Peninsula and this encircling landmass Ptolemy termed the Sinus Magnus (the Great Bay.) By the time this map was printed, the Portuguese were actively exploring the west coast of Africa but would not cross the equator until about 1485. Portugal's Bartolomeu Dias would not sail around the Cape of Good Hope until 1488, and so Europeans had not yet made the discoveries that would prove Ptolemy's model of Africa and the Indian Ocean false.

Publication History and Census

The woodcut for this map was made by the formschneider Johann Schnitzer de Armsheim for inclusion in the 1482 Holle edition of Ptolemy's Geography, titled by its translators at the time as Cosmography. After Holle's patron Justus de Albano seized the blocks for nonpayment of the printer's debts, Albano commissioned a second edition of the work to be printed from the same blocks by the printer Johann Reger in 1486. There were no further editions using these blocks. While there is no distinction between the two states' printed images, the coloring used differs between the two, mainly in Holle's profligate use of Lapiz Lazuli in coloring the large bodies of water. Reger economized in the use of that deep (and prohibitively expensive) blue, restricting it to rivers and lakes, and the maps of the 1486 Reger edition characteristically have the seas and oceans filled with a tawny-brown color (which may once have been a brighter color.) We see eighteen examples of the Holle Ptolemy in institutional collections, and ten of the Reger. Nine examples of the separate map are cataloged in OCLC.