Monday 8 December 2008 Putting America on the Map

Published by the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. in association with London-based fine-art publisher D Giles Limited , The Naming of America: Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 World Map and the Cosmographiae Introductio is the first sheet-by-sheet colour facsimile of one of the most important maps in the history of cartography.

This new book features a facsimile of the 1507 World Map by Martin Waldseemüller – the first map ever to display the name America – and tells the fascinating story behind its creation in 16th-century France and rediscovery 300 years later in the library of Wolfegg Castle, Germany in 1901. It also includes a completely new translation and commentary to Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann’s seminal cartographic text, the Cosmographiae Introductio, which originally accompanied the World Map, along with the first scholarly commentary that identifies Waldsemuller’s sources.

The Cosmographiae Introductio by Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1470-ca.1521) and Matthias Ringmann (1482-1511) was printed in two editions in 1507 in the small village of St. Dié in North Eastern France, under the patronage of Duke René II of Lorraine. It is one of the most important texts in the history of cartography, on account of the mention on its title page of two maps that appear to have originally been part of the book. One of these maps, described in Latin as a plano, is Martin Waldseemüller’s famous 1507 World Map. Produced in 12 sheets that when placed together would have produced a single wall map, it represents the continents of North and South America with a shape similar to those we would recognize today, separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean.

A masterpiece of early woodblock printing, it was rediscovered in 1901 after being lost for three centuries, and of the 1,000 originally printed this is the only known copy to survive. Purchased by the Library of Congress in 2001, it will be newly exhibited in late 2007. The other map, called a solido, was a printed set of globe gores that is thought to be the first of its kind. Together the 1507 map and the Cosmographiae Introductio occupy a crucial transitional place in history, between the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 and the birth of the scientific revolution with Copernicus in 1543.

John Hessler considers answers to some of the key questions raised by Waldseemüller and Ringmann’s representation of the New World. These include: “How was it possible for a small group of cartographers to have produced a view of the world so radical for its time and so close to the one we recognize today?”; and “What evidence did they possess to show the existence of the Pacific Ocean when, at the supposed date of the map’s creation, neither Vasco Núñez de Balboa nor Ferdinand Magellan had reached the Pacific Ocean?”. There are no easy answers. These cosmographers suddenly appear in the historical record around 1505 and disappear a decade later having produced arguably some of the most important maps in the history of cartography. As this book reveals, this group of unknowns created a map that affords us a glimpse into an age when accepted scientific and geographic principles fell away, spawning the birth of modernity.

The Author:
John W. Hessler is a member of the Collections Management Team of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. He has published extensively on the history of mathematical and planetary cartography and is the author of several well-known articles relating to the Waldseemüller Map Corpus. His current research focuses on the study of geometrical and axiomatic methods in Ptolemy’s cartographic and astronomical works, especially the Mathematica Syntaxis.


THE NAMING OF AMERICA
Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 World Map and the Cosmographiae Introductio
128 pages, 7 ½” x 9” (191 x 229mm)
35 colour illustrations, hardback
Text: 25,000 words
ISBN: 978 1 904832 49 2 (13 digit)
ISBN: 1 904832 49 0 (10 digit)

Price: US$24.95/UK£12.95
Publication date: February, 2008
Publisher: D. Giles Limited, London

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About the Geography and Map Division, the Library of Congress
Maps and atlases were among the first items acquired when the Library of Congress was established in 1800, and in 1897 a separate Hall of Maps and Charts was created. The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress is the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world, numbering over 5.2 million maps, including 80,000 atlases, 6,000