70 MAPS AND THEIR MAKERS 



These maps are also notable for the method of representing 

 relief. The highlands are marked off from the lowlands; and 

 their surface filled in by solid colour: though this method 

 tends to represent all mountains as plateaus, it is possible to 

 see in the dividing line between upland and lowland and in 

 this use of colour the prototype of form lines and layer colour- 

 ing. There also appears to be an attempt at oblique hill 

 shading. 



Before leaving these 'modern' manuscript maps, we may 

 note that for Italy the two improvements mentioned above — 

 in orientation and in the southern configuration — are combined 

 for the first time on a map in another Ptolemy codex. This map 

 in the Laurenziana, drawn about 1460, is important as either 

 it, or a near version, was followed by Berlinghieri, and later 

 by the editors of the early sixteenth-century Rome editions. 

 It is an improvement on Ptolemy's outline and is more cor- 

 rectly oriented — marine charts, and rather ancient ones at that, 

 having been used for this purpose. 



More important as a producer of these manuscript atlases 

 was Dominus Nicholaus Germanus. Very few details of his life 

 are known with certainty, and his career has given rise to 

 much surmise. He was undoubtedly in Florence and Ferrara 

 around the period 1464 to 1471. Florence was then a centre 

 of cosmographical studies, and Nicholaus was known to its 

 leading scholars. He seems to have attracted attention by his 

 presentation of a magnificently illuminated manuscript of the 

 * Geography' to Borso d'Este in 1466. In all, Nicholaus was 

 responsible for twelve MS. copies of the 'Geography'. These 

 fall into three main groups, two of which formed the basis of 

 printed editions. Nicholaus claims several improvements for 

 his versions: the maps redrawn in a smaller and more con- 

 venient size; the employment of a new projection (the 'trape- 

 zoidal'); the correction of the outlines of the various countries; 

 and the addition of new maps. He undoubtedly made alterations 

 but they were not all improvements, nor innovations devised 

 by himself. The manuscript maps by Nicholaus were the 

 basis of the first printed edition of the 'Geography', Bologna, 

 1477, and of the Rome edition of 1478: they have therefore 

 an important bearing on the form in which Ptolemy's data were 



