96 MAPS AND THEIR MAKERS 



makers upon the cosmographers? As might be expected, they 

 began by attempting to fit portions of the new discoveries into 

 the conventional framework, and finished by accepting un- 

 reservedly the new pattern of the world revealed by the 

 navigators. Three stages in this process may be discerned: 

 the emendation of a world map which had much in conmion 

 with that used by Martin Behaim for his globe; an inter- 

 mediary stage which produced a combination of Ptolemaic 

 and the *new' geography; and finally the adoption of the 

 complete contemporary world outline as embodied in the 

 Canerio chart. This transformation was made, as far as printed 

 maps are concerned, in the space of ten years, as can be seen 

 in the maps of Martin Waldseemiiller. 



The first in this series is a map of the world, designed by 

 Giovanni Matteo Contarini and engraved on copper by 

 Francesco Roselli in 1506, a unique copy of which is in 

 the British Museum. The map, on a conical projection with 

 Ptolemy's prime meridian as the central meridian and the 

 Equator truly drawn, has the eastern coasts of Asia in 

 the west and Ptolemy's Magnus Sinus and the islands of the 

 medieval travellers in the east. In one of the inscriptions the 

 cartographer says: ''if by folding together the two sets of 

 degrees [i.e. on the eastern and western margins] you form 

 them into a circle, you will perceive the whole spherical 

 world combined into 360 degrees". This is not strictly true, 

 for the map does not extend much beyond the Tropic of 

 Capricorn; but elsewhere there are verses extolling Contarini 

 for having marked out 



"The world and all its seas on a flat map, 

 Europe, Libya , Asia, and the Antipodes, 

 The poles and zones and sites of places, 

 The parallels for the climes of the mighty globe." 



T hese references to the whole sphere, the Antipodes, the poles, 

 and the globe, are intriguing; it is possible that the cartographer, 

 especially in view of some similarities between his map and 

 Beh aim's globe, had in fact a globe before him. It is possible, 

 but not very probable, that another section of his map, now 



