A short paragraph in Latin in Berlinghieri’s 'Geographia', is addressed to Fedrigo de Montefeltro (1422–1482), to whom the work is dedicated. Berlinghieri had however originally intended to dedicate it to the Turkish Sultan, Mehmet II.

This map represents the known world at the time of Ptolemy: the Roman Empire, centred on the Mediterranean Sea, Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia.  It is first the printed map based on Ptolemy's homeothermic projection, in which both parallels and meridians are shown curved to convey the spherical Earth.

The Sunderland Collection

This gorgeous map in vibrant original hand colour, is from Francesco Berlinghieri's edition of Claudius Ptolemy's 'Geographia'. Twelve energetic windheads representing the classical winds surround the Earth, which is shown on a Ptolemaic homeotheric, or 'bee-hive', projection. The map is dense with information, featuring hundreds of place-names, illustrations of the climates, and detailed depictions of the physical geography including mountains and rivers. It is very rare to find this map in rich contemporary colouring; pigments such as the deep ultramarine blue - likely made using lapis lazuli - would have been very costly.

This map appeared in Berlinghieri’s edition of Ptolemy’s 'Geographia', published in Florence in 1482. It was the third printed European atlas, and the first in vernacular Italian language with a commentary composed in 'terza rima' verse.

This finely engraved map is attributed to Francesco Rosselli (1448–c.1513), one of the leading engravers, painters, and map sellers of his day. He was influenced by the great Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) and the cardinal windheads surrounding the map are reminiscent of the Zephyr depicted in Botticelli’s masterpiece 'The Birth of Venus' (c.1480s).

This present edition of Berlinghieri's world map is exceptionally rare because it is among few surviving examples with contemporary hand-colour. Each of the sheets are ruled with unusually wide inner margins, which are more often found trimmed so that the printer could uniformly align the images within its binding. This map was included in the third European atlas ever printed, and the first in a vernacular language (Italian, in verse). It is also the first printed map based on Claudius Ptolemy's homeotheric, or 'bee-hive', projection.

Berlinghieri's Ptolemaic World Map in Contemporary Colour