This Ptolemaic map features an intriguing landmass that connects subequatorial Western Africa and Southeast Asia, which greatly influenced Europeans’ quest for a viable westward route to Asia. Medieval maps that include Asia typically place India and Sri Lanka ('Taprobana') to their south-eastern extreme; sometimes the terms ‘India’ and ‘Asia’ are used interchangeably. The cartographical enlargement of Asia as a result of the reports of travellers such as Marco Polo, and the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s 'Geographia', led to geographers adopting Ptolemy’s terms 'India within the Ganges' and 'India beyond the Ganges' to distinguish 'further' Asia that exists east of India.

The Sunderland Collection

This characterful map combines whimsy and creativity with the latest geographical information from European expeditions west to the Caribbean and east around Africa. The map notes a sea and islands that were not known to Ptolemy, and uses his homeotheric projection. This allusion to new frontiers evokes the excitement and curiosity of European explorers to dream of what might lie beyond Ptolemy's known world. Decorating this relatively simple map are wonderfully creative windheads that are depicted in a highly naturalistic style. Each windhead has its own personality; one is even wearing glasses, the first known appearance of spectacles in a map.

This untitled world map was originally published in the first seven editions of Gregor Reisch’s ‘Margarita Philosophica’, an encyclopaedic textbook widely used in universities throughout western Europe. It is particularly significant for its very first cartographic reference to European voyages west to the Caribbean and east around Africa. An inscription written across the land bridge connecting subequatorial west Africa with Southeast Asia reads, ‘hic non terra sed mare est: in quo mare magnitudinus Insulae sed Ptolemeo fuerent incognitae' ('Here, there is not land but sea, in which sea there is a mass of islands unknown to Ptolemy').

While often described as the earliest reference on a map to the 'discoveries' of Columbus in the West Indies, it is more likely that the statement refers to the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and entry into the Indian Ocean by Bartolomeo Diaz and Vasco da Gama (1488 and 1498, respectively). These new 'discoveries' would force a reappraisal of Ptolemaic geography, which for centuries had been the bedrock of geographic knowledge. Reisch's simple line of text is the first cartographic depiction of a quest that would continue for hundreds of years.

Of note are the twelve striking windheads on this map, one of which, Vulternus, is sporting a splendid pair of spectacles. Spectacles were invented in Pisa, Italy in around 1285. The first known illustration of them occurs in a mural in the chapter house in San Nicolò in Treviso, Italy, 1352, and the first known printed image is a person, variously identified as Philo, Empedocles, Seneca, or Pythagoras, in the 'Rudimentum Novitiorum' of 1475. Glasses may also be found adorning characters in Hartmann Schedel’s 'Nuremberg Chronicle', and there are no fewer than ten incunable illustrations of people wearing spectacles. Gregor Reisch, however, holds the honour of their first depiction on a map.

First edition and state of the first map to make direct reference to European voyages around Africa and to the Caribbean.

Reisch's Windhead Map