A Vast, 430-Year-Old World Map, Full of Places and Creatures, Real and Imagined

atlasobscura ^ | January 08, 2018 | Natasha Frost

[BenLurkin]

Monte envisaged the component maps—60 in all—being stitched together, and so left detailed instructions for how to turn them into one giant representation of the world, over nine feet in diameter. Included in the four volumes are also charts showing the lengths of days at different times of year and an extended geographical treatise on the world and cosmology. Unlike many modern maps, which use the Mercator projection from around the same time, his map shows the world from directly above the North Pole. Today, this perspective is known as the north polar azimuthal projection...

Once assembled, the map shows a lush, highly personalized take on the world, with a surprisingly large collection of real and fantasy beasts carousing and cavorting on land and sea. Rumsey’s scan and digital assembly of the cartographic puzzle represents the first time that Monte’s work has been seen in its full glory: It is the single largest world map of the 16th century, and one largely forgotten or overlooked by cartographers and scholars.

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Throughout the world, Monte took time to sketch exotic fauna—crocodiles, camels, lions, and more. Near a coast labeled “Terra Incognita” (somewhere around Alaska), a wolf with a cub looks watchfully over its shoulder. Elsewhere there are more fantastic beasts, including griffins and what looks like a huge bird clutching an elephant. The seas feature many-tailed mermen and fleets of well-armed ships. Political leaders, including Philip II of Spain, also make an appearance, as do several portraits of Monte himself. Mapmakers of the time didn’t like empty spaces, Rumsey told CBC Radio. “There were many places that they did not know the names of towns and locations, so they filled them up with trees, monsters,” he said.

[bar sin·is·ter]

[JoeProBono]