MARTIN WALDSEEMULLER, after CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAEUS, Decima Asiae Tabula, 1513.

MARTIN WALDSEEMULLER, after CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAEUS
Decima Asiae Tabula
Strasburg: Martin Waldseemuller, 1513
Woodcut with original hand color
Paper size: 17 1/2" x 24"

Old map of India by Martin Waldseemüller.

This fine example of Waldseemuller's map of India is one of the earliest obtainable maps of the region.

The map appeared in Martin Waldseemuller's Geographiae opus novissima traductione e Grecorum archetypis castigatissime pressum.

Waldseemuller's Geographiae is often referred to at the first modern atlas, incorporating for the first time 20 modern maps. The 27 maps of ancient geography which constitute the first part of the work are copied from the 1482 Ulm edition. The supplement of 20 maps represent the first series of "modern" maps, produced by Martin Waldseemüller at Saint-Dié. The new Latin translation of the text by Mathias Ringmann is based on d'Angelo's text, and was edited by Jacob Aeschler and Georg Uebelin.

This geography includes many important maps, including the first map exclusively devoted to America ("Tabula terre nove"); Lorraine, one of the earliest color printed maps; and the first published maps for many other countries. Waldseemüller's maps made considerable geographical advances, basing their information on material in the University libraries in Basel and Strasbourg, as well as reports of Spanish and Portuguese voyages. No better assemblage of maps was issued until Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570.

Martin Walseemüller and his collaborator, Matthias Ringmann, are credited with the first recorded usage of the word America to name the New World in honour of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
He was born about 1475, most probably in the village of Wolfenweiler near Freiburg im Breisgau (southern Germany). He studied at the University of Freiburg where he met Johann Scott, the future printer of Waldseemüller’s edition of Ptolemy and Matthias Ringman, a poet who wrote Waldseemüller’s texts. Gregor Reisch was their tutor. He was noted for a philosophical work, Margaretha Philosophica (1503), a widely read book of which included a world map in Ptolemaic form. He undoubtedly aroused the students’ interest in cosmography.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Walseemüller moved to St.Dié, in the Vosges. He Hellenized his name to Ilacomilus and worked on an edition of Ptolemy. He learned the printing trade in Basle and became professor of cosmography under the patronage of René II, Duke of Lorraine.
Together with a group of scholars, among them were Nicholas Lud and Matthias Ringmann, they installed a printing press in St. Dié. The first book appeared in 1507: Cosmographiae introductio … Few books have generated as much interest and speculation as this book because it contained the suggestion that the new continent is named America in honour of Amerigo Vespucci, whose letters about his American “discoveries” form a large part of the book. Great interest was also attached to the two maps mentioned on the title page as constituting part of the Cosmographiae introductio: a large 12-panel wall map of the world and a set of globe gores. The map and globe were notable for showing the New World as a continent separate from Asia and for naming the southern landmass America.
Ringmann wrote the text of the Cosmographiae introductio in which he used the name ‘America’. He died in 1511, and by then Waldseemüller was having doubts about the name they had coined.
In 1511 Walseemüller published the Carta Itineraria Europae, a road map of Europe that showed essential trade routes as well as pilgrim routes from central Europe to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It was the first printed wall map of Europe.
After Ringmann’s death, Waldseemüller concentrated on the new version of Ptolemy’s Geographia. The new edition was finally printed in 1513 by Johannes Scott in Strasbourg and is now regarded as the most important edition. Waldseemüller included twenty modern maps in the new Geographia as a separate appendix.
The 1507 wall map was lost for a long time, but a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in southern Germany by Joseph Fischer in 1901. It is the only known copy and was purchased by the United States Library of Congress in May 2003.