Ruysch's Conical World Map - THE EARLIEST OBTAINABLE DEPICTION OF THE NEW WORLD

THE EARLIEST OBTAINABLE DEPICTION OF THE NEW WORLD RUYSCH, Johannes (ca. 1460–1533). Universalior cogniti orbis tabula ex recentibus confecta observationibus. Engraved conical-projection map. [Rome: Bernardinus Venetus de Vitalibus, 1508.] First edition, Shirley state 5/McGuirk 3-C. Two sheets joined (sheet: 17 7/16” x 22 ¾”, 443mm x 578mm; framed: 35 9/16” x 30”). Engraved conical-projection map. Float-matted with a window verso, demonstrating water-marks (crossed arrows) Here is what AI says it’s worth: $320,000. Cost: Purchased Privately $400,000. As exploration pushed European knowledge of the world east and south, cartographers built on the framework of Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus), a second-century philosopher living in Roman Alexandria in Egypt. In the Greek tradition (Ptolemy wrote in Greek, which was the administrative language of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean), philosophy — the love of wisdom — bridged what we now divide into the humanities and the sciences; he was a mathematician, natural scientist and geographer-astronomer. No manuscripts of the Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις (Geographical Guidance) survive from before the XIIIc, but some XIIIc examples survive with maps that bear some relation to those Ptolemy himself drew. Thus, with the exception of some excavated carved maps, Ptolemy is the source for ancient cartography as well as its culmination. The discovery of the New World in the late XVc — Columbus assumed he had found the East Indies because of Ptolemy’s calculations and assertions about longitude — provoked a crisis in the understanding of the disposition of the globe; the Ptolemaic skeleton was showing signs of fracture. It is against this background that Johannes Ruysch (Johan(n) Ruijsch, ca. 1460–1533) made his coniform (cone or fan-shaped) projection. Ruysch was a profoundly cosmopolitan figure; he was Flemish or German or Netherlandish by birth, lived in Cologne, Rome, England and finally Portugal. From England, it is claimed, he himself sailed west as far as the American coast; thus he is the first mapmaker to have traveled to America. Due, perhaps, to his first-hand knowledge of the contradictions entailed by a New World adjoining Ptolemy’s, Ruysch was visionary in his solutions. (The title translates to “a more universal illustration of the known world made out of new observations;” the comparative makes clear Ruysch’s competitiveness.) Newfoundland adjoins Tibet. Japan (Zipangu) is identified with Spagnola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic), although Ruysch is fairly agnostic in his reasoning. In other ways, however, his map is cutting-edge in its modelling of Asia —here the triangular form of India appears for the first time — and the Caribbean, largely drawing on Portuguese sources. The map’s date is sometimes given as 1507, and indeed it does appear in some examples of the 1507 Rome edition of Ptolemy (colophon 8 September 1507); the vast majority, however, appear in 1508 editions, which have the addition of a commentary of Marcus of Benevento (Marcus Beneventanus) based on the findings depicted in this map. The tacit suggestion of most bibliographies is that the map was not completed until very late 1507 or early 1508, and its inclusion in 1507 editions is the work of owners rather than the publisher. Although the 1506 map of Contarini/Rosselli and the 1507 Waldseemüller are earlier (excluding manuscript maps), each survives in a single example. The Ruysch map is thus the earliest obtainable depiction of the New World. McGuirk’s 1989 census counted 64 examples, of which 14 were in private collections (plus one on the market in 1986). He also determines that about two-thirds of the maps examined were Shirley’s state 5 (his 3-C). McGuirk estimates that 100 examples of the map survive, of which perhaps 25 are in private hands. McGuirk, Donald L. “Ruysch World Map: Census and Commentary.” Imago Mundi 41 (1989) 133-141. Peerlings, R.H.J., F. Laurentius and J. van den Bovenkamp. “The Watermarks in the Rome Editions of Ptolemy’s Cosmography and More.” Quaerendo 47 (2017) 307-327. Burden 3 (p. xxiii); Harrisse 56; Sabin 66476 (Ptolemy); Shirley 25. The present example was purchased from a private collector in 2008. Trimmed at the edges, with about an inch added and loss supplied in facsimile. Some losses at the join, filled in facsimile. A little toning in patches. [1] See R.H.J. Peerlings, F. Laurentius and J. van den Bovenkamp. “The Watermarks in the Rome Editions of Ptolemy’s Cosmography and More” in Quaerendo 47 (2017) 307-327; p. 319, fig. 32 is apparently identical.

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