Asia

Rare early engraved map from Giovanni Antonio Magini’s Geographiae Universae tum Veteris tum Novae Absolutissimum, based on Abraham’s Ortelius’s ground breaking map of the continent published in his Theatrum Orbis which which was one of the earliest European maps of Asia and the standard map of the continent for more than forty years. The map is drawn on a cordiform projection but the continent has been extended too far to the east, based on Ptolemy&#8217s miscalculation of the longitude of Eurasia. Ortelius’s sources for the map were Gastaldi 1560, Mercator 1569 and portolan charts by the Portuguese mapmaker Fernao Vaz Dourado who was based in Goa. Ortelius’s maps of Asia and the East Indies were the first published works to chart the island of Formosa (Taiwan) and to identify it by that name. Magini like a number of late C16th book publishers issued their own editions of Ptlomey’s Geographia which included modern maps which resolved recent knowledge that was incompatible with Ptlomey’s legacy. References: Broecke 7, Clancy p.25, ill.1.12, Kissajukian p.12 ill.12, Moreland pp.98-99, Quirino p.96, Richardson p.201, ill.p.202, 212-213, Suarez (A) pp.164-167, ill. Fig. 85, Sweet 5, Walter 11C.