WORLD-Indiarum Orientalium Occidentalium que Descripto Pet. Maefei Historiae Harum Verissimae Dedicata.

First edition (1589) of this very rare Italian world map by Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1533–1603) showing Terra Incognito and the tip of northern Australia named, Beach.

From Maffei’s published a detailed account of the Portuguese accomplishments throughout India and the East in 1588 titled, Historiarum Indicarum and which was then printed in a number of editions most of which did not include this world map, these are; Venice, Bergamo and Antwerp. This world map only appears in only two editions of Maffei’s, Historiarum…; the first of these was published in Cologne in 1589 and the second in 1593, this being the first edition of the map.

This superbly engraved world map was based on Ortelius’s 1570 world map. As Rodney Shirley notes; ‘A skilful engraver‘ has much enhanced the title by adding strapwork elements and inserted further ornate strapwork designs in each corner.

Many of the new place names appearing along the North American west coast were provided to Ortelius by Richard Hakluyt from his accounts of recent explorations. A bulge in South America which appeared in Ortelius’s earlier world map, has now been corrected and the Solomon Islands are marked. The land of Beach is shown and above it lays the land of Java Major , the name given by Marco Polo to the island of Java. Like the influential mapmaker Plancius, the landmass Terra Sept Emtrionalis Incognita at the north pole separated by narrow straits from the continents of Europe, Asia and North America. Plancius was the pre-eminent Dutch mapmaker of the period and a leading advocate of a northern passage to the East. New Guinea is shown as an island, although a note at lower left below the word Noua Guinea states, ‘Noua Guinea nuper inuenta qu an sit insula an pars continentis Australis incertest’ [New Guinea, recently discovered. Whether this is an island or part of the Southern continent is uncertain]. In the lower right of the map in the provinces of Beach is written: ‘Vastiimas hic ee | regiones ex M Pauli Ven:et | Lud.Vartomann. scriptis pe: | regrationibus constat’. [These regions are very extended, as can be seen in the writings of Paulus Venetus and the travels of Ludovicus Vartomannus] (Varthema). Further towards the centre in Terra Australis Incognita, a note explains: Psitacorum regio | sic a Lusitanis appellata ob | incredibilem earum auium ibidem magnitudem. [This region is called ‘of the Psitaci’ by the Portuguese because of the incredible number of birds of the same size].

From Maffei, Petri; Historiarum Indicarum Cologne, 1589.