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Cartographic Practices: Depicting the Mundus Novus and the New Oceanic Order

Abstract:As the Portuguese and Spanish began sailing out into the Atlantic Ocean and along the west coast of Africa in search of a new route to the Orient and its much coveted spice trade, nautical charts became a crucial medium for explorers, merchants, missionaries, and colonizers. In a relatively short period of time, from the mid-fifteenth to the early years of the sixteenth century, Ptolemaic geography and new sailing adventures radically helped to change the late medieval vision of the world. At the outset of the sixteenth century the scholarly elite were already pondering the implications of a Novus Mundus, a new world. This essay examines the intellectual excitement of the moment by focusing on three of the most significant maps registering the emergence of this new vision: Juan de la Cosa's chart of 1500, the Cantino planisphere of c. 1502, and the Martin Waldseemüller world map of 1507. Crucial texts of the early modern period, these three maps provide us with an initial glimpse into a distinctly European forma mentis.