The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps 1472-1700

Old maps have always played a dominant role in the development of geographical thought, providing a means of communication by visual display which has guaranteed the dissemination of new geographical conceptions in the most adequate and graphic way. Printed maps have been for the development of geography and cartography as revolutionary in their cultural and educational effect as the parallel but more widely acclaimed invention of printing from moveable type. This cartobibliographical study illustrates how the printed world map developed from the earliest years of printing in the 1470s up to the end of the 17th-century.