Christie's announced the sale of important maps, atlases and globes on 8 June 2005, which will be led by the first new map of the world. The printed map by Martin Waldseemuller, produced in 1507, is truly groundbreaking. It presents the first use of the word "America", as well as the first ever printed portrayal of the Earth as a globe, the first time that the continents of North and South America had been individually distinguished and the first depiction of a Pacific Ocean. This is one of four examples of this map in existence and was discovered amongst the collection of a European collector after he read about the subject in a national newspaper. The map carries an estimate of £500,000-800,000. The Great Age of European Exploration and Discovery lasted from 1492 to 1522. During this period, the greatest explorers from Spain, Italy and Portugal sailed the seas and returned with stories and information about the New World. Although history records that Christopher Columbus had discovered America in 1492, he was convinced that the land mass was Asia. It was another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, who argued that the new land to the West was a new continent altogether.
Until this map was published, the conception of the world was based on the knowledge of the Ancient Greeks. In 1505, Rene II, the Duke of Lorraine, gathered a group of scholars to the Monastery of Saint Die des Vosges, near Strasbourg, to work on a new map of the world. These scholars, led by Martin Waldseemuller, were provided with a French translation of Vespucci’s voyages that Rene II had received from Lisbon earlier in that year. This account gave them enough material to start to plot a new map to include the New World to the West. In 1507, the scholars published a work titled "Cosmographiae Introductio", which argued the existence of a new land mass to the West. They called this land mass America, after Amerigo Vespucci. Within a month of publishing the book, they produced the first map of the world to include the Americas, which will be offered at Christie’s in June.
April 2005
