Untitled Map of the World
Ptolemaeus, Claudius & Crivelli, Taddeo
Date of Creation:
1480 [but 1590]
One of four known examples of “the most visually satisfying of all the incunable maps” (Campbell).
The map appears to be an original piece of fifteenth century mapmaking with no obvious cartographic ancestor.
“Although the information conveyed... is traditional, one looks in vain for any printed map which could have served directly as its model. The two most likely candidates, the world maps in the 1477 and 1478 Ptolemy atlases have noticeable differences. Some features appear on this separately published map but not on the other two, for example, additional branches of two Asian rivers, the “Orchardes” and the “Bantisus”, both of which flow off the map at its north-eastern extremity” (Campbell).
Both the authorship and the date of the map are, however, something of a puzzle. The map has traditionally been attributed to the miniaturist Taddeo Crivelli, the supposed mapmaker behind the 1477 Bologna Ptolemy. In 1909 Sighinolfi uncovered a contract between Crivelli and Francesco dal Pozzo (Puteolano), dated 22 April 1474, in which Crivelli committed to produce 50 copies of a world map.
The great map collector, and former owner of the present example, Prince Youssouf Kamal suggested that this was evidence for the map’s authorship, and, indeed, it may be. However, due to stylistic differences between the maps in the Bologna Ptolemy and the present map, it seems unlikely that they were, in fact, the work of the same mapmaker.