The Map That Named America

Special Note

Because of its significance, the Library is making fine art reproductions of the map available. Using ektachrome inks with a life of 150 years on acid free paper, the map is printed using the Giclee method at a resolution of 1400 dpi. The map is striking from both a historical perspective as well as a highest quality cartographic reproduction. The distinguished framing comes in two sizes (see FR0119 for smaller size) and the design is in keeping with the period and forms a containment of the world as it was known then.

In late May 2003, the Library of Congress completed the purchase of the only surviving copy of the first image of the outline of the continents of the world as we know them today, Martin Waldseemuller's monumental 1507 world map.

The map has been referred to in various circles as America's birth certificate and for good reason; it is the first document on which the name "America" appears. It is also the first map to depict a separate and full Western Hemisphere and the first map to represent the Pacific Ocean as a separate body of water. The purchase of the map concluded a nearly century-long effort to secure for the Library of Congress that very special cartographic document which revealed new European thinking about the world nearly 500 years ago.

Martin Waldseemuller, the primary author of the 1507 world map, was a 16th-century scholar, humanist, cleric and cartographer who was part of the small intellectual circle, the Gymnasium Vosagense, in Saint-Die, France. He was born near Freiburg, Germany, sometime in the 1470s and died in the canon house at Saint-Die in 1522. During his lifetime he devoted much of his time to cartographic ventures, including, in the spring 1507, the famous world map, a set of globe gores (for a globe with a three-inch diameter), and the "Cosmographiae Introductio" (a book to accompany the map). He also prepared the 1513 edition of the Ptolemy "Geographiae"; the "Carta Marina," a large world map, in 1516; and a smaller world map in the 1515 edition of "Margarita Philosophica Nova."

Thus, in a remote part of northeast France, was born the famous 1507 world map, whose full title is "Universalis cosmographia secunda Ptholemei traditionem et Americi Vespucci aliorum que lustrationes" ("A drawing of the whole earth following the tradition of Ptolemy and the travels of Amerigo Vespucci and others"). That map, printed on 12 separate sheets, each 18-by-24-inches, from wood block plates, measured more than 4 feet by 8 feet in dimension when assembled.

The large map is an early 16th-century masterpiece, containing a full map of the world, two inset maps showing separately the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, illustrations of Ptolemy and Vespucci, images of the various winds, and extensive explanatory notes about selected regions of the world. Waldseemuller's map represented a bold statement that rationalized the modern world in light of the exciting news arriving in Europe as a result of explorations across the Atlantic Ocean or down the African coast, which were sponsored by Spain, Portugal and others.

Medium : 1 map composed from 12 sheets

Creator : Martin Waldseemuller, cartographer, 1470-1521?

Frame : Large size, outside dimensions, 32 x 44, 2 1/2" x 1 3/8, black wood frame, angled to the center

Housed in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress

Price: $475.00

Availability: Usually ships in 1 week.

Product #: FR0118