Details from Mappamundi in Hartmann Schedel, Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 (top left); Martin Waldseemüller, Universalis Cosmographia, 1507, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (top right); Jacob d’Barbari, View of Venice, 1500, Cleveland Museum of Art (bottom left and bottom right).

How would the Atlantic appear on a printed map? Artisans, and especially the woodcutters, probably had a voice in how the oceans would be designed and cut on Waldseemüller’s Universalis Cosmographia. The oceans on the Universalis Cosmographia are cut with lines that closely follow each other in gradual curves, enhanced here and there with the crests (see above, top right).  This design and cutting is distinctive but not completely original. Woodcutters had already developed techniques to render oceans, and those working with Waldseemüller would have been familiar with earlier printed maps, such as the mappamundi in Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle and View of Venice by Jacobo de’ Barbari . On the world map in Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, the woodcutter used closely cut, wavy lines to depict the Indian Ocean (see above, top left). In the View of Venice, de’ Barbari renders water in a variety of ways, with closely cut straight lines employed to suggest a placidity and distance (see above, lower right), but in the southwest corner, the cutting is done to suggest waves (see above, lower left).

The oceans are designed as a continuous wavy expanse on the Mappamundi in the Nuremberg Chronicle:

Mappamundi in Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, University of Texas at Arlington.

Barbari’s massive woodcut map of Venice has water designed and cut in a variety of ways:

View of Venice by Jacobo de’ Barbari, 1500, Cleveland Museum of Art.