Francesco Rosselli, World Map, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

Francesco Rosselli engraved a small world map in 1508 on which the Atlantic is hardly marginal. This map is an excellent example of the fact that although printed, it could also be later finished liberally in color. The copy in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is a case in point. The blues are rich and thick, whether in the heavens or on the oceans, and the continents are painted in shades of green, yellow, orange, and brown.  Twelve windheads emerge out of the clouds, and between them the oval-shaped earth floats in the sky. Oceans dominate the world on Rosselli’s map, and although not named, the Atlantic occupies a prominent part of the globe. The Terra S. Crucis sive Mundus Novus (Land of the Holy Cross or the New World) rises prominently across from Africa, as does a mainland in the North. The Spanish Islands of Cuba and Hispaniola are named. According to the National Maritime Museum, which holds one of the four surviving copies, Rossell created “the earliest extant map to show the world in 360 degrees of longitude and 180 degrees of latitude within an oval projection.” The map measures 420 mm x 370 mm (about 16 1/2 inches by 14 1/2  inches). There are four known copies of this world map: in addition to the copy in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England (see above), a colored copy is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy that can be seen in the online exhibit n the online exhibition A Land beyond the Stars: Amerigo Vespucci’s and Waldseemuller’s Map of the World at the Museo Gallileo, Florence;  a colored copy is held by the Ratsschulbibliothek, Zwickau, Germany, and an uncolored copy is in the Arthur Holzheimer private collection, Chicago, USA.

Rosselli died soon after engraving this map and his son, Alessandro Rosselli, continued the bottega (workshop) of his father. After Alessandro’s death in 1527, an inventory was taken of the shop, and this document provides historians with insights into the workshop of an early sixteenth-century chart and mapmaker. The Rosselli shop specialized in the printing and engraving of maps and town plans, but many other kinds of maps and charts are listed in the inventory, including small painted mappaemundi, decorated and plain portolan charts, and some charts composed from several pieces of parchment. Among the maps mentioned in the inventory is a large mappamundi, a map of India, a map of Italy, and city maps of Florence, Rome, and Constantinople. The inventory also includes supplies and books of drawings.*

*“L’inventario Rosselli,” in Giuseppe Boffito and Attilio Mori, Piante e vedute di Firenze: studio storico topografico cartografico. Florence” 1926 rpt: Roma: Multigrafica, 1973. Appendix II: 146-150.