Moderna Europae Descriptio

A ‘modern’ antique map of Europe, the first of its kind.

The middle of the 16th century saw tremendous leaps in the advancements of cartography, as new maps were added to updated editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia, reflecting the latest in discovery and navigation. Sebastian Munster first published such an example in 1540, where he was the first to add separate maps of each continent. Four years later he would similarly modernize Ptolemy’s Cosmographia with maps from Geographia, in addition to entirely new sheets.

This map of Europe was published in a 1552 edition of Munster’s Cosmographia, with little changed from earlier issues. As such, it can be rightly said to be one of the first “modern” printed maps of Europe. Though oriented with south to the top, it shows a distinctive outline from Constantinople to the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean to the Baltic. Major political divisions, regional capitals, rivers, seas, and islands are individually labeled. Pictorial elements such as towns, forests, mountains, and the large sailing ship to the right add attractive detail, though little practical use.