# The Genoese World Map of 1457 > Anonymous Genoese cartographic workshop - 1457 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/anonymous-genoese-cartographer-1457/genoese-world-map-1457/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-06 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Anonymous Genoese cartographic workshop - **Date:** 1457 - **Medium:** Ink and tempera pigment in six colors, with gold-powder highlighting, on a single parchment sheet - **Dimensions:** 39.5 x 79.5 cm per the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale's own 'Tesori svelati' catalogue entry and the Encyclopaedia of Portuguese Expansion (Universidade Nova de Lisboa); other secondary sources and later facsimile editions give different figures (75 x 37 cm; 82 x 41 cm) not reconciled in the sources consulted for this record, and possibly reflecting facsimile-sheet sizes rather than the parchment itself - **Object type:** Map - **Period:** Italian (Genoese), mid-fifteenth century - **Current location:** Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (National Central Library of Florence), Florence, Italy - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary An anonymous world map on a single sheet of parchment, dated 1457 and named for the coat of arms of the Republic of Genoa and the Spinola family that appear on it, though the toponyms are lettered in Castilian orthography and nothing on the sheet names a draftsman. It sets a hybrid, almond-shaped image of the known world, part portolan chart and part Ptolemaic projection, against a Mediterranean drawn with navigational precision and an East and South Asia drawn from Ptolemy, from Arabic geography, and from the eyewitness account of the Venetian traveler Niccolo de' Conti as taken down in 1444 by the humanist Poggio Bracciolini.It has belonged to Florentine princely and state collections since at least the seventeenth century, when it hung in the Uffizi's Stanza delle matematiche among the Medici's scientific instruments, and it has been at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, under one shelfmark or another, since that library's formation. Since the 1960s a genre of pseudo-historical writing about supposed pre-Columbian Chinese world voyages, of which Gavin Menzies's 1421: The Year China Discovered the World is the best-known modern example, has treated maps of exactly this kind - unexpectedly detailed, unexpectedly early - as proof of secret voyages for which no other record exists. This record sets out what is actually documented about how the map's Asian and African content reached Genoa, and why the documented paper trail leaves no gap for a hidden voyage to fill.A search of Menzies's own book text for any reference to this specific map returned nothing; the record notes that finding rather than repeating an unverified claim of citation. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1457-17th century** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No source consulted for this record documents where the sheet was, or in whose hands, between its execution in 1457 and its first documented appearance in the Medici collections. A gap of roughly a century and a half is simply unaccounted for. - **by 17th century** Medici grand-ducal collection `[documented]` (display) By the seventeenth century the sheet was among the Medici collections and was displayed in the Stanza delle matematiche of the Uffizi Palace in Florence, alongside the family's scientific instruments. - **17th century-1861** Biblioteca Palatina, Florence (Grand-Ducal, later Lorraine, library) `[documented]` (transfer) The map passed into the custody of the Palatine Library, the Medici and then Lorraine grand-ducal library, where it was catalogued as 'Sezione Palatina No. 1, Planisfero Mediceo' - the shelfmark Stevenson still records in 1912. The exact date this transfer occurred, as distinct from the map's display at the Uffizi, is not given in the sources consulted. - **1861-present** Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze `[documented]` (institutional merger) In 1861 the Biblioteca Palatina merged with the Biblioteca Magliabechiana to form the library that was renamed the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze by 1885. The map passed to the new institution with the rest of the Palatine holdings; Stevenson's 1912 study still cites the old Palatina number, indicating recataloguing under the current mark 'Portolano 1' happened at some point after 1912. ## Open questions - Who actually drew and lettered the map? The Castilian-orthography toponyms and the Genoese heraldry point in different directions, and no cartographer, scribe or miniaturist is named on the sheet or identified by any source consulted. - Where was the map between its execution in 1457 and its first documented appearance in the Medici collections by the seventeenth century? No source consulted accounts for this gap of roughly a century and a half. - Exactly when did the map pass from Uffizi display into the custody of the Biblioteca Palatina, and exactly when was it recatalogued from the old Palatina number to the current 'Portolano 1'? Neither transition date is given in the sources consulted. - Which of the differing published dimensions (39.5 x 79.5 cm; 75 x 37 cm; 82 x 41 cm) actually describes the original parchment, and which describe facsimile-edition sheets? Not reconciled in the sources consulted. - Has the original undergone any conservation treatment since Stevenson's 1912 description of significant pigment loss and rubbing damage? No record of one was found. - Is there any actual textual basis for the claim, found in one low-quality secondary source, that the map was sent to the Portuguese court in 1474 and later to Columbus - or is this a conflation with the separate, non-surviving Toscanelli letter-map episode of the same year? ## Sources - [1] Wikimedia Commons, file description and Library of Congress catalog note for 'File:Genoese world map 1457. LOC 97690053.jpg' (LOC item 97690053), quoting: 'Title from Stevenson's text... In lower right corner: E.O. Cockayne, Boston... LC copy mounted on cloth and laminated.' - [2] Wikimedia Commons API (extmetadata), license verification for the same file: LicenseShortName 'Public domain', justified on the file page as 'a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art.' - [3] Edward Luther Stevenson (ed.), incorporating the studies of Theobald Fischer, Genoese World Map, 1457: Facsimile and Critical Text (New York: De Vinne Press, issued jointly by the American Geographical Society and the Hispanic Society of America, 1912) - full text via Internet Archive, for the photographic reproduction process (Istituto Geografico Militare, negatives of 1905), the map's 1912-era shelfmark ('Sezione Palatina No. 1, Planisfero Mediceo'), its condition, mounting on four boards, and sourcing notes on Marco Polo, Niccolo de' Conti and Arabic geography. - [4] Encyclopaedia of Portuguese Expansion (CHAM, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), 'Genoese World Map drawn in 1457' - for the current shelfmark Portolano 1, dimensions, inscription translation, Medici/Uffizi provenance, Castilian toponym orthography, Poggio Bracciolini/Niccolo de' Conti and Isidore of Seville/al-Idrisi sourcing, and the Kangnido comparison. - [5] Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze / Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana (Treccani), 'Mappa Mundi 1457,' Tesori Svelati historical-catalogue entry - for dimensions, six-color palette with manual retouching and gold-powder highlighting, toponym and cartouche counts, littera textualis script, Castilian-origin cartographer attribution, Angelo Cattaneo's 2008 facsimile commentary, and iconographic inventory (ships, sirens, city views, heraldic banners, animals). - [6] Cartography Unchained, '1457 World Map; Genoese, Yes! Draughtsmanship before History' - for the Ptolemaic-content analysis (c. 87 percent derived from Ptolemy's Geographia via Jacopo Angelo di Scarparia's 1406 Latin translation), the Genoa-centered longitudinal alignment, ancient sources (Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Herodotus, Strabo), and comparison with the Fra Mauro map. - [7] Facsimile Finder, 'Genoese World Map of 1457' - for the 2008 Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (Treccani) facsimile edition details: limited run of 750 copies, commentary by Juan Gil, Gino Benzoni and Angelo Cattaneo, and an alternate published dimension for the original (75 x 37 cm). - [8] Carleton College, 'Genoese World Map,' Mapping the World exhibit (HIST 231) - for David Woodward's 'transitory mappamundi' characterization, the proposed mandorla reading of the oval outline, the absence of Garden-of-Eden/Jerusalem-centered imagery, and details of a modern Treccani facsimile held in Carleton's own collection. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Genoese map.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Brunnlechner/Imago Mundi scholarship where accessible; used here only for the anachronistic three-masted-ship detail, the sea-monster iconography, and confirmation of Niccolo de' Conti as the map's principal named travel source. Its uncorroborated claim that the map was 'sent to the Portuguese court in 1474 and then to Columbus' is explicitly NOT used in this record; see source 12 and the narrative section addressing likely confusion with the Toscanelli episode. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Niccolo de' Conti.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly edition of Poggio Bracciolini's De varietate fortunae. Used for Conti's travel dates and route, his 1444 dictation to Poggio Bracciolini, and the documented statement that his account shaped both the Fra Mauro map and this map. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Zuane Pizzigano.' Tertiary source, used for the exact date (22 August 1424) and current location (James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota) of the Pizzigano chart, for the purpose of distinguishing it from this map. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli' (page title 'Paul Toscanelli'). Tertiary source, used to confirm that Toscanelli's 1474 letter and map to the Portuguese court and later to Columbus does not survive in original form, and is a distinct historical episode from this map. - [13] Wikipedia, 'Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze' / 'National Central Library (Florence).' Tertiary source, used for the library's 1714 founding as the Magliabechiana, its 1861 merger with the Biblioteca Palatina, and its renaming as the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze by 1885. - [14] Robert Finlay, 'How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America,' Journal of World History 15, no. 2 (2004), as republished by History Cooperative - for the peer-reviewed rebuttal of Gavin Menzies's 1421 thesis: the absence of any 'missing years' gap in the documented Ming naval chronology, Menzies's mishandling of Niccolo de' Conti's itinerary, and Menzies's demonstrated misuse of the Piri Reis map as a methodological parallel for how he treats cartographic evidence generally. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, 'File:EB1911 - Map - Fig. 24 - Genoese Map (1457).jpg' - source and license verification for the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica line-diagram reproduction used as a context image in this record. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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