# Henricus Martellus's World Map > Henricus Martellus Germanus - c. 1489-1491 (most accounts fix it to about 1491, partly because one legend quotes a text published that year; estimates in the literature range from c. 1489 to c. 1492) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/henricus-martellus/martellus-world-map-yale/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-20 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Henricus Martellus Germanus - **Date:** c. 1489-1491 (most accounts fix it to about 1491, partly because one legend quotes a text published that year; estimates in the literature range from c. 1489 to c. 1492) - **Medium:** Hand-drawn and colored manuscript map, ink and pigment on a single large sheet. The exact ground material (paper or parchment) is not established in the sources consulted for this record. - **Dimensions:** Approximately 201 x 122 cm (about 6.6 x 4 ft), commonly rounded in press accounts to 6 by 4 feet. A precise institutional measurement was not accessible in the sources consulted. - **Object type:** Map - **Period:** Renaissance Florence, late fifteenth century - **Current location:** Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A hand-drawn wall map of the known world, about two meters wide, made in Florence around 1491 by the German cartographer Henricus Martellus. Five centuries of fading left most of its Latin text and imagery invisible before a 2014-15 multispectral imaging project, led by the map historian Chet Van Duzer with imaging scientists from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, recovered roughly four-fifths of what could be read: hundreds of place names, dozens of descriptive legends, and unusually detailed African geography that appears to trace back to an Ethiopian delegation at the 1441 Council of Florence.The map updates Ptolemy's Geography with fresh reports of Bartolomeu Dias's 1488 rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and draws on the Marco Polo tradition for Asia. Scholars argue, on the strength of Columbus's son Ferdinand's later account of his father's expectations about Japan, that Columbus consulted this map or one very like it before 1492; Van Duzer himself treats parts of that argument as reasonable speculation rather than proof. The map also appears to have supplied text, though not place names, to Martin Waldseemuller's 1507 map, the first to label the new continents America.The Beinecke Library received the map as an anonymous gift in 1962; its ownership before that date is not established in the sources checked for this record. Martellus's other surviving world maps are page-sized illustrations bound into copies of his own island-book, held elsewhere including at the British Library; this large freestanding sheet at Yale is, so far as these sources establish, the only known example of his large-format wall map to survive. ## 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. - **c. 1489-1491** Henricus Martellus Germanus (workshop, Florence) `[documented]` (origin) Drawn by the German cartographer Henricus Martellus, active in Florence c. 1480-1496. The map is unsigned; its date is fixed to about 1491 in most scholarship, partly because one legend quotes a text published that year. - **c. 1491-1962** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No ownership is documented in any source this record could directly verify for roughly four and a half centuries. Secondary, unverified summaries repeat a claim that the map belonged to a family in Tuscany, surfaced on the market in Bern in the late 1950s, and was offered by named dealers before an anonymous purchase; this record has not treated that chain as established fact because it could not be confirmed against a source actually fetched and read. See notes_for_editor. - **1962-present** Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University `[documented]` (acquisition) Received by the Beinecke Library in 1962 as the gift of an anonymous donor. Displayed for a period on a wall outside the library's reading room; later moved into storage at the Yale University Art Gallery during a Beinecke renovation. Rendered legible in large part by the 2014-15 multispectral imaging project. ## Open questions - What is the map's chain of ownership between its creation in Florence around 1491 and its appearance at Yale in 1962? No source this record could directly verify establishes it. Secondary accounts repeat a claim involving a Tuscan family, a reappearance in Bern in the late 1950s, and named dealers, but every attempt to confirm that chain against a primary source was blocked by a paywall or login wall. - Did Christopher Columbus consult this specific sheet, a now-lost copy of it, or an earlier source shared independently with Martellus? The evidence, chiefly Ferdinand Columbus's later account of his father's beliefs about Japan, is indirect and consistent with more than one explanation. - What does the map's Dragon Tail peninsula south of Asia actually represent: a cartographic artifact of reconciling Ptolemaic and Portuguese data, or something closer to real, if garbled, information? Historians of cartography have not settled the question, and some popular accounts overstate a link to South America that the specialist literature does not establish. - What is the map's exact support material and pigment set? No source consulted for this record reports a material analysis (paper versus parchment, or pigment identification), despite the imaging project's close physical engagement with the object. - How much of the map's originally recoverable text remains unrecovered? The 2014-15 project reported roughly 80 percent legibility restored at the time of its first public accounts; whether a later pass closed the remaining gap is not established in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 'Hidden Secrets of Yale's 1491 World Map Revealed Via Multispectral Imaging'. - [2] Yale News, 'Hidden secrets of Yale's 1491 world map revealed via multispectral imaging', 11 June 2015. - [3] Phys.org, 'Hidden secrets of 1491 world map revealed via multispectral imaging', 2015. - [4] National Endowment for the Humanities, 'Columbus Sailed Here! Multi-Spectral Imaging of an Important 15th Century World Map'. - [5] National Geographic, 'A 500-year-old map used by Columbus reveals its secrets'. - [6] Smithsonian Magazine, 'Did This Map Guide Columbus?'. - [7] Archaeology Magazine, 'Digs & Discoveries: Reading the Invisible Ink', January/February 2016. - [8] Hyperallergic, 'Researchers Decipher the Map That May Have Guided Columbus Westward'. - [9] Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, 'Martellus Map Spectral Imaging Project'. - [10] TheCollector, 'How the Martellus Map Saw Africa and Europe During the Age of Exploration'. - [11] Springer Nature Link, book landing page for Chet Van Duzer, 'Henricus Martellus's World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence' (Cham: Springer, 2019). - [12] Wikipedia, 'Henricus Martellus Germanus'. Tertiary source, used only for the map's own inscribed quotation and for the list of Martellus's other surviving manuscripts; flagged for replacement with a direct citation to Van Duzer's edition. - [13] Wikimedia Commons, File:Henricus Martellus - Map of the world - 1489 - Yale archive.jpg, file information and licensing. - [14] Wikimedia Commons, File:Martellus-Yale.jpg, file information and licensing. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, File:World map by Martellus - Account of the Islands of the Mediterranean (1489), ff.68v-69 - BL Add MS 15760.jpg, file information and licensing. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.