# Carta marina navigatoria Portvgallen navigationes, atqve tocius cogniti orbis terre marisqve formam natvram sitvs et terminos nostris temporibvs recognitos et ab antiqvorum traditione differentes, eciam qvor vetvsti non meminervnt avtores, hec generaliter indicat > Martin Waldseemuller - 1516 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/martin-waldseemuller/waldseemuller-1516-carta-marina/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Martin Waldseemuller - **Date:** 1516 - **Medium:** Woodcut with letterpress text on twelve sheets of laid paper, watermarked with a triple pointed crown, with extensive manuscript additions in ink and red ink by Johann Schoner - **Dimensions:** 128 x 233 cm assembled; sheets 46 x 63 cm or smaller (Library of Congress catalogue); Chet Van Duzer gives sheets as approximately 45.5 x 62 cm - **Object type:** Map - **Period:** German and Lorraine, early sixteenth century - **Current location:** Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Jay I. Kislak Collection, Washington DC - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary This is a different map from the Waldseemuller 1507 world map already in this archive. It is Martin Waldseemuller's second and last large wall map, printed nine years later in 1516, and it survives in exactly one copy, in the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress. The two maps were owned by the same man, the Nuremberg globemaker Johann Schoner, and bound into the same portfolio, the Schoner Sammelband, in 1517. They are not the same object and this record covers only the second one.Where the 1507 map put Ptolemy and Amerigo Vespucci at the top of the sheet and coined the name America, the Carta Marina abandons both. It is built not on Ptolemy's geography but on a nautical chart, the Genoese pilot Nicolo de Caverio's chart of about 1503, and its list of the discoverers of the New World names Columbus first, Cabral second, and Vespucci third. The word America does not appear on it at all. Cuba is labelled part of Asia and the Pacific Ocean, which the 1507 map had shown before any European had seen it, is simply gone.The Carta Marina did not arrive at the Library of Congress with the 1507 map. The Library bought only the 1507 sheets from the Waldburg-Wolfegg family in 2003. The Carta Marina, the companion globe gores, and the rest of the Sammelband portfolio passed instead through the collector Jay I. Kislak, who bought them and gave them to the Library in 2014, eleven years after the 1507 purchase and by an entirely separate transaction whose price is not published. ## 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. - **1516-by 1517** Martin Waldseemuller, place of printing uncertain (catalogued as [Strasbourg, France?]) `[documented]` (Printed. This is the only known surviving copy.) The printer is not named on the map. Physical evidence (a proof sheet, a concealed errata patch, and later copying by other cartographers) implies at least one other impression once existed, though none survives. - **by 1517-1547** Johann Schoner, Nuremberg `[documented]` (Owned, extensively annotated in ink and red ink, and bound with the 1507 map, Schoner's own globe gores, and (from 1515) Albrecht Durer's star chart into the Schoner Sammelband, assembled at Nuremberg in 1517) Schoner used the map's coordinate grid to transfer data onto his own globes of 1515 and 1520. He died in 1547 per Van Duzer's monograph; a Library of Congress exhibition page gives 1474-1544 for Schoner, a discrepancy this record notes but does not resolve, parallel to a similar dating inconsistency already recorded for Waldseemuller himself on this archive's 1507 record. - **1547-mid-seventeenth century** Not established `[unknown]` (No documented owner) The same undocumented gap affects the 1507 map, since both objects were bound together in the same portfolio. - **mid-seventeenth century-twentieth century** The princely house of Waldburg-Wolfegg, Schloss Wolfegg, Upper Swabia `[documented]` (Held together with the rest of the Schoner Sammelband) This record has not identified sources describing ownership stamps specific to the Carta Marina sheets, unlike the two Wolfegg stamps recorded on the verso of the 1507 map's upper left sheet. - **2003** Library of Congress (1507 map only) `[documented]` (The Library of Congress purchases only the 1507 map from Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg for USD 10 million. The Carta Marina, the globe gores, and the rest of the Sammelband portfolio are explicitly not part of this transaction and remain with a different owner.) This is the central fact distinguishing this object's provenance from the 1507 map's. The two did not arrive at the Library together. - **by 2014-2014** Jay I. Kislak, member of the Library of Congress Madison Council `[documented]` (Purchases the Carta Marina, the globe gores, and the Sammelband portfolio itself, and donates them to the Library of Congress) The Library's own press release states this plainly, but does not name the seller or the price. This record has found no source establishing either. - **2014-2015** Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Jay I. Kislak Collection `[documented]` (Acquisition processed; the Library's catalogue record for the Carta Marina itself describes the transfer as 'acquired on exchange from the Jay I. Kislak Foundation', while its record for the companion manuscript copy of sheet 6 describes the same underlying transaction as a gift; both carry acquisition control number 2015-052) The two differing descriptions ('exchange' versus 'gift') for what appears to be one gift-and-transfer transaction are recorded here exactly as the Library's own catalogue states them. - **late 2015-present** Library of Congress `[documented]` (Purchases Albrecht Durer's 1515 star chart, the fourth original Sammelband component, from a separate source, completing the reassembly of the portfolio) Price not published in the sources consulted. - **2016-present** Library of Congress `[documented]` (Five-hundredth anniversary marked with a two-day conference and a jointly produced multimedia website with the Galileo Museum, Florence) Held in the Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building, 6-7 October 2016. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This object has never been offered at public auction. It has changed hands twice in the documented record: a private treaty purchase of the wider Schoner Sammelband portfolio (of which this map is part) by the collector Jay I. Kislak, on an unpublished date and for an unpublished price, followed by his gift and exchange of the map to the Library of Congress in 2014-2015. There is no hammer price, no buyer's premium, and no estimate for this object in any source consulted. ## Open questions - Why did Waldseemuller abandon Vespucci for Columbus and drop the name America between 1507 and 1516? Van Duzer argues it reflects a genuine change of mind about who deserved credit as discoverer; Hessler has declined to settle on a single explanation; no consensus has been published, and this record does not choose between the available readings. - Was the Carta Marina ever actually sold as a printed map, or is the sole surviving copy a proof that never reached a buyer? Hildegard Binder Johnson has argued for the latter, and Van Duzer notes no scholar has presented evidence against her; but the existence of a corrected errata state, a laid-in proof sheet, and clear later copying by Lorenz Fries and the Dieppe school implies more than one impression once existed. - Why was the map's printing so uncoordinated among the block cutters, with mismatched styles, a misaligned cartouche on sheet 9, and discontinuous rivers between sheets? Funding trouble, haste, and division of labour by geography have all been suggested; Van Duzer states plainly that it is not possible to know without further evidence. - How did the Carta Marina, the globe gores, and the rest of the Sammelband portfolio pass from the Waldburg-Wolfegg family to Jay I. Kislak before 2014? Unlike the well-documented 1999-2003 licence and purchase trail for the 1507 map, no source consulted for this record identifies the seller, the date, or the intermediate history of this transaction. - What did Jay I. Kislak pay for the Carta Marina, the globe gores, and the Sammelband portfolio in 2014, and what did the Library of Congress pay for the Durer star chart in 2015? Neither figure is published in the sources consulted. - Was Albrecht Durer personally involved in engraving or designing any of the Carta Marina's images, as the map's markedly superior artistic quality has led some to suggest? No direct evidence has been presented, and Van Duzer treats this as unproven speculation rather than an attribution. - Does the surviving manuscript copy of sheet 6, apparently made by or for Johann Schoner, imply that a second full printed exemplar of the Carta Marina once existed from which it could have been copied, or is it simply a study copy made for Schoner's own globe-making reference? The sources consulted for this record do not resolve the question. ## Sources - [1] Chet Van Duzer, Martin Waldseemuller's 'Carta marina' of 1516: Study and Transcription of the Long Legends (Springer Open, 2020), open access. Chapter 1, 'Introduction to the Carta Marina', pp. 1-53, read in full for this record. - [2] Library of Congress catalogue record, 'Carta marina navigatoria Portvgallen navigationes...', LCCN 2016586433, call number G1015 .S43 1517 Vault, Jay I. Kislak Collection, Geography and Map Division. - [3] Library of Congress catalogue record, '[Manuscript copy of sheet 6 of Waldseemuller's Carta marina]', LCCN 2016586443, Jay I. Kislak Collection. - [4] Library of Congress exhibition, '1516 Carta Marina Map', Waldseemuller Maps, Exploring the Early Americas. - [5] Library of Congress exhibition, '1516 Carta Marina Highlights', Waldseemuller Maps, Exploring the Early Americas. - [6] Library of Congress press release PR 16-142, 'Cartography Conference Will Celebrate 1516 Carta Marina and Focus on Mysterious Maps', 31 August 2016. - [7] Library of Congress catalogue record, 'Legends on Martin Waldseemuller's Carta Marina of 1516' (webcast lecture by Chet Van Duzer, recorded 15 March 2012), LCCN 2021688827. - [8] California Literary Review, review of John W. Hessler, The Naming of America: Martin Waldseemuller's 1507 World Map and the Cosmographiae Introductio, discussing Hessler's treatment of the map's unresolved questions. - [9] GeoGarage blog, reproducing an Associated Press report, 'The making of a mysterious Renaissance map', 2013, on the Caverio chart source and the map's iconography. - [10] Library of Congress, press release PR 01-093, 'Library of Congress Acquires Only Known Copy of 1507 World Map Compiled by Martin Waldseemuller', 23 July 2001. Cited here only for the USD 10 million price of the separate 2003 purchase of the 1507 map, referenced in this record solely to distinguish it from this object's own, separate 2014 acquisition. - [11] Library of Congress, press release PR 03-110, 'Library of Congress Completes Purchase of Waldseemuller Map', 18 June 2003. Cited here only for the completion of the separate 2003 purchase of the 1507 map, referenced in this record solely to distinguish it from this object's own, separate 2014 acquisition. --- 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.