A 16th century Ptolemaic map of Italy

A woodcut map of Italy according to Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, whose 'Geographia' (a gazetteer of the Roman world and treatise on mapmaking written about AD 150) had a profound influence on the development of Renaissance cartography. It shows Italy and Corsica with the islands of the Tyrrenian Sea and the Adriatic, without Sardinia and Sicily (which are depicted on 'Tabula VII'). The title is on a scroll above the map. On the reverse a Latin text is surrounded by ornate woodcut columns. This example is comes from block reduced from Wäldseemüller's original by Lorenz Fries. It was intended not for an edition of Ptolemy but for a new 'Chronica mundi' being written by Wäldseemüller. However his death c.1520 caused the project to be shelved, so the woodcuts were used to publish a smaller sized and so cheaper edition of the 'Geography'.