The original Zeno map bore all the hallmarks of a sixteenth-century Venetian production, its style close to Olaus Magnus and Bordone rather than anything from the 1300s. 

Its accompanying narrative even described ‘lands still farther south, where savage natives feed upon man’s flesh, as the sweetest meat in their judgment there is’ – a detail more likely derived from Spanish reports of Aztec and Mayan ritual than any medieval voyage. Still, the myth endured. In the nineteenth century Richard Henry Major, Keeper of Maps at the British Museum, judged the Zeno account of Frisland as ‘authentic… genuine, and valuable.’ 

In 1951 the geologist William Herbert Hobbs considered the brothers ‘honest and quite competent discoverers.’ As late as 1989 the Venetian philologist Giorgio Padoan maintained that no forgery was involved, and that Venetians had indeed reached the 

 before any other Europeans. Johnson has argued that Nicolò the elder may have voyaged in 1380 but only as far as the Faroes, and that the real driving force behind the fabrication was patriotism and family pride: ‘Publishing the Nicolò and Antonio Zeno story would assuage family pride and personal vanity; most importantly, honour for the discovery of America would be restored to Italy.’ (Johnson, 1999)

Few episodes demonstrate more clearly the rhetorical power of a map. The present sheet combines Ruscelli’s Septentrionalis Partium Nova Tabula (his map of the North Atlantic) with his edition of a world map based on Ptolemy’s second projection, Ptolemaei Typus. Both were issued for Ruscelli’s 1561 edition of the Geografia. When, as here, they are found together on a single undivided sheet and without text on the verso, it indicates an early state, almost certainly prepared for inclusion in a Lafreri-type composite atlas.

Ex Carta

Ruscelli’s engraved pairing of Ptolemy’s projection and his own North Atlantic chart combines the classical and the speculative frontiers of cartography. The inclusion of the mythical Frisland demonstrates how sixteenth‑century maps could fabricate as well as record the world.

‘One of the most unusual and controversial maps in the chronicles of cartography’. (Johnson, 1999)

In 1558 the Venetian Nicolò Zeno published 

, a book accompanied by a map that claimed for Venice the discovery of the North Atlantic island of Frisland and, further west, the 

 of Estotiland. These discoveries were attributed to fourteenth-century voyages of his supposed ancestors: Nicolò Zeno the elder, who in 1380 was said to have been shipwrecked on Frisland and rescued by its Latin-speaking prince Zichmni; and Antonio, who allegedly voyaged further to Estotiland, noting its ‘cannibal’ inhabitants more than a century before Columbus.

Zeno admitted that the original manuscripts had been torn up in his youth – "Being still a boy when they came into my hands, and not understanding what they were, I tore them in pieces and destroyed them, as boys will do" – and presented instead a reconstruction from memory.

The map was persuasive. Frisland appeared as a rectangular island, complete with plausible place-names such as 

, and the inclusion of latitude and longitude made it easy for other cartographers to simply accept Zeno’s claims and follow his precedent. Girolamo Ruscelli published it in his 

 of 1561, only three years after Zeno’s book. Mercator added Frisland to his world map of 1569 and Ortelius followed suit in the opening map of the 

 (1570). With such authorities endorsing it, Frisland swiftly entered the canon. Martin Frobisher reported sighting it in 1576, and in 1580 John Dee claimed it formally for Elizabeth I.

The original Zeno map bore all the hallmarks of a sixteenth-century Venetian production, its style close to Olaus Magnus and Bordone rather than anything from the 1300s. Its accompanying narrative even described ‘lands still farther south, where savage natives feed upon man’s flesh, as the sweetest meat in their judgment there is’ – a detail more likely derived from Spanish reports of Aztec and Mayan ritual than any medieval voyage. Still, the myth endured. In the nineteenth century Richard Henry Major, Keeper of Maps at the British Museum, judged the Zeno account of Frisland as ‘authentic… genuine, and valuable.’ In 1951 the geologist William Herbert Hobbs considered the brothers ‘honest and quite competent discoverers.’ As late as 1989 the Venetian philologist Giorgio Padoan maintained that no forgery was involved, and that Venetians had indeed reached the New World before any other Europeans. Johnson has argued that Nicolò the elder may have voyaged in 1380 but only as far as the Faroes, and that the real driving force behind the fabrication was patriotism and family pride: ‘Publishing the Nicolò and Antonio Zeno story would assuage family pride and personal vanity; most importantly, honour for the discovery of America would be restored to Italy.’

Few episodes demonstrate more clearly the rhetorical power of a map. The present sheet combines Ruscelli’s 

 (his map of the North Atlantic) with his edition of a world map based on Ptolemy’s second projection, Ptolemaei Typus. Both were issued for Ruscelli’s 1561 edition of the 

. When, as here, they are found together on a single undivided sheet and without text on the verso, it indicates an early state, almost certainly prepared for inclusion in a Lafreri-type composite atlas.

Mythical Islands in the North Atlantic