A short paragraph in Latin in Berlinghieri’s '

', is addressed to Fedrigo de Montefeltro (1422–1482), to whom the work is dedicated. Berlinghieri had originally intended to dedicate it to the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II.

This map represents the known world at the time of Ptolemy: the Roman Empire, centred on the Mediterranean Sea, Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. The use of a cone-shaped projection admits to an understanding of a wider world, which is spherical and unrecorded. It is first the printed map based Ptolemy's second projection, in which both parallels and meridians are shown curved to convey the spherical nature of the Earth.

 engraved Ptolemaic map of the world, on two sheets with wide margins, joined, with contemporary hand-colour in full. 

This gorgeous map in vibrant original hand colour, is from 

'. The wonderful engraving is attributed to Francesco Rosselli (1448–c.1513). Energetic windheads that represent the twelve classical winds surround the world on a Ptolemaic projection showing the climates, hundreds of place-names, and detailed depictions of mountains, rivers and other geographical features. It is very rare to find this map in colour; the pigments likely include lapis lazuli and would have been very costly.

This map appeared in Berlinghieri’s edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s '

', published in Florence in 1482, which was the third printed atlas, and the first in Italian with a commentary composed in verse.

The map was likely engraved by Francesco Rosselli, one of the leading engravers, painters and map sellers of his day and influenced by the great Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. The windheads are redolent of the Zephyr depicted in Botticelli’s 'The Birth of Venus'.

This present edition of Berlinghieri's world map is exceptionally rare because it is among few surviving examples with contemporary hand-colour. Each of the sheets are ruled with unusually wide inner margins, which are more often found trimmed so that the printer could uniformly align the images. This map was included in the third atlas ever printed, and the first in a vernacular (Italian, in verse) language. It is also the first printed map based on Claudius Ptolemy's second 'bee-hive' projection.

Berlinghieri's Ptolemaic World Map in Contemporary Colour