Sylvanus’s atlas was never reissued making maps from this sole edition extremely rare.

Syvlanus’ map uses color to distinguish between major regional names (printed in red), and others in black, using inset type. It has been suggested that the dual-colour printing style is done to mimic contemporary portolan charts, which used black and red to distinguish toponyms of various importance. The text in the book says that it used the maps of navigators to update Ptolemy’s original work, and the influence may also have extended to the aesthetic.

This world map is the first to use a cordiform (heart-shaped) projection to simulate the curvature of the globe, a technique that would be frequently emulated by subsequent mapmakers. It is also one of the first to show Japan as an island, the western coast of South America, labelled as 'Terre Sanctae Crucis,' a very northerly Cuba and Hispaniola, and a very westerly 'Terra Laboratorus' and 'Regalis Domus', preceded only by Johannes Ruysch’s 1507 world map.

Double-page woodcut map of the world, printed in red and black.

 in his 1511 Venice edition of Claudius Ptolemy's '

' is among the earliest example of two-colour printing in cartography and include the first cordiform (heart-shaped) world map of its kind. Place names are shown in red and black, a significant technical advancement in rendering details. Derived on a Ptolemaic projection, Bernard Sylvanus states that his maps update Ptolemy’s geography with more recent discoveries. The signs of the zodiac are shown on the right with Strabo’s climatic zones listed on the left.

This map was included in Sylvanus’s 1511 Venice edition of the '

', which was groundbreaking in several regards. It was the only edition to add modern updates directly to Ptolemy’s maps, the only edition at the time to print maps on both sides of the leaf, the first edition printed in two colours, and the first Italian edition to use woodblocks.

This map may be a modification of a Portuguese prototype in the interest Syvlanus' discretion, as the map was published in Venice, adopted city of John Cabot, who had discovered land in the same region as the Corte-Reals for the king of England. Collectively, dual-colour printing, decorative windheads, climatic zones, zodiacal signs, and a distinctive heart-shaped projection, make this map especially distinctive from its contemporaries. 

The first use of a cordiform projection in a world map to suggest the spherical nature of the Earth; the first to be printed in two colours; only the second map in a Ptolemaic atlas to show America; and the first western printed map to indicate Japan as an island.

Sylvanus' Heart-Shaped World Map