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

Sylvanus’s 1511 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 (see SC-A-1507-Ruysch-

). Sylvanus may have been modifying a Portuguese prototype in the interest of 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.

The capital letters are printed in red by means of type set into the woodblocks with the major regional names printed in red, others in black. Woodward (2007) suggests 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 Claudius Ptolemy’s original work, and the influence may also have extended to the aesthetic. Collectively, dual colour printing, decorative windheads, climatic zones, zodiacal signs, and a distinctive heart-shaped projection, make this map especially distinctive from its contemporaries. 


Bernard Sylvanus (c. 1465–1511,) or Bernardo Silvani, was an Italian scholar and printer born in the 1460s in Eboli, a small agricultural town near Salerno in southern Italy. He began studying Claudius Ptolemy around 1490, when he was living in Naples. At this time, he ran a print shop or studio, producing maps and codices. It was here that he produced his first edition of Ptolemy’s ‘

’ in 1490, which he dedicated to Andrea Matteo Acquaviva, the third Duke of Atri. For this edition Sylvanus used coordinates and text from Jacopo d’Angelo’s translation of Ptolemy and copied the maps from a Roman printed edition of either 1478 or 1490 (both printed from the same plates). 

Sylvanus’ 1511 Venice edition of the ‘

’ built on his prior work but was groundbreaking in several regards. He explains in a preliminary note that Ptolemy’s work must be updated and adds that as Ptolemy himself used the work of navigators, so will he. It was the only edition to add modern updates directly into 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. Nothing is known of Sylvanus’ life after the publication of this edition.

' 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.

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.

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

Sylvanus' Heart-Shaped World Map