The two hemispheres appear to have been published for inclusion in a very small number of copies of the work. Yarmonlinksy (1937) traces just twenty-one known examples of the book; six undated, and fifteen dated. There is no consensus as to whether the map is an integral part of the book, but only four copies (Vienna, Munich, Breslau, all of which are now missing; and John Carter Brown Library, Providence) of the twenty-one known of both issues include the map. To this we can add the present example, first recorded by Burden (1996) in the corrigenda to Burden II, and the example at the Bodleian noted by Shirley (2001).

The map is constructed using a partial and sub-spherical projection truncated at the poles, which, may be considered a precursor to 

Johannes Stobnicza (c. 1470–1530) held the chair of cosmography at Jagiellonian University, Kraków and later entered the Franciscan order there. His ‘Introductio in Ptholomei Cosmographiam’ (Introduction to the Cosmography of Ptolemy) of 1512 is one of the most important early writings on the Americas and contains several passages on Amerigo Vespucci and his discoveries. The work is notable for its early description of the Isthmus of Panama, seemingly a year before its official discovery by Núñez de Balboa. 

Stobnicza’s world maps were derived from a famous wall map created by 

 (c. 1470–1520), a German cartographer, in 1507. Waldseemüller made this map for a new edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’ sponsored by a French association of humanists known as Gymnasium Vosagense, in the Duchy of Lorraine. He was joined in this project by the geographer Matthias Ringmann who had worked on a previous edition of the ‘

’. Both men are credited with the first recorded usage of the word ‘America’ to name the 

 in honour of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci who had completed two voyages to the new continent between 1499 and 1502. Waldseemüller was also the first to map South America as a continent separate from Asia, the first to produce a printed globe, and the first to create a printed wall map of Europe. A set of his maps printed as an appendix to the 1513 edition of Ptolemy's ‘

’ is considered to be the first example of a modern atlas. The only surviving example of Waldseemüller’s map, now housed in the Library of Congress, is dateable to 1516, some four years after Stobnicza’s work.

Produced in Poland by the highly respected local cartographer Johannes Stobnicza, this map of the Eastern Hemisphere pairs with a second map of the Western Hemisphere (SC-TM-1512-Stobincza-WesternHemisphere) forming a small, yet detailed view of the world based on part of 

's legendary wall map (1507).

The Stobnicza maps are extremely rare and are the first to separate out the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. While they are very small and appear quite simple, closer inspection reveals wonderful details such as clouds, windheads, an elephant in southern Africa and a bird in Madagascar.

During the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, Johannes Stobnicza’s maps experienced a resurgence of interest, specifically as to how such advanced maps came to be produced in Poland, well away from the centres of cartographic knowledge. In 1892, Henry Harrisse showed that Stobnicza was acquainted with the geographical work of the St Dié Gymnasium in Lorraine. In 1901, Joseph Fischer discovered the great twelve-sheet world map of 1507 by 

 and it became clear that Stobnicza had drawn from the two small insets at the top.

First half of an exceptionally rare pair of maps, one of only three known, based on insets from 

’s wall-map of the world (1507), known in only one example. 

This pair is one of only three known extant examples. The others are located at: the Bodleian Library, Oxford (B.1.c.12); and the John Carter Brown Library. Burden II cites three known examples - JCB, Munich, and Vienna (the last two now missing), but with the following note to the corrigenda in Burden II that refers to the present pair of maps: “A further example was discovered in 2003 bound inside an example of Ptolemaeus’s ‘Geographicae’ published in Lyons in 1535. It now resides in a private American collection” (Burden II vii). 

First half of a pair of woodcut maps showing the west and east hemispheres of the world, watermarked with a stylized bull’s head with caduceus, similar to Meder 81, with countermark of bull’s head surmounted by a cross, similar to Piccard XVI-371 and Bricquet 15409.

Stobnicza's Eastern Hemisphere