There are three surviving pairs of these hemispherical maps by Stonbnizca: the present example, at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (B.1.c.12); and at the John Carter Brown Library. Reference work Burden II cites three known examples - John Carter Brown Library, Munich, and Vienna (however, 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 Ptolemy’s ‘

' published in Lyons in 1535. It now resides in a private American collection’ (Burden II vii). 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 of the maps, first recorded by Burden (1996) in the corrigenda to Burden II, and the example at the Bodleian noted by Shirley (2001).

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

 (c.1470–1520) in 1507, which was made for a new edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s '

'. This map was constructed using a partial and sub-spherical projection that has been truncated at the poles, which - according to the historian Henry Harisse - may be considered a precursor to Mercator’s projection.

Stobnicza’s map of the Western Hemisphere shows two large masses of North and South America, with a continuous coastline from fifty-degree North to forty-degree South latitude, connected by a narrow strip of land dividing the ocean between Asia and Europe. A vast ocean to the west of the Americas, on the face of it a year before the first European, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, reported its existence. Stobnicza, like Waldseemüller before him, labels South America 'Terra Incognita' indicating, according to Harisse, that they possessed only hypothetical reasons for delineating the Pacific coast. Stobnicza follows Waldseemüller in showing Cuba, under its traditional name Isabella, as part of the American mainland, but otherwise, only a few small decorative details have been added, such as an elephant in South Africa and a bird in Madagascar.

The Sunderland Collection

Produced in Poland by academic and cartographer Johannes Stobnicza, this map of the Eastern Hemisphere pairs with a second map of the Western Hemisphere forming a small, yet detailed view of the world that is based on the inset maps in the upper border of Martin Waldseemüller's legendary wall map of the world (1507).

The Stobnicza maps were the first to separate out the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, and were possibly originally included in his ‘Introductio in Ptholomei Cosmographiam’ (Introduction to the Cosmography of Ptolemy) of 1512, one of the most important early writings on the Americas and contains several passages on Amerigo Vespucci and his 'discoveries'. 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.

Stobnicza’s '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 reports of Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa's crossing in 1513, when he became he first recorded European to encounter the Pacific Ocean.

During the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, 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, historian Henry Harisse (1829-1910) showed that Stobnicza was acquainted with the geographical work of the St Dié Gymnasium in Lorraine. In 1901, German cartographer Joseph Fischer (1856-1944) discovered the great twelve-sheet world map of 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller and it became clear that Stobnicza had drawn from the two small hemispherical insets at the top.

Western half of an exceptionally rare pair of maps - one of only three known - based on insets from Martin Waldseemüller’s celebrated wall-map of the world (1507), itself known in only one example and held by the Library of Congress. In effect, it is the first separately printed map of the Western Hemisphere.

Stobnicza's Western Hemisphere