Salamanca first published this map under his own imprint in Rome, (‘Ant. Sal Exc. : Romae’), in about 1550, although possibly earlier with an example in the British Library dated to 1543. The present map bears Lafreri's imprint and dates from after Lafreri had taken control of their joint publishing business in 1563.


’s world map of about 1555 (see SC-TM-c1555-Florianus-PolarWorldMap), Salamanca’s map is based on the double-cordiform world map by Gerhard Mercator of 1538. It bisects the world on the Equator, with the southern hemisphere featuring a mysterious continent centred on the South Pole and the conjectural Terra Australis. Following Mercator, Salamanca showed the Americas as being two continents, labelled north and south, and being entirely separate from Asia. A large ice mass is shown covering the world's Arctic regions. Salamanca's rendering is distinguished from Mercator's by his use of stipple engraving for the seas. 

The so-called ‘Lafreri School’ was named for Antonio Lafreri (1512– 1577), arguably one of Italy’s most influential publishers of maps. In fact, Lafreri, was a Frenchman from Burgundy, born Antoine du Pérac Lefréry of Besançon, who settled in Rome in 1540 and established his business as an engraver and print seller in the Via del Perione in 1544. His name is associated with the first atlases made up to order, known to modern scholars as the IATO editions (Italian Assembled To Order), or ‘Lafreri atlases’. 

Lafreri was primarily a dealer and publisher, rather than a mapmaker, His own name appears comparatively seldom in the atlases attributed to him. Many of the maps found in IATO, or ‘Lafreri atlases’, were initially sold separately, and so no two assembled collections are alike: neither in the number of maps they contain nor in their content. From 1553 onwards, Lafreri partnered with an established dealer, 

. In 1562 Salamanca died, and from 1563 until his own death in 1577, Lafreri published on his own account and became the leading dealer in engravings in Rome.


 created this finely engraved copperplate map for the famous publisher Antonio Lafreri. It is only the second world map to have been made on a double-cordiform projection. Salamanca first published it under his own imprint in Rome in around 1550.

The map contains very little embellishment but is exquisitely engraved. The oceans are minutely stippled, and the geographical features of the map are very delicately drawn. Like its predecessors, this striking map shows a mysterious Southern continent where modern-day Antarctica lies. However, the iron islands previously thought to stand at the North Pole have been replaced with a much more accurate Arctic region. 


‘Beyond being a most elegant artistic concept, cordiform maps were considered to be imbued with great emblematic significance by contemporary humanists, in that they linked the human heart, the innate source of reason, with the grander theatre of the world of human action’ (Mangani 1998).

Only the second world map on a double-cordiform projection.


Double-page double-cordiform copperplate engraved map of the world

Salamanca’s Double-Cordiform World Map