Bernardus Sylvanus

An Italian scholar and printer who published important editions of Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’. The first was based on the copperplates from the Rome editions of 1478 and 1490. The next, published in Venice in 1511, was more original. Sylvanus updated the traditional maps with more recent information, which he mainly gathered from contemporary manuscript material. This created a unique effect, made all the more recognisable by the pioneering use of two-colour printing, in red and black. Sylvanus’s second 'Geographia' also contained a large cordiform world map, again the earliest of its kind, and only the second Ptolemaic world map to show America.