Johann Ruysch

An artist and cartographer from the Low Countries, Ruysch became a Benedictine monk and was given an office in the papal palace by Julius II. This could be when he made his famous fan-shaped world map, as featured in Ruysch's edition of Ptolemy's 'Geographia'. The introduction to the 1508 Rome edition of the ‘Geographia’ states that Ruysch claimed to have sailed from England to the North Pole and then to Asia. He may have been a member of John Cabot’s expedition from Bristol trying to reach China, although the entire claim remains a subject of heated debate.