Martin Wäldseemüller

An important map of China by Martin Waldseemüller, the first 'modern' map of the region, which includes Tibet, Tartary and Japan.

• Martin Waldseemüller (German).
• Ta. Superioris Indiae.
• Lyons: Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel, 1535.
• Hand colored woodcut.
• This work is presented unframed.

Although it was published in an edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, it was not a reduction of a map from the Waldseemuller edition of 1513, but a new one prepared for a new Chronica mundi being written by Waldseemüller.

The title, as above, is on the reverse, with a descriptive text in Latin surrounded by woodcut columns.

Waldseemüller expanded the Ptolemaic map of the Far East by adding information on Tartary and Japan gleaned from the accounts of Marco Polo.

Japan is a large island called Zipangri, a name derived from the Chinese 'Land of the Rising Sun', which Polo learned about from the Chinese, long before the first recorded European visit to Japan.

The landing of the Portuguese Alvarado in Okinawa was in 1542, seven years after this map was printed.