Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova

From the press release:
Between the Lines: Culture and Cartography on the Road to Statehood


Girolamo Ruscelli, Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova.
Copperplate engraving, Venice, 1564.
Courtesy Private Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The first edition of this map, based on a similar 1548 map by Piedmontese Italian Jacopo Gastaldi, appeared in Ruscelli’s publication of the ancient Greco-Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemy’s La Geographia (1561, 1562) in Latin and Italian. This second edition correctly has Baja California and the Yucatan as peninsulas, and the Mississippi River is shown as the “R. de Spirito Santo.” New Mexico is little more than “white space,” except for some mountains, a few unnamed villages, and the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola rendered as “Ciuola.”

Note: Representative image at left is often cropped for display purposes. Downloaded high-resolution images are not cropped.