Calecut Nuova Tavola

Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1561

Copper engraving on paper pasted on board

7.5 x 9.5 in (19.05 x 24.13 cm)
Visible plate mark; originally issued in Ruscelli’s copper-plate edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia.

An early and attractive Venetian engraved map of India from the formative moment when Renaissance geography absorbed the discoveries of the Portuguese age of exploration

Finely engraved Renaissance map depicting the Indian peninsula and surrounding seas, extending from the Deccan and the Malabar Coast across the Coromandel Coast and Bengal, and southward to the Maldive Islands. Coastal settlements, including Goa, Calicut, and Cochin, are identified, while stylised mountain ranges, river systems, and regional place names structure the interior geography. The surrounding waters are labelled “Mare de India” and “Golfo de Bengala". A rectilinear graticule border frames the map in the traditional format associated with sixteenth-century Ptolemaic atlases.

The map was issued in Girolamo Ruscelli’s influential Venetian edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia, first published by Vincenzo Valgrisi in 1561. Ruscelli’s atlas represented an important development in Renaissance cartography, replacing the traditional woodcut maps used in earlier Ptolemaic editions with newly engraved copper plates, allowing for greater precision and clarity in geographic representation. Several of these maps drew upon the geographical models developed by the leading Venetian cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, whose work significantly influenced mid-sixteenth-century Italian cartography.

The engraving reflects the moment when Renaissance mapmaking began incorporating Portuguese navigational intelligence into the classical geographic framework inherited from Ptolemy. The depiction of the Malabar and Coromandel coasts integrates information derived from early European voyages into the Indian Ocean following the opening of Portuguese sea routes to Asia at the turn of the sixteenth century.

Of particular interest is the reference to the powerful Vijayanagara empire, rendered here as “Narsinga,” one of the earliest European printed cartographic references to that polity. During the sixteenth century, the kingdom of Vijayanagara was widely known in European travel accounts and commercial reports, reflecting its prominence in South Indian political and economic networks.

Ruscelli’s map therefore illustrates a transitional phase in the history of cartography, when inherited classical geography was increasingly supplemented by information gathered through global exploration. The resulting synthesis of Ptolemaic cartographic structure and Portuguese-era geographic knowledge reflects Europe’s evolving understanding of the commercial and political geography of the Indian subcontinent during the age of maritime expansion.

An early and historically significant Venetian engraved map of India, appealing to collectors of Renaissance cartography, early printed maps of the Indian Ocean world, and sixteenth-century geographical atlases.

References
Suarez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, pp. 191–192 (Ruscelli Ptolemy maps)
Shirley, The Mapping of the World, no. 112 (Ruscelli Ptolemy atlas)
Tooley, Maps and Map-Makers, pp. 32–34

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