“Cosmographer to the Venetian Republic, then a powerhouse of commerce and trade. Gastaldi sought the most up to date geographical information available, and became one of the greatest cartographers of the sixteenth century” (Burden).

On an oval projection, Gastaldi’s world map one of the earliest of the series created by Italian engravers found in IATO (Italian assembled to order) atlases of the latter part of the sixteenth century, and is considered a landmark in cartographic production. However, Gastaldi “has reverted to earlier misconceptions assuming that North America and Asia were both part of one large mass of land. The Californian peninsula is shown but the east coast is relatively poorly drawn with no obvious marking of either the River Hudson or the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In South America, the Amazon is prominently depicted, but flowing almost north-south.
“In spite of its imperfections Gastaldi’s map was an influential prototype. It was reduced and redrawn for the Ptolemy-Gastaldi atlas of 1548, adapted in woodcut form by Pagano in 1550 and was the source for De Jode’s first world map of 1555” (Shirley). IATO atlases, such as those produced by Antonio Lafreri in the 1560-70s, often included very similar maps by Forlani, Camocio and Bertelli.

Giacomo Gastaldi (c1500-1566) was, and styled himself, ‘Piemontese’, and this epithet appears often after his name. Born at the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, he does not appear in any records until 1539, when the Venetian Senate granted him a privilege for the printing of a perpetual calendar. His first dated map appeared in 1544, by which time he had become an accomplished engineer and cartographer. Karrow has argued that Gastaldi’s early contact with the celebrated geographical editor, Giovanni Battista Ramusio, and his involvement with the latter’s work, ‘Navigationi et Viaggi’, prompted him to take to cartography as a full-time occupation. In any case Gastaldi was helped by Ramusio’s connections with the Senate, to which he was secretary, and the favourable attitude towards geography and geographers in Venice at the time.

The present map is an example of the second state, with the addition of the river Amazon to South America, and addition of clouds to the boarders.