Meanwhile, the earliest news on American
cannibalism came from the travel accounts of
Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci.
associated with the American Indian stereotype, and the fact that
of his sailors was killed, and later cooked and eaten. The German
here they characterize Asiatic people derives from the confusion
translation published by Johannes Grüniger in Strasbourg in 1509
that existed between the two Indies); Europe (lower right) shows
incorporated a woodcut where in the background two natives are
classical architecture and European figures, among which Ludovico
chopping up a body (fig. 4).
di Varthema, a well-known sixteenth-century Italian traveler to
Sebastian Münster enriched his maps with artistic images, and these
Asia, is identified by name; and America (lower left) is associated
were in many cases relegated to the margins. In his edition of Ptolemy’s
with a cannibalism scene, where victims are being chopped up and
Geography, first published by Henricum Petrum in Basel in 1540, the
dismembered human remains are being cooked over a fire and in a
eighth regional map of Asia incorporated monstrous races at the edges
pot, and being dried hanging from the branches of a hut. The same
(plate 11): a Sciapod using his big feet as an umbrella to shelter from
hut appears in Brazil by the reference to the Canibali in Sebastian
the sun, small Pygmies fighting against the cranes, two Blemmya with
Münster’s New weldt oder Inseln (Basel, ca. 1550), the earliest known
their facial traits on the chest, and a Cynocephalus or dog-headed man.
separate map of the Americas, which appeared in his Cosmographia
All of them were associated with India, as Münster also showed in his
(Basel: n.p., 1550; plate 10).
Cosmographia first published in Basel in 1544 (plate 11), and they were
Münster and Holbein approached the world with curio sity and an
closely related to the medieval monstrous races that inhabited the world
early ethnographical eye, though nuanced by a clear Eurocentrism.
(plate 7 and fig. 2). The similitude between the scene of Anthropophagi
The sources used were varied and included other maps and travel
chopping up a human victim in Münster’s Ptolemaic map of India and
books. For example, as Jean Michel Massing showed, a couple of
in Münster-Holbein’s 1532 mappamundi is explained again by the
lip-plated Africans appeared in Lorenz Fries’s edition of Ptolemy’s
identification of both East and West Indies.
Geography, published in Strasbourg in 1522 by Johannes Grieninger
A work that played a major role in the definition of the images of the
(fig. 3), specifically in a woodcut related to the second regional map
four continents in cartography was the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by
of Africa—another marginal image as it is not on the map itself but
Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), first published in Antwerp in 1570.
on the reverse folio.
This systematic and comprehensive collection of maps of uniform style
has often been considered the first modern atlas (plate 13 and plate
Meanwhile, the earliest news on American cannibalism came from
the travel accounts of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci.
34). The title page or frontispiece, an image marginal to the collection
In Vespucci’s letter to Piero Soderini, written in Lisbon in 1504 and
of maps that it introduces, stands out as one of the most interesting
published in Florence between 1504 and 1506, he testified how one
innovations in the history of cartography. Ortelius is thought to be the
11