The four allegorical figures of the elements (water,
earth, fire, and air) and the celestial hemispheres
were copied from Hondius’s world map.
from previous maps, not only British (especially the very fine world
Grent’s diagram with the solar divisions is replaced in Speed’s
map by William Grent, London, 1625), but also “stranger,” as the
world map by the image of an armillary sphere and “a figure to
title says, that is, foreign, such as the Dutch world map of 1617 by
prove the spherical roundness of the sea,” as the accompany text
Jodocus Hondius.
reads. The four allegorical figures of the elements (water, earth,
The four medallion portraits of circumnavigators of the
fire, and air) and the celestial hemispheres were copied from
globe—Drake, Magellan, Cavendish, and Van Noort—similar
Hondius’s world map.
astronomical drawings of solar and lunar eclipses, and the
A step forward in the mapping of the universe according to
diagram of the universe derive from Grent’s map. Despite the
modern scientific discoveries appears in A New and Correct Map of
supposed attempt at accuracy (the title describes it as an Accvrat
the World, Laid Down According to the Newest Discoveries, and
Map), the image of the cosmos in this early-seventeenth-century
From the Most Exact Observations by Herman Moll (1654?–1732),
map (as it was also evident in Breu’s Nova Totius Terrarum
inserted in his The World Described, or A New and Correct Sett of
Orbis, plate 27) is still rooted in the ancient tradition that
Maps, a collection of maps issued in London in 1715–1720 that saw
persisted in the Middle Ages (fig. 1 and plate 4). It does not evoke
numerous later editions (plate 29). The map, originally produced
the heliocentric model of the universe that places the sun, rather
separately in 1707, is dedicated to King George II, as reads the legend
than the earth, at the center, as formulated by the astronomer
in a cartouche, and the text on both sides includes interesting vitriolic
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) in his On the Revolutions
attacks on Moll’s competitors, particularly French cartographer
of the Celestial Spheres, first published in Nuremberg in 1543.
Nicolas Sanson, “whose maps have been condemned and found to be
Copernicus’s ideas, strengthened and improved by later rational
notoriously false,” and a claim that Dutch maps are inaccurate and
scientists, namely Galileo Galilei (1546–1642) and Johannes
often illegal piracies. At the borders of the double-hemisphere map
Kepler (1571–1630), had a profound effect on thinking about
there are diagrams of the universe. In the upper left corner stands
the universe and shape of the Earth after about 1650. Despite
Ptolomy’s universe, where the positions of the sun, the earth, and the
this scientific anachronism of Speed’s world map, it is important
moon are emphasized and the external sphere does not have a name
to note that the outermost sphere that Petrus Apianus identified
(that external sphere that Petrus Apianus called “The Empyreal Sky,
with “The Empyreal Sky, Residence of God and of all the Elects”
Residence of God and of all the Elects,” plate 4, does not have a
(plate 4) here lacks a name; thus, God as the ruler of the cosmos
name either in Speed’s A New and Accvrat Map of the World, plate
is omitted from the diagram.
28). In the upper right corner Copernicus’s sphere is shown with the
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