A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox: Johannes Schaner and the Revolution of Modern Science 1475-1550

This new volume, and its accompanying microsite, is the first scholarly publication and English translation of the Schoner Sammelband, a collection of maps and notes made by the Nuremberg astronomer and mathematician Johannes Schoner (d. 1543), including the original World Maps made by Martin Waldseemuller and a set of celestial globe gores of Schoner’s design. The survival of Schoner’s notebooks and annotations is unique in the history of cartography; not only do they show his thinking about theoretical and practical geography, but they also reveal the art of map-making during his lifetime. Author John Hessler discusses Schoner’s opinions on the then canonical geography of Ptolemy, and his reaction to the new discoveries of Columbus and Vespucci. The notebooks offer an unprecedented insight into the history of these materials, and into the geographical concerns that fuelled cartographic development during this critical period in the history of science and exploration.