After losing his ship to pirates, he became a cartographer famous for producing more than twenty two works between 1461 and 1482. We noted above that details of Africa included in this atlas had only recently become known following the return of the explorer navigator Gil Eanes. Yet in 1467 Benincasa was apparently quite prepared to use out of date information for the maps of northern Europe in his atlas, in which he included Maps, p. 56 and 58. A cartographer of the Dutch East India Company, Hessel Gerritsz drew up his map of the Pacific in 1622.

The ‘Christopher Columbus’ Map c. 1492 Parchment, 70 x 110 cm Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris