Africae tabula noua

This standard map of Africa came from a popular Atlas in the late sixteenth century. In a dramatic age of exploration, new information poured in from around the world through books and travel accounts that artists and geographers, like Abraham Ortelius, used to craft beautifully detailed maps of far off lands. By compiling the host of detailed descriptions before them and perhaps even their own experience as travel and mobility increased, mapmakers such as Ortelius sought to capture the vast reality of different places in a visual format, allowing larger audiences to become familiar with spaces and kingdoms they otherwise would never have seen or read about.