ABSTRACT
Trade, no less than exploration and discovery, stimulates the spirit of enquiry and provides channels for the transmission of geographical information. This explains why Italian and German workshops played an important part in the map-production and publication of the Renaissance period. The most original French cartographer of the early 16th century was Oronce Fine. His first map, a manuscript world map on a heart-shaped projection, dates from 1519. As copper-plate engraving came to assert itself as the most suitable medium for the printing of maps, the aptitude of Netherlandish craftsmen for metal-working created a vigorous industry for the production of maps, centred originally at Antwerp and later, from the 1590's, at Amsterdam. But the output of the two great Flemish cartographers — Gemma Frisius and Gerard Mercator — who most conspicuously influenced the world map of the 16th century was largely produced outside the commercial map workshops.
