ABSTRACT
The representation of the Pillars of Hercules still endured for a while in some fifteenth-century maps but, instead of denoting a physical or mental restraint, they became a simple place-name like many others. The desolate desert-like shores sighted by the Portuguese seamen sailing immediately south of Capes Non and Bojador seemed to confirm the age-old geographical prejudice of the ‘torrid zone’. As with the Portuguese approach to the new lands, commanded by direct visual experience, chartmakers were able to express in Euclidean terms a consistent correspondence between the physical reality and the cartographic image. Portuguese cartography excels from the outset for its pragmatic orientation and for a fairly rigorous depiction of the world. The most repeated argument used to explain why fifteenth-century Portuguese cartography is out of phase when compared with other contemporary works in Italy has been the recurrence of the so-called política do sigilo.
