ABSTRACT
The principal interest of Martellus’ work consists in assessing the way in which the author harmonized Ptolemy’s ideas with the recent expeditions in the shaping of the southern extremity of Africa. Both events represented the culmination of two parallel and far-reaching processes of an essentially contradictory nature in their respective images of the African outline. This chapter discusses how light may best be thrown on these particular episodes that punctuate the process, through an analysis which places them in the context of the wider recurrent debate concerning the antagonistic roles played by ancient authority and modern experience in the drawing of the world. It examines the precise cartographic manner in which this controversy finally came to a climax in the last decades of the fifteenth century. The influence of the Alexandrian on the globe is also noticeable in the depiction of the African interior.
