![De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]](http://usm.maine.edu/maps/sites/default/files/MatthewEdney/featured_maps/map-image/world 1672 de wit large 20pc.jpg "De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]") |
Current Exhibition:American Treasures October 18, 2009 - August 21, 2010American Treasures celebrates the reopening of the newly renovated and expanded Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine. It explores the library’s rich and varied collections and its mission to preserve those collections and make them accessible. Beginning with the foundational gifts by the Smith and Osher families, the library’s collections emphasize Maine and New England, followed in order by the United States, the Americas, and the (continued) |
(click on image to view in greater detail) | Sebastian Münster German, 1489-1552 Typvs Vniversalis Wood-cut, hand-colored, 25.5cm x 34.4cm From: Geographia vniversalis, vetvs et nova, complectens Clavdii Ptolemaei Alexandrini enarratio. Nis libros VIII. (Basle: Hinrich Petri, 1540/42) |
Typvs VniversalisThis world map, from a 1540/42 edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, shows the full twelve winds designated by Aristotle. The twelve-wind system remained throughout the Middle Ages as the one most commonly used. In keeping with the mythologic origin of winds for direction finding, they are of necessity placed beyond the confines of the known world--beyond the earth itself, in an outer, celestial sphere. |
