The Most Wonderful Map in the World: Urbano Monte’s Planisphere of 1587

Monte carefully crouched over the section of his map that bore his self-portrait from two years earlier — close-cropped sandy hair, a trim beard, modest clothes — and pasted a new self-portrait over it. It’s the fact that the enormous scale of Monte’s vision gave him space to crowd his map not only with a tremendous amount of local cartographic detail, but with tiny illustrated figures (of demons, monsters, unicorns, and more), mini-maps of major cities, and highly eclectic captions. King Philip II of Spain himself — who, in his rule as Duke of Milan, was Monte’s liege lord — makes an appearance on a ship of state off the coast of Brazil.

Source: resobscura.blogspot.com