Two maps of Greek islands. Left: Thassos (El Tasso) and the Mount Athos peninsula (Monte Santo); right: Limnos (Stalimene). Both 150 x 145 mm.

Benedetto di Bordone’s (1460-1539) “Isolario…”, or book of islands, was the first printed isolario to encompass the entire world, the only printed isolario to precede it was the little book of Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, 1485, which covered only the Aegean islands. The isolario was a popular genre that had first appeared in manuscript examples by Cristoforo Buondelmonte dating from the early fifteenth-century, Bordone expanded on the usual theme to encompass lands beyond the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean archipelago and the Levant, to guide travelers other parts of Europe and the world, stretching as far as the Indian Ocean, the African coastline and the New World.