Fool's Cap World Map RMG L8314-001

Fool's Cap World MapFool's World Map, based on Ortelius's third 'Typus Orbis Terrarum,' which suggests a publication date after 1587. Published by an unknown maker, it shows a fool's or jester's cap with a world map where the face would be. In this conceit, it is based on an earlier woodcut map by Jean de Gourmant. The text is in Latin: (panel on the left) 'Democritus Abderites deridebat, Heraclites Ephesius deflebat, Epichthonnis Cosmopolites deformabat' / 'Democritus of Abdera laughed at it' the world, 'Heraclitus of Ephesus wept over it', 'Epichtonius Cosmopolites portrayed it'; (above the cap) 'Nosce te ipsum' / 'Know thyself' (from the Greek dictum 'gnothi seauton' reputedly inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi); (across the cap’s brow) 'O caput ellebore dignum' / 'O head, worthy of a dose of hellebore' (a poisonous plant). On the cap's ears: 'Auriculas asini quis non habet' /'Who does not have donkey's ears?', a phrase ascribed to Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, a Roman stoic philosopher from the 1st century AD. The Latin quote immediately above the map is from Pliny the Elder's 'Natural History' (bk. 2 ch. 72) 'Hic est mundi punctus et materia gloriae nostrae, hic sedes

Date

1590

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

chart

Original size

1,280 × 974 pixels

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