“MISS AMERICA AND HER SISTERS”
AT THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE MAP
Detail of plate 9, Sebastian Münster’s Typus Cosmographicus Universalis from Johann Huttich and Simon Grynaeus’s Novus Orbis Regionum ac Insularum veteribus
incognitarum … (Basel: Io. Hervagium, 1537; 1st ed. 1532). Image courtesy of The American Geographical Society Library (E141 .N933 1537).
The discovery of America inspired an artistic boom in the
four continents—Africa, Asia, Europe, and America—went hand
representation of the four continents. The New World, also known
in hand with the idea of woman as nature, literalizing the symbolic
as the Fourth Part of the world, was named after the Italian explorer
representation of woman as territory and allowing for an aesthetic
Amerigo Vespucci, as Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1470–1520)
exploration of the female body as both beautiful and sublime.”
explained in his Cosmographiae Introductio that accompanied his
One of the earliest artistic representations of the four continents
1507 mappamundi:
on a map appears in Sebastian Münster (1488–1552)’s mappamundi
I do not see what right anyone would have to object to calling
included in Johann Huttich and Simon Grynaeus’s Novus Orbis
this part after Americus, who discovered it and who is a man
Regionum ac Insularum veteribus incognitarum, first printed in Basel
of intelligence, [and so to name it] Amerige, that is, the Land
in 1532 (plate 9). At the margins, the four corners are covered with
of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their
woodcuts attributed to the German Renaissance artist Hans Holbein
names from women.
the Younger (ca. 1497–1543). Although they are not labeled, each
Paradoxically, despite its male name, America, as well as her three
corner is devoted to one continent: Africa (upper left) is represented
“elder” sisters, were mostly represented through female figures. That
by a terrifying elephant, big snakes, and two lip-plated Africans;
led Clare Le Corbeiller to title an article focused on the iconography
Asia (upper right) by the Indian spice plants clove, musk, and pepper
of the four continents as “Miss America and her sisters,” which
traded through Calicut, and some natives carrying bow and arrow
is now echoed here. In the words of Charmaine A. Nelson, “The
and dressed with feathers (both the weapons and feathers were
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