The Cantino planisphere is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese discoveries in the east and west. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for the Duke of Ferrara, who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502. The map is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast; in 1500 explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral had correctly conjectured that this was part of a continent previously unknown to Europeans.

Reference

• Miles Harvey, The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime. New York : Random House, 2000. ISBN 0767908260, p. 145. (Also ISBN 0375501517).