Ruggieri and Martini’s Atlases of China: A Preliminary Comparative Analysis

During their missionary work Jesuits made several maps of China and its provinces. The reasons are well-known: to have a better knowlege of the country they were labouring, and to show the progress of the Mission in China to the European readers. Ruggieri was the first Jesuit to prepare a map of China and its provinces, nevertheless it remained in manuscript form. Several years later another Italian Jesuit Martino Martini published a whole map of China: the Novus Atlas Sinensis. This paper tries to retrace the steps from Ruggieri to Martini’s Atlas, and at the same time it analyzes the connections between these two geographical works.