Giovanni Matteo Contarini (1452-1507) was a cartographer and likely a member of a prominent Venetian family.

[1][2] In 1506, Contarini created a world map that Francesco Rosselli later engraved.

The inscription, placed to the west of this land said: The world and all its seas on a plane map, Europe, Lybia [i.e., Africa], Asia, and the Antipodes, the poles and zones and sites of places, the parallels for the climes of the mighty globe, lo!

Giovanni Matteo Contarini, famed in the Ptolemæan art, has compiled and marked it out.

Stay, traveller, and behold new nations and a new-found world.