V-in-square map

It is a square map divided into three parts by a V. These are labelled after the three sons of Noah, each corresponding to one of the known continents: Japheth for Europe on the left, Shem for Asia in the middle (inside the V) and Ham for Africa on the right.

[2] Michael Andrews classifies it as of the oecumenical tripartite type, by which he means that it depicts only the habitable world known to the medievals, to the exclusion of the Antipodes.

[4] The geography of V-in-square maps is based on a single sentence in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, written in the early 7th century: "For Asia extends from south to north in the east, but Europe from the north to the west, Africa from the west to the south."

The most elaborate example of the type was that painted by the Master of Jouvenel des Ursin for a copy of Giovanni Colonna's Mare historiarum, which may have been based on a V-in-square map in a copy of Raoul de Presles [fr]'s translation of Augustine's De civitate Dei, where it could have been used to show the monstrous races as all descended from Adam.

[6] A copy of Corpus Pelagianum made at Oviedo around 1200 (now Madrid, Biblioteca nacional de España, MS 1513, but known as the Códice de Batres) contains a highly unusual square map on the back of the first folio.

A V-in-square map with all four edges correctly labelled by cardinal direction and the continents identified with Noah's sons and their climates (temperate Asia, frigid Europe and hot Africa).
A Renaissance elaboration of the V-in-square concept, in which "what had been the rectangular edges of the earth have become the frame of a view of the earth". The earth's curvature is depicted on the horizon. The positions of Europe and Africa have been curiously reversed. [ 5 ]