First Double-Hemisphere Map in an Atlas

Girolamo Ruscelli, 1561 (1574) :
Orbis Descriptio.  Excellent. 7 x 10 inches. $1400.

The Ruscelli atlas contained the text of the Geographia with 64 copperplate maps. It was a new translation into Italian with numerous remarks and extensive addenda by Ruscelli. The title-page, strangely, notes that the atlas contains 26 old and 36 new maps, but in fact there are 27 old and 37 new maps, a total of 64.

Most of the maps are enlarged copies of the maps in the edition of 1548 by Gastaldi. The following, however, are new or revised :
The Ptolemaic world map did not appear in the 1548 atlas.
The present modern world map on a double-hemisphere projection, Orbis descriptio, is new.
The so-called Zeno map, Septentrionalium partium tabula nove, is new.
Brasil, nova tavola, is new.
Toscana, nova tabula, is new.
the map of Central America (Nueva Hispania), where Yucatan is drawn as a peninsula, and not separated from the main by a strait as in the map of 1548.
the map of Britain, for the northern part of which Ruscelli has modified the type hitherto followed of the Tabula nova Hiberniae, Angliae et Scotiae in the Ptolemy of 1513

According to Nordenskiold, two important innovations were introduced by this edition into cartographical literature, or at least into the literature of atlases, viz:
Firstly, the present map, remarkable for it division of the map of the world into two hemispheres, of which the right one represents the Old World and the left the New. Nordenskiold describes this map as being extremely well designed, and engraved on copper with Italian taste and Italian skill.
The drawing of Zenos map of the Arctic Regions which had appear in Venice three years earlier, in De I commentarii del Viaggio in Persia...libri due. Et dello scoprimento dell Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrouelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico, da due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolo il K. e M. Antonio. Libro uno, con un disegno particolare di tutte le dette parte di Tramontana da lor. scoperte...in Venetia per Francesco Marcolini MDLVIII. maps of this edition of Ptolemy served as models for the famous wall-paintings executed in the Vatican during the reign of Pope Pius IV.