This essay re-examines the connections between geography, print and the Renaissance. Starting with an historiographical survey of the ways in which these categories have previously been connected, the essay points to an explanatory lacuna in the accepted view. It is widely agreed that geographical writing responded remarkably slowly to the changing European knowledge of the globe initiated during “the age of discovery”, major transformation away from ancient and medieval patterns of global description only coming a century after Columbus. Yet the nature of this transformation has never been depicted, nor has any explanation of its timing or intellectual origins been offered. In filling this gap, this paper also seeks to offer new insights into the connections between geography and Renaissance intellectual life.