Three-section orbs

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R. Sale wrote:

Certainly seems that there were a fair number of possible variations that used a three-section format to represent the earth.

I'd say that it is not the Earth itself. The three-section orb often represented not the Earth, but the World. As MarcoP pointed: "It clearly represents the creation of the world, as in the above mentioned Brunetto Latin ms You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The creator, as in the BNF ms, is represented by Christ Pantocrator." And Nablator wrote: "BNF Fr. 568, Livre du Trésor, 13th century. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. God is holding the world-orb. Obviously, Air is above, with Sun and Moon. Earth and Water below, with assorted animals." In d'Oresme'sTraité de la sphère ; Aristote, Du ciel et du monde (including You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), Gautier de Metz's Image du Monde (Harley 334) one can see it even from the titles. Le Miroir historial, f16v (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) also depicts the Creation of the World with the same inverted T-O map, but without any pictures in it.
The fragment of the f16v(BNF 308):

Thus, a three-section orb is the "triplex mundus" (the threefold World). I think the matter is that some saw this threefold world as the world of living creatures, i. e., the Earth with divisions: classical - sky, earth, water; by land masses - Europe, Asia, Africa, etc.; another - in philosophical sense: body, soul, sirit; or in theosophical - God, universe, human; Platonic - phisical, metaphisical and logical elements of the world; Hermetic (similarly to Platonic) - elementary, celestial and intellectual components; Kircher's division - sublunar, celestial and supecelestial worlds, and so on.

As I understand, it depends on that what a person knows and how interprets the world. It seems that, in general, the main aim is showing the division by three to reflect the principle of triplicity of the World,  it doesn't matter whether a "T-O" is inverted or not, if it represents the world, only pictures in it can show how /from which angle a person (an artist) considers the world. I gave a link You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to the good collection of Christian icons "Salvator mundi", on their examples we can see that different artists depicted the orb of the world differently (like the Earth, the Solar system, a transparent sphere, etc.), but we know that it is the World (Salvator Mundi - the Savior of the World), after all.