The New World in the Pesaro Map

Author(s): Margaret S. Dilke and A. Brancati

Source: Imago Mundi, Vol. 31 (1979), pp. 78-83
Published by: Imago Mundi, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1150729 .
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The New World in the Pesaro Map
By
MARGARET S. DILKE and A. BRANCATII
The Pesaro, or Oliveriano, World Map is a well preserved parchment Mappamundi in manuscript, measuring 1m22
x 2mO6 and housed in the Biblioteca Oliveriana, Pesaro, so named after its founder Annibale degli Abbati Olivieri
Giordani (1708-1789). It was presented to that library in 1904 by Marchese Ciro Antaldi Santinelli, librarian
1894-1907. Many years before he had loaned it to the library, and it was first shown to the public at the third
International Geographical Congress (Venice, 1881). It is undated and unsigned.
It has been suggested that the theory of cartography should find its centre in the map-maker. With human
interests, any cartographer is concerned with financial and artistic matters and (at that time particularly) with sheer
survival. His human errors of fatigue and lack of materials are only too obvious in manuscripts copied from
manuscripts or derived from hearsay. Unfortunately no one has succeeded in discovering who was the maker of the
Pesaro map; yet he is the interpreter for us of spatial patterns of his time. The Pesaro map is a working navigational
chart, not an artistic copy made for some prince. There are no elaborate wind-roses, no long. Latin captions, no
details of the interior. No latitude or longitude is shown.
One clue to the cartographer's identity might be in the fact that Antaldi presented the 'Pesaro Map' to the
Oliveriana Library along with another early manuscript world map which is known to be by Vesconte Maggiolo of
Genoa, one of the most competent members of this famous cartographic family. This latter, although it is much
inferior in detail, should also be studied more, and in association with our map. The Maggiolo maps are in a similar
style to the Pesaro map.
Although this is almost certainly the first map to label South America as Mundus Novus, it has no west coast of
America, and to confound the situation there is no China area coast, as though allowing for a possible linkage of
Asia and America. But what is the explanation for the lack of decorative border to the eastern edge such as there is
to west, north and south? Did the cartographer deliberately not finish the map, hoping or suspecting that more
information was coming to hand, and then give up for lack of it? Or has a piece been torn off for use for other
purposes or just been lost over the centuries?
The world maps with which it can be compared are those of 1500-1510 which show not only the Old World but
the discovered areas of the New. Those which survive areJuan de la Cosa's, of 1500; Cantino's, of 1502; Caverio's,
of 1502-5, which provided the material for the American section of Waldseemuller's printed map of 1507; King-
Hamy, of similar date; Kunstmann II, of 1505; Contarini-Roselli, of 1506; and Ruysch, of 1507-8, which illustrated
the Rome Ptolemy. The Pesaro and Ruysch maps are the only ones of the period to bear the words MUNDUS
NOVUS on South America. This is presumably taken from the Mundus Novus letter attributed to Vespucci (1504).
Thus the
dating
of the Pesaro
map
to
1501-2,
advocated
by
Bellio in Raccolta Colombiana IV.2 (1892), must be
wrong.
Whereas Skelton thought 1508-10 the most likely date, others have conjectured 1504-8, Pohl's dates being 1505-8.
Levillier, in America la bien llamada, had no hesitation in calling it the first Mundus Novus map, earlier than Ruysch.
Layng, in an addendum to the Ganong volume Crucial Maps..., calls it 'aberrant and puzzling' and says it deserves
more study.
The place-names are mostly in Portuguese, the few descriptions in Latin. Levillier considered it Portuguese, but
this is not a necessary conclusion since so many contemporary explorers were of that nationality. The Caribbean
islands resemble those on the la Cosa map, especially the hooked west point to Cuba. North America is very
fragmentary, shown in the form of three large territories running east-west and detached from each other,
presumably Greenland, Labrador and Nova Scotia. The most easterly name (Fig. 1) is 'Ponta de Sampaulo': 'S.
Paulo' appears in a 1527 map. Confusing near duplications are 'Cauo Larbadore' and an 'Insula de Labardor'
south of Greenland; variations on this name, derived fromJoao Fernandes 'labrador' (small landowner), appear on
a number of maps. 'Riuo de los Bacalaos', referring to cod fishing, also appears on several maps, as do features
associated with hope ('la Spera'). 'Terra de Corte', referring obviously to the Corte Real explorations, is an unusual
feature. 'Baia uentura' appears to be the intended reading ('C. de bona uentura' appears in a different place in
Cantino and the Strasbourg Ptolemy). C. (= Cabo) Fermoso' is in a different place in the 1527 map from the Pesaro
map's 'Costa Fermoza'.
We should note that Haiti (Fig. 2) appears in what might be considered the Bahama group, as in Cantino, where
it is called 'Haiti'. 'Carsemom' bears some resemblance to Cantino's 'Cajeman'; 'S. Saruador' is San Salvador or
Watling's Island; 'Abicos' is Great Abaco Island; and 'Ima' is evidently Yuma or Long Island. In the Antilles section
of the map we may note the Italian forms 'Spagnola', 'Le Virgine' and 'La Trinita', where other maps have rather
more Spanish forms. Many of the islands, however, can be closely paralleled with other maps, and a number of
them with modern names.
The biggest group of names is along the South American coast, from what may be considered part of Panama to
78
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Monte Pascual near Porto Seguro. The angle taken by the coast at 'Cauo S(anta) Croxe' is remarkably accurate. As
can be seen, there are three large estuaries dotted with small islands, the first two clearly intended for the Amazon
and the Pari. But the third, which would appear to be the Plate River, is featured as not far from Monte Pascual,
sighted by Cabral in 1500, which is actually about 1600 miles distant. The names shown on Fig. 2 include an
attempt to correct some wrongly transcribed in the Raccolta Colombiana.
It is not correct, as has been claimed,2 that all but one of the place-names of Brazil on the Pesaro map are
identical with those of Waldseemuller's printed map of 1507. The latter is very closely borrowed from that of
Caverio of Genoa (ca. 1502), with some names latinised. If we compare the Pesaro map with Caverio's, we find that
nothing corresponds until we come to the pearl-fishing and 'montana' (mountain), the two being inverted in
Caverio, after which there is a very long stretch for which there is no correspondence. Then six names from 'Santa
Maria de Gratia', well east of the Para, to 'Riuo de S. Fransesco' correspond with Caverio, after which the Pesaro
map omits four which are in Caverio. The next two correspond, but after this the Pesaro map becomes selective and
inserts only five out of the fifteen that Caverio has, two being inverted. Caverio's map continues south of Monte
Pascual.
On details of place-names,3 'serenie', 'marca', 'taribe', 'riuo das', 'riuo de la posision', 'lifama' and 'terra lana'
seem the correct readings rather than those given by Bellio in the Raccolta Colombiana; though the s of 'das' is of
unusual shape, and Bellio's 'La Farna' for 'lifama' would correspond more with other maps. 'Monte de san uicenso'
(as in Caverio) is omitted by Bellio, and several others are incorrectly expanded or contracted. Clearly 'urana' is
Uraba, and 'S. Marta' is the modem place of that name. 'S. Agostino' and 'S. Iacomo' are in reverse order in
Caverio, but otherwise there are close correspondences on the east coast as opposed to the very aberrant Pesaro
treatment of north coast names.
If the Pesaro map's own parentage is doubtful, can it be used to solve other cartographic puzzles? Further study
might help in disentanglement of the Cabot discoveries, the Vespucci disputed voyages and the Waldseemuller
antecedents.
REFERENCES
1. This article has been adapted from a paper prepared for the seventh International Conference on the History of
Cartography, Washington, D.C. 1977. Our thanks are due to Professor 0. A. W. Dilke for help with the
palaeography, and to Mr. T. P. Hadwin for the cartographic work.
2. S. E. Morison, The European Discovery of America: the Southern Voyages (New York, 1971), 310.
3. Abbreviations include 'c' = cauo (cabo), 'G' = golfo, 's. ma' - Santa Maria, 'i' or 'y' = insula.
SELEcr BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. A. Banha de Andrade, Mundos Novos do Mundo, 1 (Lisbon, 1972), 401-5.
V. Bellio, 'Notizie delle piu antiche carte geografiche . . .', in Raccolta Colombiana IV.2 (Rome, 1892).
A. Brancati, La Biblioteca e i Musei Oliveriani di Pesaro (Pesaro, 1976).
W. P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton and D. B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America (London, 1971), 62-3.
0. A. W. Dilke and Margaret S. Dilke, 'First Map to mark the New World: the Mappamundi of Pesaro', Geographical
Magazine XLIX (1977), 776-80.
W. F. Ganong, Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place Nomenclatures of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, rev. edn.
(Toronto, 1964).
A. Giraldi, Raccolta di carte e documenti esposti ... nel V centenario delta nascita di Amerigo Vespucci (Florence, 1954), Tav.
12.
H. Harrisse, Dicouverte et evolution cartographique de Terre Neuve (Paris-London, 1900), 53-5 and P1.IV.
R. Levillier, America la bien lRamada (Buenos Aires, n.d. [19481), ii. 17-19.
S. E. Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (New York, 1971), and The Southern Voyages (New
York, 1974), indices s.v. Maps, Oliveriana.
F. J. Pohl, 'The Pesaro Map (1505)', Imago Mundi VII (1950), 82-3.
Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica I, ed. A. Cortesio and A. Teixeira da Mota (Lisbon, 1960).
E. L. Stevenson, Maps illustrating Early Discovery and Exploration in America (New Brunswick, 1903).
E. L. Stevenson, Marine World Chart of Nicolo de Canerio (= Caverio) Januensis (New York, 1908).
Figures referred to in this article appear on pp. 80-83.
79
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