Martin Waldseemüller
Martin Waldseemüller, Latinized Martinus Ilacominus or Hylacomilus (Wolfenweiler, near Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, c. 1470 - Saint-Dié -des-Vosges, c. March 16, 1520) was a Franco-German geographer and cartographer, the first with Mathias Ringmann to use the name of America, in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, on a map published in 1507, Universalis Cosmographia, which also presented America separated from Asia for the first time.
Biography
Born in Wolfenweiler, he moved with his family to Freiburg im Breisgau (his mother was from Radolfzell, where Martin was thought to have been born). In 1490 he appears enrolled at the University of Freiburg, although there is no record of the studies he attended. Still, he must have studied geography and mathematics as well as cosmography. There he came into contact with Mathias Ringmann, with whom he moved to the collegiate church of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, in the heart of the Vosges, in the Duchy of Lorraine. The monastery was a center of the humanist movement, in whose Gymnasium (secondary level school) he worked as a teacher and cartographer. The canon in Saint-Dié, there he died around 1520.
Work
Universalis Cosmographia
His most important work is the Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes which he published in 1507 together with a small terrestrial globe printed on spindles with which the sphere could be built, accompanied by a geographical treatise called Cosmographiae Introductio, whose writing is usually attributed to Ringmann. Using earlier maps, notably Caverio's planisphere and an unsurviving Henricus Martellus planisphere, the map consisted of 12 woodcut panels to form a mural and was produced in a large print run, distributing more than a thousand copies. For the first time America appeared unequivocally separated from Asia and surrounded by water. A strait divided the continent in its central part; however, in the upper part of the map, in a second, smaller-scale representation of the Earth divided into two hemispheres, next to the portraits of Ptolemy and Vespucci, the strait disappeared making America a united continent. The treatise also contained the Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespuccio (Americi Vespucii navigationes Quattuor), apparently an account of the voyages of the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, although its authenticity has been questioned. doubt, and in all three works the name of America applied to the lands that had just been explored appeared for the first time, considering Américo Vespucci as its discoverer. Lost for a long time, in 1901 the cartography scholar Joseph Fischer found the only surviving copy in Wolfegg Castle, in Upper Swabia, which was acquired in 2001 by the United States Library of Congress for $10 million.
Globe
The globe possibly published together with the treaty itself, since it alludes to it in its introduction, consisted of a sheet with a planisphere that could be cut out in the form of spindles or segments in order to compose a small sphere with them. It also includes the name America as the name of the new continent, but the arrangement of the «occeanus occidental» to the west of America makes its location confusing.
Five copies of it are preserved, all of them intact. The first of these sheets to be discovered, in 1871, is currently in the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota. Another, found inside a Ptolemaic atlas, is in Munich at the Bavarian National Library. A third copy was discovered in 1992, bound in an edition of Aristotle's works in the Offenburg public library. The fourth surviving copy came to light in 2003 after its owner read an article about Waldseemüller's map in the newspaper. It was auctioned at Charles Frodsham & Co. for $1,002,267, the highest price paid for a one-sheet map. The last to appear, with slight variations on those previously known, was presented in July 2012. It was located in the library of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, which has published a digital version.
Terre Nove
From 1507 to 1513 he worked on the preparation of a new Latin edition of Ptolemy's Geographia. While Mathias Ringmann was in charge of the amendments to the text, he took care of drawing twenty new maps to form with them a true atlas, in one of which, entitled Tabule Terre Nove, he rectified the attribution of the discovery to Américo Vespucci. Waldseemüller no longer used the name "America", but had replaced it with "Terra Incognita", and in an explanatory note he added that "this land and the adjacent islands were discovered by the Genoese Columbus, by order of the King of Castile". As in the small map of 1507, the continent was presented as united and independent of Asia, but made some corrections in the lines of the tropics.
Orbis Typus Universalis
Attached to Ptolemy's atlas published in Strasbourg in 1513, Waldseemüller published a new planisphere in the style of nautical or portolan charts, which arose in Europe in the 17th century XIII: Orbis typus universalis iuxta hydrographorum traditionem, with notable differences from the one published in 1507, which suggests that it could have been drawn earlier, around 1505-1506. The introduction to the atlas indicates that the information for the new lands comes from the admiral, probably alluding to Christopher Columbus. It is also the first printed nautical chart, preceding his Carta Marina Navigatoria of 1516 by 3 years.
Greenland is here a peninsula of Europe, the Antilles are only represented by three islands: Isabella (Cuba), Spagnola (Hispaniola) and a third without legend, and of South America, only the northeast coast is shown, up to Alta pago de S. Paulo. However, South Asia, India and Sri Lanka are represented in a more modern way than in the 1507 planisphere, better preserving their proportions.
Sea Charter of 1516
The Carta Marina of 1516 marks a notable change from their previous conceptions. He breaks with the Ptolemaic tradition and begins to take Caverio's planisphere as a model. He assigns the Discovery of America to Christopher Columbus instead of Vespucci, eliminates the name of America for the New World and, following the Columbian theses, seems to doubt that it is really a differentiated continent, placing in North America an inscription that says "Terra de Cuba-Asie Partis", returning to the peninsular conception of the island of Cuba and to the division of the continent by an interoceanic passage, perhaps influenced by the greater Ptolemaic orthodoxy of the Italian cartographers or by the lack of new reports from the Portuguese sailors.