Slide #307
TITLE: Caveri World Map
DATE: 1504-05
AUTHOR: Nicolo Caveri [Canerio]
DESCRIPTION: The sea-faring city of Genoa, Columbus's birthplace, returns
to center stage with this major cartographic contribution. The Genoese mapmaker,
Nicolo Caveri, referred to by historians as "Nicolay Canerio"
until recently when his signature on this map was re-interpreted, has a
place in history with this production. The Portuguese toponymy employed
throughout shows that Caveri had access to what the historian Henry Harrisse
referred to as Lusitanio-Germanic prototypes. Its strong likeness
to the Cantino planisphere (Slide #309) indicates
that Caveri either used the Cantino chart or the two maps had very similar
sources.
This important map, discovered in the 19th century in the Archives du
.Service hydrographique de la Marine at Paris, represents the entire
world as known in 1502-1504, and measures 46 X 90 inches (1150 X 2250 mm).
This great planisphere bridges the medieval and Renaissance worlds, as dramatized
by the circular mappamundi [world map] at its center (near the Equator
on the continent of Africa). Radiating out from the nucleus are rhumb lines
that connect with a circle of compass roses. Rhumbs are also projected from
these, forming a network covering the chart. Outside this circle six further
points of intersection with compass roses inscribe yet another, though incomplete,
concentric circle. This mesh of loxodromic lines has its origin in the late
thirteenth century with the oldest of surviving sea charts.
If the mappamundi in the middle is a reference to the past, the latitude
scale in the left margin is an innovation of great significance for future
mapmaking. Since voyages across the seas had become a possibility, determining
latitude accurately became essential to record compass directions. With
this information navigators could return directly to home port and revisit
newly discovered lands. Dead reckoning and a few latitude readings may have
brought Columbus to America initially, but for regular travel more scientific
methods were required.
The fact that it is a Portuguese map is undisputed, however, it is undated,
but signed as follows: Opus Nicolay de Caveri Januensis: The work
of Nicolas de Caveri, Genoese. That is, the Caveri chartwas constructed
(or only copied) by a Genoese cartographer, most probably in Portugal; as
if he had executed his work in Italy, there would have been no reason for
inscribing the legends in the Portuguese language, and he would have translated
them into Italian. On this point we must give the precise text of the two
leading legends:
Over the West Indies
The Antillies of the King of Castile, discovered by Collonbo, Genoese [this
word is not in Cantino] Admiral, which islands were discovered by command
of the very high and very powerful prince the King Dom Fernando, King of
Castile.
On the Brazilian Coast
The True Cross, so called, which was discovered by Pedro Alvarez Cabral,
gentleman of the household of the King of Portugal; and he discovered it
in navigating as chief captain of fourteen ships which the said King was
sending to Calicut, and, in following his route, he found that land, which
is believed to be a continent, where are many men endowed with reason, and
men and women who go naked, as brought into the world. They are rather white
than dark, with smooth hair. The said land was discovered in the year [one
thousand] five hundred.
The configurations and nomenclature, everywhere in this chart, are those
of the Cantino map, but they do not proceed from the latter, as the profiles
exhibit differences, and there are additional names indicating another prototype
of a later date.
Caveri and the Cantino map show similar contours for most parts of the world,
although Caveri's mapping of the Red Sea is less accurate. In South America,
particularly on the Brazilian coast. Caveri includes new place-names reported
by two Portuguese expeditions. The first, in 1501-02, included Amerigo Vespucci;
the second, commanded by Fernando de Noronha in 1503-04, attempted to establish
a trading post in Rio de Janeiro Bay. Since Caveri had information from
these voyages, the map probably dates from 1505. In North America he presents
a new delineation of the Gulf of Mexico, with the peninsulas representing
Yucatan and Florida. Although the relationships of Cuba, Yucatan and Florida
are only partly correct, Caveri's concept of the Gulf region was widely
used for the next twenty years.
While the great Spanish planisphere by Juan de La Cosa (Slide
#308) fell into virtual oblivion until its modern rediscovery, Caveri's
chart was responsible for a continuous series of derivatives over the next
twenty-five years, principally the 1507 twelve-sheet printed world map of
Waldseemüller (Slide #312). These maps served
to present the image of the New World to Europeans until news of further
explorations of Ayllon, Verrazzano, and Gomez corrected and helped to complete
the cartography of North America
As mentioned, a very important feature in the Caveri map is a regular scale
of latitudes. According to that scale, the continental region in the northwest,
first delineated in Cantino, extends here from 50° to 20° north
latitude; showing a prolongation of that region southward of eighteen degrees,
less, however, than in Schöner's first globes, and with new profiles.
As on this prolongation the Nuremberg geographer has inscribed the word
Parias, and as his prototype was certainly very much like Caveri's,
we are inclined to believe that the prolongation was originally intended
to represent the countries discovered by Columbus during his third voyage;
the first mention of which appeared in print on the loth of April, 1504,
in the Libretto de tutta la Nauigatione de Re de Spagna, but was
known in Italy as early as the autumn of 1501, when Angelo Trivigiano sent
his account to Domenico Malipiero.
In the nomenclature on the northwestern continent, we see for the first
time the name Lago del ladro, which appears in Ruysch as Lago del oro, and
in Waldseemüller as larro dellodro; but was probably inscribed on the
prototype, Lago del ladro, for Lago del ladron [The Lake of
the Thief], and not Lago del oro [The Lake of Gold].
Two other names are spelt differently, but not more intelligibly. Where
the Cantino chart displays: G: do lurcar, and C. do mortinbo, Caveri
inscribes: Gorffo de lineor, and Cauo de mertineo. Finally, the preposition
"of," which in Cantino is written "do," as in Portuguese,
appears in Caveri as " de," in the Spanish form, while that northwestern
continent exhibits in the latter, at both ends, the standard of Castile
and Leon; which indicates in the opinion of the cartographer, Spanish possessions,
and perhaps also Spanish discoveries or explorations.
The southern continent extends from 12 to 35 degrees south latitude, which
is about ten degrees more than in the Cantino planisphere. The nomenclature
for the north coast or Brazil is as in the latter; but on the eastern seaboard,
the list comprises, in addition to the names in Cantino, those of Kunstmann
Nos. 2 and 3, with the addition of Porto de Sto Sebastiano, and
Alapago (pagus) de Sam Paullo, both of which make here their first appearance.
According to the scale inscribed by Caveri, thirty-five degrees (from 20°
to 55° North latitude)of that continental region were then known; and,
what is more remarkable, he places at both extremities the standard of Castile
and Leon.
Do those flags indicate Spanish discoveries, or only Spanish possessions
? They may mean both, as we know from the despatch sent by Pedro de Ayala
to Ferdinand and Isabella, giving an account of Cabot's discoveries in 1497,
that the Spanish Ambassador to the Court of Henry VII, actually stated that
the lands found by Cabot formed part of the transatlantic dominions of the
Crown of Castile. The envoy of the Republic of Venice, when relating the
discoveries just accomplished by Gaspar Corte-Real (1501), also expressed
the opinion that the country discovered by the latter was connected with
the Spanish possessions in the New World. If to those surmises, which must
have been current then, we add the clauses of the Treaty of Tordesillas,
which Portugal was the first to invoke, so as to maintain her rights to
Newfoundland and Brazil, the appearance of Spanish flags on a western continent
appears quite natural, even in a Portuguese map.
Newfoundland presents the configuration already seen in Cantino, and is
placed in the same erroneous longitude, but bears no inscriptions whatever.
Nor is the Line of Demarcation depicted.
The Portuguese legends concerning the discoveries of the Land of the True
Cross and of the Antillies are as in Cantino, but Caveri takes care to recall
the action of his countrymen by adding to the map: descoberta por collonbo
ienoeize; and the cross of St. George to the Canarian island of Lansarotto.
The latter, however, is a peculiarity already existing, not only in the
celebrated Catalan chart of 1375 (Slide #235), but
also in the Majorcan mappamundi, which bears the inscription: Hoc opus
fecit angelino Dulcert ano M°cCc°XXXVIIIJ de mense augusti in ciuitate
maioricarum.
The Caveri map constitutes the earliest specimen known of Harrisse's Fourth
Type (see Slide #309, Cantino, or Harrisse's Discovery
of North America for a discussion of the five types of the Lusitano-Germanic
Group). The calligraphy is representative of the beginning of the sixteenth
century; and the prototype map or the model copied by Caveri was certainly
Lusitanian, as is shown by the identical resemblance of the configurations
and nomenclature in his map with those in the Cantino chart, which was made
at Lisbon in 1502; by the leading legends, which are in the Portuguese language;
and by the fact that we read on the Brazilian coast: The Bay of All Saints,
instead of The Abbey of All Saints.
In Wroth's discussion of the northern discoveries as an element of the Verrazzano
story, he states that the Cantino and Caveri maps take a place of great
significance for many reasons, good and bad. One of their common features
is their location of Newfoundland as an island "cast far away into
the sea" to the east or northeast of the "American" landmass
which they both portray for the first time. It is now generally agreed that
the maker of the Cantino map did not intend to represent the Newfoundland-Labrador
landmass as an island, but as the known eastern extension of a supposed
continental land not definitely located. Not all of the the contemporaries
of the Cantino planisphere interpreted his meaning in this way. The Newfoundland-Labrador
land is shown unmistakably as an island in the Lusitano-Germanic Group,
including Caveri. A significant point to be kept in mind in the discussion
of the maps of Cantino and Caveri, and their chief derivative, the Waldseemüller
world map of 1507, is that, whether or not they regarded Newfoundland as
an island, they showed Verrazzano and his contemporaries no connection of
solid land between Newfoundland and the Florida landmass portrayed on them.
This wide expanse of ocean offered unimpeded passage to an explorer seeking
a route to China.
Also on these two similar maps, it is to be observed that the two mapmakers
intended to convey a belief that the two continents of North and South America
formed a grand division of the earth, separated as they were from both Europe
and Asia. This belief is graphically portrayed in the Caveri map where open
water borders the western shore of the North American continent. While not
shown on the Cantino chart, this concept is inferred by the fact that the
chart only display 257 degrees of the earth's 360 degrees and that the eastern
coast of Asia is bordered by open water, leaving the remaining 103 degrees
to speculation.
Of all the types of the Lusitano-Germanic cartography, that which
has exercised the greatest influence in Central Europe is the one which
was derived from the prototype copied by Caveri. A map resembling the latter
in most respects, found its way into Germany at an early date; for we find
its chief configurations in globes which were constructed during the first
ten years of the sixteenth century. The oldest of these is represented by
the Hauslab Gores (a set of 12 globe gores engraved on wood).
Like the Cantino planisphere, the Caveri map also displays castlelated cities
in Europe and Africa. In addition, there is a large drawing of a castlelated
city in the Middle East [Jerusalem, the Holy Land] along with a tower and
castle in Saudi Arabia. There are colorfull parrots shown in South America
and a giraffe and elephant placed in Africa.
LOCATION: Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
REFERENCES:
Crone, G.R., Maps and their Makers, p.88
*Harrisse, H., The Discovery of north America, pp. 77, 305-306, 428-430.
*Nebenzahl, K, Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries, p. 40.
*Wroth, L. C., The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, pp.45-46, no. 3
*illustrated