# Solving the Paradoxes of North America's East Coast in Juan Vespucci's Planisphere of 1526

Luis A. Robles Macías

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## To cite this version:

Luis A. Robles Macías. Solving the Paradoxes of North America's East Coast in Juan Vespucci's Planisphere of 1526. The Portolan, 2025, 122, pp.16-27. hal-04999669

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Page 7

# Histories of Cartography:
A History

by Matthew H. Edney

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PURPOSE OF THE WASHINGTON MAP SOCIETY

"The purpose of the Washington Map Society is to support and promote map collecting, cartography, and the study of cartographic history."

## In This Issue

Page 4

WMS Program & Meetings
by Ronald Grim

Page 7

Histories of Cartography: A History
by Matthew H. Edney

Page 16

Solving the Paradoxes of North America's East Coast in Juan Vespucci's Planisphere of 1526
by Luis A. Robles

Page 28

Jerusalem's Sacred Places and the Stations of the Cross
by Martin van Brauman

Page 41

Book Reviews

Page 50

Recent Publications
by Louis Miller

https://WashMapSociety.org

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# The Washington Map Society

## OFFICERS, 2024–2025

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## OTHER DIRECTORS 2024–2025

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*The Portolan* (ISSN 1096-1925) is published three times per year by the Washington Map Society. The Society is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. All donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Annual print subscription rates: US: $65 (1st yr student rate $25); Canada $70; All other countries: $85; Single Copy to U.S: $14.00; Canada $17; Other countries: $21. Annual digital subscription rates: New member $25 first year; then $40. All payments are to be made in U.S. currency. Internet Address: https://WashMapSociety.org. Address all editorial correspondence to the Editor. Viewpoints of the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Society.

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# Contents – The Portolan – Issue 122 – Spring 2025

<table><tr><td>Letter from the President Jeff Katz</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Ristow Prize Competition 2025</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Washington Map Society Meetings Program, Spring 2025 Ron Grim</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Exhibitions and Meetings Tom Sander</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Histories of Cartography: A History Matthew H. Edney</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Solving the Paradoxes of North America's East Coast in Juan Vespucci's Planisphere of 1526 Luis A. Robles Macías</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Guidelines for Main Article Submissions to The Portolan</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>Jerusalem's Sacred Places and the Stations of the Cross Martin van Brauman</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>Book Reviews: Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America's Revolutionary Leadership Patrick Leonard</td><td>41</td></tr><tr><td>Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America William C. Wooldridge</td><td>42</td></tr><tr><td>Frames that Speak: Cartouches on Early Modern Maps Christine M. Petto</td><td>44</td></tr><tr><td>The Book of Marvels: A Medieval Guide to the Globe Evelyn Edson</td><td>46</td></tr><tr><td>Index to our Advertisers</td><td>45</td></tr><tr><td>Map Site Viewing Sites</td><td>47</td></tr><tr><td>Bronson Edwards (Bron) Percival (1948–2024) Tom Sander</td><td>48</td></tr><tr><td>Cartographic Notes Tom Sander</td><td>49</td></tr><tr><td>Recent Publications Louis Miller</td><td>50</td></tr></table>

# From the Editor

In a world which seems to be full of instability and uncertainty I, like so many others, am always grateful for the comfort to be found in collecting, studying and writing about maps. It is worth remembering of course that the maps we all treasure and enjoy reading about, here in *The Portolan* and elsewhere, are themselves accounts of a world which has always been full of instability and uncertainty. As such, nothing has really changed, today we just have more accurate maps.

That said, I am delighted to invite you to the Spring 2025 edition of *The Portolan*. In this edition we have a good deal to read and enjoy, ranging from an excellent article by Matthew Edney in which he introduces some essential reading material which will surely benefit us all. Luis Alex Robles looks to solve the Paradoxes of North America's East Coast in Juan Vespucci's Planisphere of 1526 and Martin van Brauman takes a look at ancient maps of Jerusalem as he traces the Stations of the Cross. Last but not least we are delighted to include our usual round of book reviews, meetings program, exhibitions and review of the latest literature. Turn off the News and enjoy *The Portolan!*

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# Solving the Paradoxes of North America's East Coast in Juan Vespucci's Planisphere of 1526

by Luis A. Robles Macías

## INTRODUCTION

Juan Vespucci was born in Florence in 1487 and emigrated to Seville around 1507 to join his famous uncle Amerigo, pilot major of the Casa de la Contratación de las Indias. Following his uncle's death in 1512, Juan was appointed royal pilot at the Casa and entrusted, jointly with the new pilot major, with updating and copying the Padrón Real (the Spanish repository of geographical information about the Indies). Thirteen years later, in 1525, Vespucci was fired from the Casa, most likely because he refused to join an expedition to the Spice Islands.¹ By then, the institution had two other mapmakers on its payroll: Diogo Ribeiro and Nuño García. Pilot major Sebastian Cabot, who in theory should have continued to update the Padrón Real, was busy with the preparation of a long expedition that sailed out in 1526. Responsibility for the Padrón thus became unclear until it was assigned to Hernando Colón in 1527.

In 1526, Vespucci authored a nautical-style planisphere i.e. a world map drawn by hand according to the aesthetics and conventions of medieval portolan charts, with geographical details largely confined to coastal and maritime regions, toponyms written perpendicularly to the coast

and a network of rhumb lines. Next to a prominent healdic emblem with the arms of Emperor Charles V, the map's signature says "Juan vespuchi piloto de sus magestades me fezit en seuilla año de 1526", i.e. Juan Vespucci, Their Majesties' pilot, made me in Seville in the year 1526.

This planisphere was brought to light in 1914 and is currently preserved at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York [Figure 1]. Its study was long hampered by the unavailability of photographic reproductions.² The first full-size facsimile of the map was at last published in the 1990s, accompanied by a general description authored by Ángel Paladini.³

Numerous historians, such as William P. Cumming and Louis De Vorsey, have studied the depiction of North America in Vespucci's planisphere and what it reveals about the early European exploration of the east coast of today's United States.⁴ In the process, three paradoxes have been raised:

1. The map is dated 1526 but does not include the results of Estevan Gomes's trip to the region in 1525, which however appear in near-contemporary Spanish maps.

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Juan Vespucci's planisphere. Hispanic Society Museum and Library, K42. Four sheets of parchment measuring 85 x 262 cm overall. Image courtesy of the HSML.</figcaption></figure>
2. Vespucci's planisphere shows knowledge of an exploration commissioned by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1525 that was ignored by all other Spanish mapmakers; a fact that has led past scholars to wonder about the "process still undocumented" by which the Florentine had managed to lay his hands on this recent geographical information.⁵

3. Certain authors have seen in Vespucci's map traces of a trip made in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazano to North America for France, which is surprising because at the time France was at war with Spain.

Resolving these three paradoxes using only Vespucci's planisphere and contemporary maps has proven impossible. As such it was decided that a closer look at Vespucci's life and movements may point to answers to the questions raised, which as we shall see, it did. By meticulously reconstructing his activities during the years 1525-26 using overlooked and, in some cases, unpublished archival documents, it was possible to clarify his movements between Europe and the Caribbean. This provided a clearer understanding of the explorer reports he had access to, ultimately helping to explain the apparent paradoxes in his planisphere.

## JUAN VESPUCCI'S WHEREABOUTS IN 1525-26

At the time of his dismissal from the Casa de la Contratación, in March 1525, Vespucci was already busy with the preparation of a commercial trip to Cubagua, a small island off the coast of today's Venezuela with a booming economy due to its pearl fisheries.⁶ He owned a ship called *Santa Cruz* and had hired a Sevillian seaman, Domingo de Vaena, to be its *maestre* (shipmaster).⁷

The *Santa Cruz* was inspected by the *visitadores* of the Casa de la Contratación, as was the norm for all ships bound for the Indies, but the ship's detailed file has been lost, as is unfortunately the case for the overwhelming majority of the Casa's ship registers from the 1520s.⁸ What remains at the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) is an extremely succinct note that only says that the ship was indeed inspected in 1525.⁹ The date of departure was surely after 23 March, as on that day shipmaster Vaena gave power of attorney in Seville to one of his sailors.¹⁰

One major convoy of merchant ships bound for the Indies is known to have sailed within that period from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the port at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. The Casa de la Contratación's records of incoming royal orders and letters, which normally provide information about such convoys, have disappeared from the AGI for the period January 1524-June 1525, but brief

excerpts published in 1923 note that "This year [1525] a fleet of 22 naos and caravels left for the Indies around April".¹¹ A private letter penned shortly after the facts by Peter Martyr, chronicler and member of the Council of the Indies, reported that "a fleet of 24 ships sailed on 27 April" with Martyr's envoy Juan de Mendiguren aboard.¹² Martyr later provided more details in his *Decades*, indicating that the fleet sailed from Sanlúcar on 3 May 1525, called in at Gomera on 13 May and was planning to sail from there on 17 May.¹³ He also explicitly pointed out the reason for forming the convoy: French pirates.

The first Spanish convoy to the Indies had been arranged in 1522, when eight ships loaded with cargo were detained in Sanlúcar until they could be escorted by two warships.¹⁴ In October 1526 solitary sailing to the Indies would be prohibited for good, following the capture by French corsairs off Andalusia of a Spanish pilot with his nautical chart, which raised fears that the French would move to intercept incoming traffic from the Indies. All ships were then ordered to form convoys both for the outward and the return trips.¹⁵ Between 1522 and 1526, periods of compulsory convoying alternated with others during which ships could still travel solo. The spring of 1525 must have been one of the periods where convoys were enforced; therefore Juan Vespucci was forced to wait with his ship in Sanlúcar de Barrameda until a large fleet was assembled.

By 13 July 1525, the *Santa Cruz* had already crossed the Ocean and was ashore in Cubagua given that on that day Vespucci paid the *almojarifazgo* import tax on his ship's cargo.¹⁶ Thereafter, Vespucci sailed to the continental coast nearby, which was called Tierra Firme by the Spanish, to trade with the locals. From there, he set sail for Santo Domingo, in Hispaniola, where he arrived shortly before 15 October 1525, which is the date on which he paid the *quinto* tax on his gold.¹⁷ The Florentine was still in Santo Domingo on 7 November, when he paid the *quinto* tax on pearls.¹⁸

Juan Vespucci was back in Seville by 14 June 1526, when he signed a notary act there.¹⁹ Three months later, on 17 September, Florentine merchant Francesco Gucci reported from Granada, where the Court was staying, that "Vespucci, our Florentine, is back from the Indies".²⁰

It is unlikely Vespucci returned to Seville before 30 January 1526 because on that date Martín Méndez, one of his business partners, signed a contract transferring his investment in Vespucci's trip to other merchants, and the contract's language implies that the trip's outcome was not known yet.²¹ Therefore, Vespucci arrived in Seville between February and early June and, based on the 1 ½ to 2 ½ months that the trip typically lasted,²² he must have left Santo Domingo between December 1525 and April 1526.
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** Author's reconstruction of Juan Vespucci's Santa Cruz itinerary in the Caribbean in 1525.</figcaption></figure>

Vespucci's ship, however, never returned or at least there is no trace of it in the Casa's registros de venida, i.e. the reports of inspections of ships returned from the indies. It is definitely possible for Vespucci to have sold the Santa Cruz in Hispaniola as he did not need a ship to carry the small weight of gold and pearls he had amassed in the Caribbean, and by selling the vessel he would have saved the crew's salaries for the return trip. Shipmasters sailing from Seville for the Indies were often explicitly authorized by the owners to sell their ships at destination.²³ Ship demand seems to have been high when Vespucci was there, for local trade and for territorial expansion.

## LUCAS VÁZQUEZ DE AYLLÓN'S LAND

When Vespucci was in Hispaniola, licenciado Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón was organizing a settlement expedition to the eastern coast of North America with several hundred passengers and crew members. This project followed the successful return in August 1525 of two caravels led by Pedro de Quexo. These small and fast ships had explored, at Ayllón's expense, the coast north of River Jordan (possibly in today's South Carolina).²⁴ Aside from these two caravels, Ayllón already possessed another ship since at least 1524, and he bought a fourth one from the Crown in October 1525.²⁵ A fifth ship, a caravel, was added to Ayllón's fleet at an unknown date. A sixth one, another caravel bought in Seville, was expected to arrive by end of December 1525 with artillery for the entire fleet

but it never showed up.²⁶ After being delayed by a lawsuit, the licenciado sailed from Puerto Plata in July 1526 with only five ships, without waiting for the Sevillian caravel.²⁷ Could Vespucci's Santa Cruz be the caravel purchased by Ayllón at an uncertain date? One cannot answer conclusively without additional evidence but it certainly is possible.

Even if Vespucci's direct interaction with Ayllón cannot be substantiated, the Florentine cannot have been unaware of Ayllón's project, for it mobilized a substantial share of Hispaniola's people and resources. It is thus all too natural for Vespucci's 1526 planisphere to include a "tierra nueva de Ayllón [Ayllón's new land]" north of Florida as well as several toponyms coined by Pedro de Quexo along that coast [see Figure 3]. The reconstruction of Vespucci's itinerary enabled by hitherto ignored documents now provides a clear answer to how he managed to lay his hands on this geographical information.

Another conclusion relevant for historians of the early European exploration of the U.S. east coast is that the geography depicted in Vespucci's map is confirmed to correspond to the state of knowledge immediately before Ayllón's expedition, based solely on Quexo's exploration, and not as an eyewitness but from second-hand accounts. When Ayllón's colonists made landfall, in July 1526, Vespucci was already back in Seville. This fact limits the reliability of Vespucci's planisphere for the identification of Quexo's toponyms with today's coastal features. On
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3.** The t[ier]ra nueua de ayllon northeast of Florida in Juan Vespucci's planisphere of 1526. Facsimile photographed by the author.</figcaption></figure>

the other hand, it gives credence to the observation made by Louis De Vorsey that the eastern end of Ayllón's Land in Vespucci's map lies north-south with Hispaniola so as to be consistent with the location indicated in Ayllón's royal charter of 1523.²⁸ Quexo and Ayllón wanted to avoid any doubt that their exploration would stay well within the limits of the Castilian hemisphere (as defined in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494), not trespassing into Portuguese territories.

After Vespucci, the following mention of Ayllón's Land in extant maps occurs timidly in the unsigned 1527 planisphere preserved in Weimar (usually attributed to Diogo Ribeiro), with just a toponym written perpendicularly

to the coast. It later features more prominently, including many toponyms and a note about Ayllón's death, in the two planispheres signed by Ribeiro in 1529 now in Weimar and the Vatican.²⁹

## ESTEVAN GOMES'S LAND AND THE CASTIGLIONE PLANISPHERE

Estevan Gomes (Portugal, ca.1484-1538) was appointed royal pilot at the Casa de la Contratación in 1518. After a tumultuous participation in Magellan's expedition, he sailed under Spanish banners from Corunna on 24 September 1524 with a single ship to search for a north-west passage to the Pacific Ocean. He naturally failed to
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 4.** Florida and Estevan Gomes's Land in the Castiglione planisphere. Image courtesy of the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria.</figcaption></figure>

find a strait and, after exploring the North American east coast and illegally enslaving several tens of locals, returned to Corunna on 21 August 1525.

Gomes's discoveries were prominently featured in the Castiglione planisphere, with a legend in North America about the "Tierra que descubrio esteuam gomez este año de 1525 [Land that Estevan Gomes discovered this year of 1525]". Scholars have long wondered why the author of the Castiglione was able to draw Gomes's Land but Vespucci failed to do it in his planisphere of the following year.

The Castiglione planisphere, which is dated 1525 but not signed and is preserved at the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena, has been variously attributed to three mapmakers in the service of the Casa de la Contratación: Diogo Ribeiro (d.1533), Juan Vespucci,³⁰ and Nuño García de Toreno (d.1526).³¹ The evidence in favor of Ribeiro's authorship is nevertheless overwhelming, as already stated by the earliest studies of the map and corroborated by Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota based on the likeness between the Castiglione and Ribeiro's signed planispheres.³² Similarities include

handwriting, decoration with astronomical instruments, and the depiction of the Mediterranean without the typical counterclockwise tilt of portolan charts. To this already extensive list we can add the extremely similar shapes of Scandinavia, the Caribbean Sea and the Spice Islands.

The Castiglione planisphere ended up in the hands of Count Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), who was Pope Clement VII's ambassador at Emperor Charles V's court and attended the latter's wedding in Seville on 10 March 1526. It is often stated that the ambassador was given the map as a gift by the emperor on that occasion, but there is no documentary evidence for that. Castiglione may have bought the map directly from Ribeiro or through some intermediary, and not necessarily in Seville during the wedding.

The reconstruction of Vespucci's whereabouts in 1525-1526 definitely rules him out as author of the Castiglione planisphere: when Gomes returned to Corunna, the Florentine was in the Caribbean and would not get back to Seville till 1526. Diogo Ribeiro, on the contrary, spent all of 1525 in Corunna at the service of the Casa de la
<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 5.** North America's Atlantic coast in the Salviati planisphere.</figcaption></figure>

Contratación de la Especiería. His mission there was to make maps for the upcoming expedition to the Moluccas led by García Jofre de Loaysa. In December 1525, Ribeiro was ordered to stay in Corunna to prepare maps for the follow-up expedition led by Simón de Alcazaba. Ribeiro surely met Gomes in Corunna when the latter returned because the mapmaker was appointed tutor of one of the "Indians" abducted by Gomes.³³ Therefore, it is more than likely that Ribeiro drew the Castiglione planisphere in Corunna between September and December 1525. Further, it is logical that he would include Gomes's discoveries, but not Ayllón's Land because news about it had not yet reached him.

The contents of the Castiglione planisphere are thus satisfactorily explained but one question arises: why did Vespucci not include Gomes's Land in his planisphere made at least a few months *after* the Castiglione? Before attempting an answer, the matter is further complicated by a third planisphere that was drawn in Spain within few months of Vespucci's and the Castiglione.

## THE SALVIATI PLANISPHERE

The large unsigned and undated Spanish-language planisphere at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence

is named after Cardinal Giovanni Salviati (1490–1553) because his armorial bearings are prominently displaced twice on it. Salviati was the papal legate who officiated one of the ceremonies of Charles V's wedding in Seville, where he stayed between March and May 1526. He then followed the Court to Granada and left for Lyon in July 1526.³⁴

Based on Salviati's itinerary, it is logical to date the eponymous planisphere to 1526, and most likely to the months of March to May. The author is believed to have been Nuño García de Toreno, who by then, and up to his death on 22 June 1526, was the only mapmaker at the Casa de la Contratación de las Indias in Seville as Vespucci had been fired, Cabot was overseas and Ribeiro was in Corunna. The attribution is reinforced by the strong similarity of the planisphere's handwriting, compass roses and scale bars with García de Toreno's signed map of the Indian Ocean of 1522.³⁵ It is true that the Salviati presents numerous geographical coincidences with the Castiglione planispheres such as the shapes of the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia but the depiction of the Red Sea and other territories are quite different. Rather than a common author, these geographical similarities
<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 6.** The Caribbean Sea (clockwise from top left): the Castiglione planisphere, the Salviati planisphere, the Torino planisphere and Vespucci's 1526 planisphere (in greyscale). Parallel of Paria superimposed by the author in orange. While lands are plotted according to accurate latitudes in the Castiglione and the Salviati, they follow an older model in Vespucci's map and the Torino.</figcaption></figure>

point to the use of a common model or source for part of the map's content.

The toponyms reported by Estevan Gomes that appear on the Castiglione planisphere all appear in the Salviati planisphere as well, albeit without naming the discoverer. However, the Salviati contains six additional place names near the big river found by Gomes and east of it (montañas, C: de muchas yslas, Arreçifes, R. verde, baya seca, Cabo de la buelta) and the shape of the coastline is rather different from that drawn in the Castiglione (compare **Figure 5** and **Figure 4** above).³⁶ This indicates that the author of the Salviati planisphere had direct access to Gomes's report and/or cartographic sketches, and not merely to the Castiglione planisphere or a copy thereof.

On the other hand, the Salviati contains no trace of Pedro de Quexo's discoveries or Ayllón's intended expedition. The stretch of coast between Gomes's westernmost

toponym, *Baya de s[an] [crist]oual*, and *la florida* is covered by toponyms unrelated to Ayllón and Quexo. This is the exact opposite of Vespucci's planisphere, which prominently displays Ayllón's Land but entire omits Gomes's discoveries.

This is not the only difference in geographical content between Vespucci's and García's planispheres. In the Salviati planisphere, and in the Castiglione too, the contours of the Mediterranean were modified to plot localities according to their latitudes, abandoning the typical tilt of portolan charts. García and Ribeiro applied the same criterion to the Caribbean [see **Figure 6**]. Vespucci, on the contrary, stuck to the traditional depiction of these regions such as what can be found in the Torino planisphere of ca.1523.

It is hard to explain why the Salviati and Vespucci's planispheres, two maps drawn the same year in the same city by two former colleagues, could be so different in
their geographical content. How is it that they seem to
mutually ignore each other regarding the latest discover-
ies along North America's east coast?

To answer these two questions, we may consider that
omitting the Land of Ayllón in the Salviati planisphere
would have been inevitable for Nuño García if Vespucci
arrived in Seville when the planisphere was already drawn
i.e. around or after the Emperor's wedding in March. As
we have seen, extant documents do not provide the ex-
act date of Vespucci's return to Seville, but it must have
taken place between February and June 1526, so it is not
unlikely that the information he brought back simply did
not reach García in time.

In which case, we should also consider why Vespucci
didn't include Estevan Gomes's discoveries, which García
was aware of, in his own map. One possibility is that
Vespucci did not have access to the latest information
held by the Casa de la Contratación due to his dismiss-
al the year earlier; or perhaps he had already drafted his
map's outlines before returning to Seville and finishing
and signing it there. It is also possible, nonetheless, that
Vespucci did not strive to make the most up-to-date map
possible. As Matthew Edney has pointed out, that "maps
are routinely kept up to date" is one of the widely-held
"wrong convictions" about cartography.³⁷ Vespucci had
been mandated to routinely update the Casa's Padrón
Real, but he faced no such obligation in his private map-
making endeavors, particularly after his dismissal in 1525.
The prospective customers of Vespucci's planisphere were
most likely not seamen who risked their lives if a nautical
chart was inaccurate but city dwellers and members of the
Imperial court. They may have been content with just a
coarse, global picture of the world.

VERRAZANO?

Finally, I would like to discuss an important myth about
Vespucci's planisphere. For this we are going to examine
some common arguments made around 1975 and avoid
twisting the map's text beyond reason.

It is nowadays frequently taken for granted that
Vespucci's planisphere includes information from
Giovanni da Verrazano's expedition to North America
in 1524 under French flag. This misconception rests on
a rather forced reading of a single toponym and can be
easily refuted, but it is worth looking into how the myth
came to enjoy such widespread credibility.

The creators of this theory were historians William P.
Cumming (1900–1989) and Lawrence C. Wroth (1884–
1970). In 1958, Cumming stated that Juan Vespucci's pla-
nisphere contained what he considered the earliest carto-
graphic reference to Verrazano's discoveries.³⁸ In a footnote
that listed the toponyms of Vespucci's Land of Ayllón,
Cumming included: "rio da sa verazanas (or terazanas).

This is a remarkably early reference to the French voy-
age from Dieppe of Verrazano in 1524. Verrazano landed
briefly at about 34° N.L., and this may be the Cape Fear
River; it may also refer to the Verrazano sea or an inlet
along the banks."³⁹ Cumming did not explain why he
read *verazanas* when the map clearly says *terazanas*, as can
be seen in **Figure 7**.

Wroth, in his last year of life, published a book aiming
to prove the veracity of Giovanni da Verrazano's voyages.
Looking for traces of the 1524 trip in contemporary maps,
he built on Cumming's lead and argued that the initial "t"
of *terazanas* must have been a typo for "v" based on a let-
ter in which Verrazano's family name had been similarly
miswritten. Wroth concluded that Vespucci's toponym
indicated the river where Verrazano had made landfall.⁴⁰
Neither Wroth nor Cumming before him provided a
hypothesis for how the location of Verrazano's landfall
could have reached Vespucci, nor for how the latter would
have been able to place it within the stretch of coast dis-
covered by Quexos.

The alleged connection between Vespucci's plani-
sphere and Verrazano was swiftly rebuked by Louis
Vigneras, who argued that the toponym in question
should be read *r. das aterazanas*. The Spanish word *ata-
razana* means arsenal, so Vigneras interpreted Vespucci's
toponym as "River of the Arsenals" or perhaps "River of
the Boathouses" and tentatively identified this river with
the "River of Canoes" found in many other maps at the
same location.⁴¹ However, Vigneras's opinion was large-
ly ignored. Only very recently has historian Juan Maura
brought the same arguments forward.⁴²

The decisive popularization of Cumming and
Wroth's theory came in 1990 with map dealer Kenneth
Nebenzahl's *Atlas of Columbus*. Describing Vespucci's
planisphere, Nebenzahl stated that "One interesting
place-name, *Rio de sa verazanas*, is shown between the
Jordan River and the Chesapeake. This implies that the
explorations of Verrazano, a Florentine sailing for the
King of France, were known in Spain".⁴³ Nebenzahl, who
cited Wroth as one his sources, actually went beyond
Wroth's claims by directly writing the toponym *veraza-
nas* with "v".

Nebenzahl's *Atlas* was a best-seller that was quickly
translated into numerous languages. Its texts were soon
reproduced (or plagiarized) in the nascent World Wide
Web and became the default source of information about
the most iconic early modern maps. This popularity may
be the reason why the *Rio de sa verazanas* reading was un-
critically accepted by numerous later authors including,
astoundingly, Ángel Paladini.⁴⁴

In the posthumous third edition of Cumming's book
in 1998, editor Louis De Vorsey removed the claim that
Vespucci's map had mentioned Verrazano and cited
<figure><img src="image_14.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 7.** Detail of Ayllón's Land in Vespucci's planisphere. Above: from the black & white reproduction provided by the Hispanic Society, which Cumming reproduced in his 1958 book; below: photographed by the author from a full-size color facsimile.</figcaption></figure>

Vigneras's rebuttal.⁴⁵ This did not change things much, unfortunately, because the myth had already taken hold.

A comment that can be made on Vigneras's reading *r. das aterazanas* is that the word "das", meaning "of the", is not Castilian Spanish but Galician or Portuguese. This would betray the geographical origin of the person who coined that toponym, perhaps Pedro de Quexo himself, whose biography is almost entirely unknown. Besides, to add to Vigneras's rebuttal of Cumming and Wroth's *r. da sa terazanas* interpretation, one further issue can be raised: what is the word "sa" supposed to mean? If an elided "-n" is assumed, does it mean *san terazanas* and therefore River of Saint Verrazano? It is already a stretch to assume that Vespucci learnt of the exact location of Verrazano's landfall, but why canonize him?

## CONCLUSION

The itinerary followed by mapmaker and merchant Juan Vespucci in 1525 and 1526 has been reconstructed based on accounting entries and notary acts overlooked until now. This novel information has helped to address apparent paradoxes regarding the early mapping of the North American east coast: why Vespucci's planisphere includes toponyms connected with Pedro de Quexo and Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón before any other map; why Ayllón's Land does not appear at all in the Castiglione and Salviati planispheres, and why Vespucci failed to include in his

own map of 1526 the discoveries reported by Estevan Gomes the previous year. In addition, the theory that Vespucci's planisphere indicates Giovanni da Verrazano's landfall is found to be baseless and should be discarded. Vespucci's planisphere should not be used as evidence to reconstruct the Verrazano's 1524 trip.

Future updates of the history of the early European exploration of North America's east coast should take these findings into account. Beyond that, this research illustrates how biographical research can help understand the circulation of geographical information in a momentous period of the Age of Discoveries.

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luis A. Robles Macías obtained his engineering degree at the University of Seville and a Master of Science at the Institut Français du Pétrole (France) and McGill University (Canada) in 2001. He has since pursued a professional career in clean energy that has taken him to France, California, and Belgium. In parallel Luis became interested in the mathematical aspects of old maps and in the circulation of geographical knowledge in the Renaissance, which resulted in several academic publications. He eventually embarked on a PhD in History at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), devoted to the life and works of sixteenth-century mapmaker Juan Vespucci. He successfully defended his thesis in January 2024 and was awarded the Washington Map Society's Walter W. Ristow Prize for his article "Polar Hemispheres: The Overlooked Alternative to Nautical Planispheres in Renaissance Iberia". Luis has been a scientific advisor to the MEDEA-Chart European research project on portolan charts and since 2020 is the editor of *Maps in History*, the magazine of the Brussels Map Circle.

## ENDNOTES

1. Luis A. Robles Macías, "No, Mapmaker Juan Vespucci Was Not a Medici Spy," *Imago Mundi* 72, no. 1 (2020): 41–46.

2. For decades, the most relevant work on Vespucci's planisphere was a brief article by Roberto Almagià, "Alcune osservazioni sul planisfero di Giovanni Vespucci (1526)," *Rivista geografica italiana* 59, no. 4 (1952): 253–60.

3. Original edition in 1994 by Italian publisher Neri Pozza Editore (Vicenza). I have used the Spanish edition by Ediciones Grial (Valencia) in 1998.

4. William Patterson Cumming, *The Southeast in Early Maps* (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 6–9; Louis De Vorsey, "Early Maps and the Land of Ayllón," in *Columbus and the Land of Ayllón: The Exploration and Settlement of the Southeast*, ed. Jeannine Cook (Valona, GA: Lower Altamaha Historical
Society, 1992), 1–25; Robert S. Weddle, “Spanish Mapping of Texas,” in *Handbook of Texas Online*, updated 2019 1996, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/spanish-mapping-of-texas; Douglas T. Peck, “Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón’s Doomed Colony of San Miguel de Gualdape,” *The Georgia Historical Quarterly* 85, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 183–98.

5 Paul E. Hoffman, “The Chicora Legend and Franco-Spanish Rivalry in La Florida,” *The Florida Historical Quarterly* 62, no. 4 (April 1984): 423.

6 Enrique Otte, *Las perlas del Caribe: Nueva Cádiz de Cubagua* (Caracas: Fundación John Boulton, 1977). For a broader overview of the sixteenth-century Venezuelan pearl rush, see Pedro Cunill Grau, *Geohistoria de la sensibilidad en Venezuela* (Caracas: Fundación Empresas Polar, 2011), 137–56.

7 15 February 1525. Archivo Histórico Provincial de Sevilla (AHPS), Protocolos 1524, fascicle of 8 February 1525; summary in the *Catálogo de los fondos americanos del Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla* (CFAAPS) published by the Instituto Hispano-Cubano de Historia de América, volume 8 (Seville, 2000), document 1360.

8 The Casa's *visitadores* were expert seamen who inspected every ship to ensure its seaworthiness, verify that the amount of cargo was not excessive and record the name of every person aboard. This information was written down in the file called *registro de ida*. When the ship returned, it was inspected again with particular attention to its load, resulting in the *registro de venida*. Enrique Otte (*Las perlas del Caribe*, 556) has estimated that only 1% of the *registros de ida y venida* from the first 50 years of Spanish transatlantic navigation have been preserved; today they can be found at Archivo General de Indias (AGI), CONTRATACION,S.13.

9 Under year 1525, “yda”: “la nao nonbrada santa cruz / maestre domingo de baena” AGI, CONTRATACION,2898, f.62v

10 AHPS, Protocolos 1524, fascicle of 17 March; summary in CFAAPS 8, 1383.

11 *CoDoIn Ultramar* XIV, 25.

12 “Sexto Kalendis Maii vela fecit vna classis nautum xxiiii” Letter to Archbishop Giovanni Ruffo from Toledo, 13 June 1525. Posthumously published in Petrus Martyr Anglerius, *Opus Epistolarum* (Alcalá de Henares: Miguel de Eguía, 1530), letter 814.

13 *De orbe novo*, Decade VIII, book IX. English translation by MacNutt.

14 Esteban Mira Caballos, *La Armada Guardacostas de Andalucía y la defensa de la Carrera de Indias, 1521-1550*, Colección Biblioteca americana (Sevilla: Muñoz Moya Editor, 1998), 31.

15 Royal order to Hispaniola for incoming trips, 19 October 1526, AGI, INDIFERENTE,421,L.11,F.248V-249R. The Casa separately issued an order for outgoing trips, not extant, which was endorsed by the Court on 9 November 1526, AGI, INDIFERENTE,421,L.11,F.281R-282R.

16 “paresçe que rresçibio de juan de vizcuche [sic] piloto de su magestad de los derechos de mill e seisçientos e sesenta e seis pesos e quatro tomines que montaron las mercaderías que a esta villa truxo e vendio en treze dias del mes de julio de mill e quinientos e veynte e çinco años çiento e veynte e tres pesos e siete tomines e seis granos” AGI, CONTADURIA,1562, ff.55r-56r. This payment was mentioned by Otte, *Las perlas del Caribe*, 295.

17 AGI, CONTADURIA, 1050,N.2, f.321v. These accounts have been published, with certain omissions and errors, by Genaro Rodríguez Morel, *Cuentas de las Cajas Reales de Santo Domingo. Tomadas al tesorero Esteban de Pasamonte por el licenciado Alonso López de Cerrato* 1525-1534 (Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2020), 55-167, https://www.academia.edu/44376075/TOMO_II_Cuentas_de_las_cajas_Reales_26_0ctubre_de.

18 *Ibidem*, ff.335r, 349v, 356v and 369r.

19 Vespucci acted as guarantor of a lease to clergyman Fernando Gómez. AHPS, Protocolos 13455, s.f.; unpublished. Mentioned by Juan Gil, *Los conversos y la Inquisición sevillana. Ensayo de Prosopografía* (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2001), IV, 529.

20 Letter sent to Giovanni Balducci in Florence, 17 September 1526. Copied in Gucci's *libro di ricordi* of his trip to Spain, now at Archivio si Stato di Firenze (ASF), Acquisti e Doni, Registro Galletti, 286/33, ff.28v-30r. This letter has been cited by Angela Orlandi, “Al soffio degli Alisei. Mercanti fiorentini tra Siviglia e il Nuovo Mondo,” *Archivio Storico Italiano* 169, no. 3 (luglio-settembre 2011): 477–506; Angela Orlandi, “Fiorentini alla ricerca del Nuovo Mondo,” in *Amerigo Vespucci e i mercanti viaggiatori fiorentini del Cinquecento*, ed. Margherita Azzari and Leonardo Rombai (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2013), 131–56. Orlandi assumed that the letter was written in Valladolid but this cannot be the case because, in the text, Gucci states his intention to travel to Valladolid soon. Gucci’s mentions of ambassadors, of Queen Germana and the Duke of Calabria, who had married shortly before in Granada, and of “the moors” rather point to the city of the Alhambra, where the Court was staying at the time. This hypothesis is reinforced by a list of cities in ff. 11r-19r of Gucci’s book, which seems to be the itinerary of his trip and in which he wrote that he left Cádiz on
1 June and stayed in Granada until 20 November, presumably of 1526 (f.14r).

21 AHPS, Protocolos 27, f.313r-v; summary in CFAAPS 8, 1551.

22 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, in his *Historia general* (book II, chapter IX), stated that the return trip from Santo Domingo typically took 55 days, even though two caravels had exceptionally made it in just 25 days in 1525. Archival records allow us to calculate the precise duration of four other trips completed around those years: in 1526, Lope Sánchez, Francisco Corbalán and Diego Sánchez Colchero took 46 days (26 June–11 August); in 1527, Antón Martínez 57 days (11 March–7 May), Rodrigo Pinto 70 days (16 January–27 March) and Pedro de Garrandiz 75 days (18 January–3 April).

23 For example, Francisco de la Peña, master and one-third co-owner of his ship, which sailed for Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo in 1525, carried an authorization to sell it; the ship seems to not have made the return trip. AHPS, Protocolos 3260, f.104; summary in CFAAPS 8, 1416. A similar power of attorney was granted to Juan Gutiérrez, master of Ginés de Carrión's *Magdalena* that sailed in February 1526 to Santo Domingo. AHPS, Protocolos 3261, f.169v; summary in CFAAPS 5, 707. Notwithstanding, Gutiérrez did not sell the *Magdalena*, which was registered by the Casa on its return to Seville that same year. AGI, CONTRATACION,2898,F.68R. Yet another example is the power of attorney granted on 29 July 1527 to both the pilot and a sailor of Diego García's *Cuerpo Santo*. AHPS, Protocolos 3269, f.468v; summary in CFAAPS 9, 367.

24 Paul E. Hoffmann, "Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón," in *Columbus and the Land of Ayllón: The Exploration and Settlement of the Southeast*, ed. Jeannine Cook (Valona, GA: Lower Altamaha Historical Society, 1992), 27–49.

25 8 October 1525. Accounts of treasurer Esteban de Pasamonte in AGI, CONTADURIA,1050,N.2, f.392r. The sale of Vespucci's ship would not have been recorded in Pasamonte's accounts, given that the Crown was not a party to the transaction.

26 Esteban Mira Caballos, "Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón: Un jurista, empresario y descubridor en la América de la Conquista," July 28, 2022, https://estebanmiracaballos.com/2022/07/28/lucas-vazquez-de-ayllon-un-jurista-empresario-y-descubridor-en-la-america-de-la-conquista/.

27 Mira Caballos. However, other authors report six ships: the flagship (a nao), the *Bretona*, the *Santa Catalina*, the *Churruca*, a brigantine and a *gabarra* (barge). Juan Francisco Maura, "Caballeros y rufianes

andantes en la costa atlántica de los Estados Unidos de América: Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón y Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca," *Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos* 35, no. 2 (Invierno 2011): 305–28.

28 De Vorsey, "Early Maps and the Land of Ayllón." The charter, dated 12 June 1523, is at AGI, INDIFERENTE,415,L.1,F.36R-41R; transcription first published in 1864 and now available at https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmcgq6t4

29 Respectively, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek (HAAB), Kt 020 – 57 S; HAAB, Kt 020 – 58 S and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borg.Carte.naut.III.

30 Rolando Berretta, "Cartografia antica—Cartografia fiorentina," *Il Mulino del Tempo* (blog), April 18, 2013, http://ilmulinodeltempo.blogspot.com/2013/04/cartografia-antica-cartografia.html.

31 Hans Wolff and Susi Colin, eds., *America: das frühe Bild der Neuen Welt: Ausstellung der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, Patrimonia 38* (München: Prestel, 1992), 48–49. This hypotheiss was thoroughly refuted by Ernesto Milano, *Planisfero Castiglioni: Carta del navigare universalissima et diligentissima 1525, C.G.A. 12 Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria: Commentario all'edizione in facsimile* (Modena: Il Bulino, 2001), 22–24. However, the attribution to García de Toreno inexplicably surfaced again in José Miguel Alonso Rojo, "Nuño García de Toreno: El primer cartógrafo de la Casa de la Contratación," *Revista de estudios colombinos*, no. 16 (2020): 36.

32 Vittore Bellio, "Notizia delle più antiche carte geografiche che si trovano in Italia reguardanti l'America," in *Raccolta di documenti e studi pubblicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana pel quarto centenario dalla scoperta dell'America*, vol. IV, II (Roma: Ministero della pubblica istruzione, 1892), 128–30; Heinrich Winter, "The Pseudo-Labrador and the Oblique Meridian," *Imago Mundi* 2, no. 1 (January 1937): 63, https://doi.org/10.1080/0308569370859 1835; Armando Cortesão, "Note on the Castiglioni Planisphere," *Imago Mundi* 11, no. 1 (January 1954): 53–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/03085695408592058; Armando Cortesão and A. Teixeira da Mota, *Portugaliae monumenta cartographica* (Lisboa: [Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda], 1960), I, 95–98.

33 Louis-André Vigneras, "The Cartographer Diogo Ribeiro," *Imago Mundi* 16 (1962): 76–83; Nicolás Toscano Liria, "España y Portugal en la exploración de la costa atlántica de Norte América. Compilación de datos sobre Esteban Gómez," *Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos*, no. 788 (2016): 43.

34 José García Mercadal, *Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal: desde los tiempos más remotos hasta comienzos*
del siglo XX (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 1999), I, 764.

35 The first to attribute the planisphere to García de Toreno was Miguel de la Puente y Olea, *Los trabajos geográficos de la Casa de Contratación* (Sevilla: Escuela Tipográfica y Librería Salesianas, 1900), 303–5, http://fama2.us.es/fde/ocr/2013/losTrabajosGeograficosDeLaCasaDeLaContratacion.pdf. The similarity in handwriting with the 1522 map was pointed out by Antonio Sánchez Martínez, *La espada, la cruz y el Padrón: soberanía, fe y representación cartográfica en el mundo ibérico bajo la Monarquía Hispánica, 1503–1598* (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2013), 182. The identity of compass roses and scale bars is reported in more detail in the author's doctoral thesis, pages 344–348.

36 The depiction of Gomes's Land on sixteenth-century maps was studied, with particular attention to toponyms, by William F. Ganong, "Estêvão Gomez— The Influence of His Explorations on the Ribero-Type and Chaves-Santa Cruz Maps," in *Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada*, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1964), 135–190 [125–179].

37 Matthew H. Edney, *Cartography: The Ideal and Its History* (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 54.

38 Cumming, *The Southeast in Early Maps*, 9.

39 Cumming, n. 26.

40 Lawrence C. Wroth, *The Voyages of Giovanni Da Verrazzano 1524–1528* (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 169–70. Wroth's argument was repeated by Seymour I. Schwartz and Ralph E. Ehrenberg, *The Mapping of America* (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1980), 43; Seymour I. Schwartz, *The Mismatching of America*, digital edition (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 53.

41 Louis-André Vigneras, "Is There a 'Verrazano River' on Juan Vespucci's 1526 Mappemonde?," *Terrae Incognitae* 7 (1975): 65–67, https://doi.org/10.1179/tin .1975.7.1.65.

42 Juan Francisco Maura, "La invención de la carta de Giovanni da Verrazano y de la Nouvelle France (Canadá)," *Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos*, no. 839–840 (June 2020): 177; Juan Francisco Maura, *Españoles y portugueses en Canadá en tiempos de Cristóbal Colón* (Universitat de València, 2021), 98–99.

43 Kenneth Nebenzahl, *Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries* (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1990), 84.

44 Ángel Paladini Cuadrado, *Mapa portulano de Juan Vespucci: mapa del mundo conocido: Sevilla 1526* (Valencia: Grial, 1998), 23. Another work that echoes

Nebenzahl's statement is Leonardo Rombai and Claudia Borgioli, "Le scoperte geografiche e i nuovi mappamondi dell'inizio del XVI secolo: il ruolo di Amerigo Vespucci e dei cartografi fiorentini," in *Florence in Italy and Abroad from Vespucci to Contemporary Innovators* (Florence: Florence Campus Publishing House, 2012), 195, http://fua.it/images/do wnloads/e-book_Conference_Proceedings.pdf#page=112.

45 "The first known maps to record Verrazano's discoveries in detail are Italian." "Vigneras (...) states that hte name is the Spanish atarazanas (boathouse) and dismisses categorically the idea that it may refer to Verrazano's landfall (...) as suggested in earlier editions of this work". William Patterson Cumming and Louis De Vorsey, *The Southeast in Early Maps*, 3rd ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 5 and 41.

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