page_title: Cantino planisphere
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cantino planisphere / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Image pasted from 27 detailed frames by using Adobe Photoshop. Frames to be found at: http://www.cedoc.mo.it/estense/img/geo/Cantino/index.html
context_page_description: The Cantino planisphere or Cantino world map is a manuscript Portuguese world map preserved at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Italy. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for the Duke of Ferrara, who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502. It measures 220 x 105 cm.
  This planisphere is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese geographic discoveries in the east and west, and is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast, which the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral explored in 1500, and for depicting the African coast of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans with a remarkable accuracy and detail.
context_section_description: In the beginning of the 16th century, Lisbon was a buzzing metropolis where people from diverse backgrounds came in search of work, glory or fortune. There were also many undercover agents looking for the secrets brought by the Portuguese voyages to remote lands. Among them was Alberto Cantino, who was sent to Portugal by Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, with the formal intention of horse trading, while secretly collecting information on Portuguese Discoveries. Cantino's diligence is shown in one of his five remaining letters to the Duke, dated 17 October 1501, where he describes, amongst other things, hearing Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real detailing his latest voyage to Newfoundland (Terra Nova) to King Manuel I.
  A popular theory, introduced in the earliest studies of the map, suggests that the Cantino Planisphere was ordered to an official Portuguese mapmaker, who made a copy of the royal cartographic pattern, the so-called Padrão Real, kept in the Armazéns da Índia. However, there is no historical evidence that such order was ever made and the theory is weakened by the presence of numerous mistakes. One would expect a carefully made copy of an official standard, if it existed in Portugal at that time, would be accurate. A more plausible explanation is that the map was surreptitiously acquired shortly after it was made for some nobleman or official client. From a letter sent by Cantino to his patron, the Duke of Ferrara, on 19 November 1502, we know that he paid 12 golden ducats for it, which was a considerable amount for the time. An Italian inscription in the back of the map reads: Carta de navigar per le Isole nouam trovate in le parte de India: dono Alberto Cantino al S. Duca Hercole, which translates as 'Navigational chart of the islands recently [discovered]... in part of the Indies: from Alberto Cantino to Duke Hercole'.
  While it enlightened the Italians to many new territories yet unknown to them, it was obsolete within months due to subsequent mapping voyages by the Portuguese. Nevertheless, its importance to the Portuguese–Italian trade relations should not be understated; this map provided the Italians with knowledge of Brazil's coastline and that of much of the Atlantic Coast of South America long before other nations even knew South America extended so far to the south. It also supplied great details of the Indian Ocean. A peninsula to the northeast of Cuba has been identified by some others as Florida while others argue that it was actually intended to represent part of China, Cuba itself, or the Yucatan Peninsula.
  The geographical information given on the Cantino map was copied into the Italian-made Canerio (or Caveri) map shortly after the Cantino map arrived in Italy and the Canerio, in turn, became the primary source for the design of the newly discovered western lands on the highly influential wall map of the world produced by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 under the auspices of Rene, Duke of Lorraine.
  This old map, made-up by 6 glued parchment sheets, was kept in the Ducal Library, Ferrara, for about 90 years, until Pope Clement VIII transferred it to another palace in Modena, Italy. More than two centuries later, in 1859, the palace was ransacked and the Cantino Map lost. It was found by Giuseppe Boni, Director of the Biblioteca Estense, in that same year, in a butcher's store in Modena. The Cantino world map can currently be found in Modena, Italy, at the Biblioteca Estense.
caption: West and the recently reached Americas, Tordesillas line depicted - Cantino planisphere detail
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