Cantino Map
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Cantino Map
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
The Cantino Planisphere, 1501 AD.
This is one of the oldest world maps that includes America, albeit partially. The relevance of this map, however, is normally misplaced. We tend to believe that when America was discovered to the rest of the continents in 1492, the rest of the world had been already tamed. Far from the truth.
The real fact is that navigation east from Europe to India surrounding Africa was not achieved until 1499. It was the Portuguese who discovered this new route that ended the monopoly of Venice over spice and other products of the Silk Road. The feat, achieved by the Portuguese Vasco da Gama in 1499, was summarized in a map that instantly became the path to immense riches and a state secret for Portugal.
Paradoxically, the Cantino World map takes its name from the Italian spy that stole this secret only two years after. It is the copy Cantino obtained in Lisbon and secreted to Genoa that survived and we admire now.
20 years later, Magellan, another Portuguese working for the Spanish crown, would find the south-western pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Spanish Elcano would complete the journey around the world in that same expedition and another Spanish sailor, Urdaneta, would discover the returning route from Asia to America across the Pacific in 1565. The map would finally lose all its relevance but, for a short period of time, this map was the most important secret in the world.
It also happens it is an exquisite work of art, a delicate polychromy full of color and detail.
Weston Westmoreland.
Uploaded
March 5th, 2020
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