The Cartographer Sets Sail: Eyewitness Records and Early Modern Maps

NAUTICAL CHARTS

It is tempting to see descriptive texts as an integral part of the role of maps to convey geographical information. But in fact a study of early nautical charts reveals that some charts by a particular cartographer include descriptive texts, while others do not, so that descriptive texts were an optional feature of these charts, something that the person commissioning the chart could pay to include or not. But even on the early charts that do include descriptive texts, declarations by the cartographer that he had visited a specific spot on the map are rare. In fact, if we look at the locations of the descriptive texts on two early nautical charts that have abundant texts, we find that not one of them is located in the Mediterranean, which is where we would expect to see a descriptive text based on the cartographer’s own experience. This is true of the Catalan Atlas of 1375,² The Catalan Atlas is in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Espagnol 30, and has been reproduced in facsimile several times, for example in Cresques, 1983, and Cresques, 2005; the atlas is also reproduced in Pujades i Bataller, 2007, on the accompanying CD, number C16. An excellent high-resolution image of the map is available at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/1375_Atlas_Catalan_Abraham_Cresques.jpg. of Grazioso Benincasa’s nautical chart of 1482,³ Grazioso Benincasa’s chart of 1482 is in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, rot. 3, and is well illustrated in Cavallo, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 356-357, with brief discussion and bibliography on pp. 353 and 358. On this and other charts made by members of the Benincasa family see Emiliani, 1936. and Ottomano Freducci’s nautical chart of 1539,⁴ Ottomano Freducci’s chart of 1539 is in London, British Library, Add. MS 11548, and is well illustrated in Van Duzer, 2015, p. 8; and studied in Van Duzer, 2017. to mention three examples from different centuries.

This lack of records of first-hand knowledge on nautical charts is surprising, first because we know that a number of chart-makers were experienced mariners, and certainly had such knowledge to convey (Falchetta, 1995Falchetta, P. (1995) “Marinai, mercanti, cartografi, pittori. Ricerche sulla cartografia nautica a Venezia (sec. xiv-xv).” Ateneo Veneto, 33, pp. 7-109.). The fifteenth-century cartographer Andrea Bianco had a life full enough of maritime adventure to inspire a novel,⁵ On Bianco see Falcheta, 1995, pp. 49-52; the novel is Slaughter, 1958. but none of his surviving maps contains any explicit reference to his own knowledge or experience. I referred above to a chart by Grazioso Benincasa, and not one of his surviving charts mentions his experience-yet Benincasa does mention his personal experience in the opening of his portolano (a port-book or rutter). At the opening of the work he writes:⁶ The text of Benincasa’s portolano is supplied by Kretschmer, 1909, pp. 358-420, with the passage in question on p. 358. The translation is mine.

This passage shows that men of the sea were perfectly willing to assert their authority based on eyewitness experience, but for whatever reason, they generally did not do so on charts. What is particularly interesting about this passage is that Benincasa, himself a cartographer, clearly places a lesser value on the information one might obtain from charts than what one might gather from first-hand experience.

We can only speculate about why early chart makers generally did not include texts on their charts that proclaimed their accuracy due to first-hand experience. One important factor was certainly that if the Mediterranean were crowded with such claims, it would impede the actual use of the charts. And perhaps the salesmanship was largely a matter of the cartographer’s reputation, or claims about accuracy were made in person to the client when the charts were being commissioned.

Nonetheless, a few early charts do preserve claims of accuracy based on first-hand experience. The first I will consider is a chart made by Francesco Beccari in 1403 and now preserved in the Beinecke Library at Yale.⁷ The shelfmark of the Beccari chart in the Beinecke Library at Yale is Art Object 1980.158, and a high-resolution image of it is available at http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3521236?image_id=1027149. On Beccari’s work as a cartographer see Skelton, 1968. The chart does not contain a program of descriptive texts, just one unusually long text in North Africa in which Beccari asserts that he changed the way he depicted the Atlantic coasts of Europe on his charts beginning in 1400, and that his new depiction is based on the first-hand experiences of numerous sailors in that region:⁸ Beccari’s text may be found in Gautier Dalché 2001, p. 24; the translation is mine.

We have little information about the transfer of knowledge from sailors to chart-makers during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but this text shows that at least some cartographers were actively seeking out and incorporating into their maps new information from both sailors and other cartographers, and placed a high value on first-hand experience. At the same time, the rarity of this type of testimony on maps confirms that there was a strong tendency not to include such information on charts.

One other early nautical chart includes an indication that it was mapped according to first-hand experience, and that is the 1455 chart by the Genoese priest Bartolomeo Pareto.⁹ Pareto’s chart is in Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Cart. naut. 1, and is reproduced and discussed in Cavallo, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 314-315; and is reproduced in Pujades i Bataller, 2007, on the accompanying CD number C57. There is also and in a hand-drawn facsimile in Kretschmer, 1892, plate 5; and some discussion of the map in Amat di San Filippo, 1878. The chart has a program of descriptive texts similar to those on the 1375 Catalan Atlas and Grazioso Benincasa’s 1482 nautical chart mentioned above, but also has one short text in the western Mediterranean that speaks directly to Pareto’s personal experience. East of the Strait of Gibraltar by the small island of Alborán is the inscription Alborame unde ego sic vidi, “Alborán, where I saw it.” The location of the island is not significantly different than on other contemporary charts, but perhaps Pareto was correcting the position he had seen on charts that no longer survive.

Nautical charts saw a dramatic change in terms of the use of first-hand knowledge with the beginning of the Age of Discovery in the late fifteenth century. Maps of a newly discovered area simply could not be made without knowledge of that area, and the discoverer had many good reasons to map it: at least at that moment, the crew of the discovering ship had unique access to first-hand knowledge, which was thus a precious commodity it would be foolish to waste; mapping the newly discovered areas would serve as proof of the explorer’s success, which would earn him fame and the ability to obtain funding for new voyages; and maps would document territorial claims made on the voyage.

We have documentary evidence that Christopher Columbus made maps of his discoveries in the New World,¹⁰ For detailed discussion of Columbus’s maps see Harrisse, 1892, pp. 399-437 and passim; and Ferro, 1997. but no important map by him survives. Although knowledge that Columbus was the cartographer and of the history of his voyages would allow one to deduce that the maps showed first-hand knowledge, we do not know whether Columbus proclaimed this on his maps. We have a world map made in 1500 in the nautical chart tradition by Juan de la Cosa, an experienced navigator and cartographer who had sailed with Columbus on his First and Second Voyages and was also the chief pilot on a voyage led by Alonso de Ojeda to South America from 1499 to 1500.¹¹ On Juan de la Cosa see Harley and Tilton, 1992. His map is in the Museo Naval in Madrid, shelfmark MN 257; for discussion of it, see Cerezo Martínez, 1989; and O’Donnell y Duque de Estrada, 2006. The map has been reproduced in facimile as J. L. Comellas García-Llera, El mapa de Juan de la Cosa and as Carta de Juan de la Cosa: año de 1500. It is interesting to note, however, that while la Cosa’s chart certainly contains much first-hand information, the cartographer makes not a single assertion of his special authority on the map. He thus continues the tradition of cartographic reticence in this regard.

But later in the sixteenth century it became much more common for cartographer-explorers to assert their authority as first-hand observers on their maps. The Italian explorer Sebastian Cabot (c. 1474 - c. 1557) does so on his printed world map of 1544, for example (Fig. 1).¹² Cabot’s 1544 map survives in two exemplars, in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Rés. Ge AA 582), and at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (Kt 020 - 31 S), which latter exemplar however lacks the surrounding descriptive text. The Paris exemplar is well reproduced in Nebenzahl, 1990, pp. 106-107, and a full-size color facsimile of the map has been published as Mappemonde de Sébastien Cabot, 1544. On the discovery of the exemplar in Weimar see Schilder, 1986-2007), vol. 2, p. 23. On Cabot and his map see Kelsey, 1987; and Karrow, 1993, pp. 103-112 , esp., pp. 108-109. In legend 17 in the right-hand border of his map, Cabot writes (Deane, 1890-1891, pp. 324 and 337Deane, C. (1890-1891) “[Inscriptions on Cabot’s Mappe-monde].” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Series 2, 6, pp. 305-339.):

Legend 8 in the left-hand margin of the map, which applies to northwestern North America, reads as follows:

Cabot goes on to describe the inhabitants and the animals of the region that he and his father discovered.

Another interesting case of assertion of first-hand exploration on a nautical chart may be found in the Nautica mediterranea (1607) of Bartolomeo Crescentio, a Roman officer who had years of experience on papal galleys (Ciampi, 1887Ciampi, I. (1887) “Viaggiatori romani men noti.” In: Opuscoli vari, storici e critici. Imola: s. n., pp. 83-156.). In 1596 he had published an updated nautical chart of the Mediterranean, and this was reprinted in the Nautica mediterranea. In the dedicatory epistle of that book he proclaims his wide experience sailing the Mediterranean, and says that he is offering the fruits of those experiences in his book:

Book 2, chapter 5 of the book is titled “L’errore delle carte del Mare Mediterraneo et il modo di farle giuste secondo i gradi e le corse,” i.e. “The error of the maps of the Mediterranean and the way to make them right according to the degrees and courses.” Crescentio’s map, included in the book, does not have a program of descriptive texts on it, but does have a cartouche in which Crescentio proclaims the map’s accuracy based on his careful investigations, and goes on to express his hope that it will prove useful to sailors:

The most puzzling thing about the map is that although Crescentio emphasizes that he took great pains to confirm the coordinates of places, and although it has a scale of longitudes, it lacks a scale of latitudes or parallels at regular intervals, and has instead a traditional network of rhumb lines. Nor is the data he collected about winds communicated to the user of the map. The author is very keen to correct errors, but after seven years of effort, did not find an adequate method to communicate his findings to his audience.

ISOLARII

While makers of early nautical charts were reticent about claiming the authority of first-hand experience on their maps, such claims were common in contemporary island books illustrated with maps, a surprising divergence given that the maps in isolarii were derived from nautical charts. At the same time, an examination of these authors’ discussions of their sources reveals that some make the claim with less justification than one might hope, while others make no pretense of having seen the places they describe and depict in their maps.

Cristoforo Buondelmonti (c. 1385 - c. 1430) traveled the Greek islands seeking to purchase manuscripts of works of classical literature for patrons back in Florence, and these travels served as the basis for his Liber insularum archipelagi (Book of the Islands of the Archipelago). This was the first island book illustrated with maps, which Buondelmonti wrote in 1420, and then expanded in two subsequent versions completed in 1422 and 1430; the work survives in about seventy manuscripts (Campana, 1957Campana, A. (1957) “Da codici del Buondelmonti.” In: Silloge bizantina in onore di Silvio Giuseppe Mercati. Roma: L’Associazione, pp. 33-52.; Turner, 1987Turner, H. (1987) “Christopher Buondelmonti and the Isolario.” Terrae Incognitae, 19, pp. 11-28, <https://doi.org/10.1179/tin.1987.19.1.11>.; Ragone, 2002Ragone, G. (2002) “Il Liber insularum Arcipelagi di Cristoforo dei Buondelmonti: filologia del testo, filologia dell’immagine.” In: D. Marcotte, ed., Humanisme et culture géographique à l’époque du Concile de Constance. Autour de Guillaume Fillastre. Actes du Colloque de l’Université de Reims, 18-19 novembre 1999. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 177-217.; Bessi, 2012Bessi, B. (2012) “Cristoforo Buondelmonti: Greek Antiquities in Florentine Humanism.” The Historical Review - La revue historique, 9, pp. 63-76. doi: https://doi.org/10.12681/hr.289 ).¹³ A facsimile of the Düsseldorf manuscript has been published in Siebert and Plassmann, 2005; the accompanying commentary volume is Bayer, 2007. The author ends the work by mentioning his first-hand experience of the islands:¹⁴ The text is from von Sinner, 1824, p. 133; the translation is mine.

The first to follow Buondelmonti’s footsteps seems to have been Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, a Venetian mariner whose name “Sonetti” comes from the fact that he describes each island in his book with one or more sonnets. His work survives in a few manuscripts and in an edition printed in Venice in about 1485 (Goff, 1972Goff, F. R. (1972) “Introduction.” In: B. Sonetti, Isolario. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., pp. v-xi.; Donattini, 1994-1995Donattini, M. (1994-1995) “Bartolomeo da li Sonetti, il suo Isolario e un viaggio di Giovanni Bembo (1525-1530).” Geographia Antiqua, 3-4, pp. 211-236.; Bracke, 2001Bracke, W. (2001) “Une note sur l’Isolario de Bartolomeo da li Sonetti dans le manuscrit de Bruxelles, BR, CP, 17874 (7379).” Imago Mundi, 53, pp. 125-129. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085690108592943 ; Zacovic, 2013Zacovic, K. (2013)Mapping the Mediterranean: Bartolommeo da li Sonetti and the Isolario Tradition. MA Thesis. Richmond: Virginia Commonwealth University.).¹⁵ The Boston Public Library copy of Sonetti’s book is available in digital format at https://archive.org/details/isolario00bart. At the opening of the book he emphasizes that he has visited every part of the Mediterranean:¹⁶ I thank Giuseppe Ragone for his valuable help in translating this passage from Sonetti.

Sonetti no doubt drew inspiration from Buondelmonti, but it does seem that Sonetti’s work, and particularly his maps, are based on independent observations and experiences of the islands. It is difficult to compare the maps in the two works in a definitive way as there are so many different surviving manuscripts of Buondelmonti’s book, each with its variations and stylistic differences. But from the comparisons I have been able to make, Sonetti’s maps seems to be original in their details to a significant extent.

The Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis (1465/1470-1553) finished his Kitab-ı Bahriye or Book of Navigation in 1521, and greatly expanded it 1524-25. It is a guide to the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, illustrated with maps, and survives in fifteen manuscripts (Soucek, 1973Soucek, S. (1973) “A propos du livre d’instructions nautiques de Piri Reis.” Revue des Etudes Islamiques, 41, pp. 241-255., 1992Soucek, S. (1992) Piri Reis & Turkish Mapping after Columbus. London: Nour Foundation.). In his introductory poem, Piri Reis strongly asserts that the work is based on his first-hand knowledge (Reis, 2013, p. 11Reis, Piri (2013) The Book of Bahriye. B. Özükan, ed. and trans. Istanbul: Boyut Yayıncılık.):

Some of Piri Reis’s maps in his Kitab-ı Bahriye were certainly inspired by Sonetti, for example his maps of Lemnos, Samos, and Cyprus.¹⁷ The manuscript of the Kitab-ı Bahriye in Baltimore at the Walters Art Museum (MS W.658) is available in digital format at https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/gm992tz4846, and in this manuscript the map of Lemnos is on f. 47r, the map of Samos is on f. 79v, and the map of Cyprus is in f. 334v. On the Walters manuscript see Hepworth, 2005. But the many differences of detail in these pairs of maps, together with the much greater length and detail of Piri Reis’s text, demonstrate that the Ottoman admiral was indeed using sources in addition to Sonetti, presumably his own knowledge. It is interesting to compare Piri Reis’s emphasis on his firsthand knowledge in his Kitab-ı Bahriye with his account of his sources in his famous 1513 world map, of which only the portion depicting the New World, the Atlantic, and western African and Europe survives.¹⁸ Piri Reis’s 1513 map is in Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi R.1633 mük, and is well reproduced in Nebenzahl, 1990 , p. 63. The standard study of the map is McIntosh, 2000. On this map the cartographer makes no mention of his experience at sea, but explains that he compiled it using information from twenty earlier maps (McIntosh, 1993, pp. 291-292McIntosh, G. C. (1993) “Columbus and the Piri Reis Map of 1513.” The American Neptune, 53.4, pp. 280-294.; 2014McIntosh, G. C. (2014) “The Piri Reis Map of 1513: Art and Literature in the Service of Science.” In: D. Couto, F. Gunergin, and M. P. Pedani, eds., Seapower, Technology and Trade: Studies in Turkish Maritime History. Istanbul: Piri Reis University Publications and Denizler Kitabevi, pp. 367-379.):

We thus acquire an image of Piri Reis as a pragmatic cartographer, making use of his own experience in making his maps where possible, but drawing information from multiple other maps for areas that he had not visited.

While Buondelmonti, Sonetti, and Piri Reis all made use of their personal experience in creating their island-books, the case is very different with the editor and cartographer Benedetto Bordone (1460-1531). In his Libro di Benedetto Bordone nel qual si ragiona de tutte l’isole del mondo (Venice, 1528), Bordone expanded the geographical coverage of the isolario to include the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (Almagià, 1937Almagià, R. (1937) “Intorno alle carte e figurazioni annesse all’Isolario di Benedetto Bordone.” Maso Finiguerra, 2, pp. 170-186.; Skelton, 1966Skelton, R. A. (1966) “Introduction.” In: B. Bordone, Libro de tutte l’isole del mondo (Venice 1528). Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd.; Armstrong, 1996Armstrong, L. (1996) “Benedetto Bordon, Miniator, and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Imago Mundi, 48, pp. 65-92. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085699608592833 ; Lancioni, 2009Lancioni, T. (2009) “El Islario de Benedetto Bordone y la transformación del conocimiento geográfico.” Revista de Occidente, 342 , pp. 36-71.).,¹⁹ A copy of the 1534 edition of Bordone’s isolario is available in high-resolution scans at https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/10239942. but as he makes clear in the preface, the book is not based on information he gathered on his own voyages among the islands, even within the Mediterranean. In a remarkable contrast to the claims we have seen in other isolarii, Bordone says that he hopes his descriptions of the islands will carry his patron back to his own memories of his naval victories among the islands:

Bordone’s lack of originality is clear in his maps, quite a number of which are close copies of those in Sonetti’s isolario (Figs. 2 and 3).

The island book completed in 1542 by the Seville cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz (1505-67) survives in five manuscripts and is titled Islario general de todas las islas del mundo (Hill, 1971Hill, J. T. (1971) Alonso de Santa Cruz: The King’s Map-Maker. Dissertation. Texas: Texas Christian University.; Santa Cruz, 2003Santa Cruz, A. de. (2003) Islario de Santa Cruz. M. C. Domingo, ed. Madrid: Real Sociedad Geográfica.; Cuesta Domingo, 2004Cuesta Domingo, M. (2004) “Alonso de Santa Cruz, cartógrafo y fabricante de instrumentos náuticos de la Casa de Contratación.” Revista Complutense de Historia de América, 30, pp. 7-40.).²⁰ The only complete manuscript of the Islario general is in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS Res. 38, which is available in digital format at http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000149359. It is similar to Bordone’s in that the author makes no pretense to have visited the islands he describes and depicts. He cites Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Strabo, Ptolemy, Macrobius, and Solinus as his sources, along with many others, and in his introductory epistle to Philip II he writes:²¹ On Philip II’s interest in maps see Parker, 2002.

Santa Cruz’s Islario is also similar to Bordone’s work in that he made extensive use of Sonetti’s island-book as a source for his maps (or else Bordone’s), often making no change other than consistently orienting all of the maps to the north, whereas Sonetti oriented his maps with a variety of compass directions at the top of the page. Although Santa Cruz mentions modern authors in the passage in his introductory epistle just cited, nowhere does he cite Sonetti (or Bordone) by name.

With the isolarii of Antonio Millo (active 15571590) we return to a situation much closer to what we saw with Sonetti and Piri Reis. Millo was a mariner from the Greek island of Milos, and his isolario survives in several manuscripts (Millo, 1979Millo, A. (1979) Isolario et portolano di me Antonio Millo. Trieste: Veneziani Zonca Vernici.; Moschona, 1997Moschona, P. (1997) “Ta Ionia nesia se nesologia tou Antonio Millo.” In: Hekto Diethnes Panionio Synedrio (Zante, 2327.9.1997). Zante: Perilepseis Anakoinoseon, pp. 307-326.; Tolias, 1999Tolias, G. (1999) The Greek Portolan Charts: 15th-17th Centuries: A Contribution to the Mediterranean Cartography of the Modern Period. Athens: Olkos., 2001, pp. 62-63Tolias, G. (2001) “Un ammiraglio greco al servizio di Venezio: Antonio Millo e il suo isolario.” In: C. Tonini and P. Lucchi, eds., Navigare e descrivere: isolari e portolani del Museo Correr di Venezia: XV-XVIII secolo. Venezia: Marsilio and Musei Civici Veneziani, pp. 62-63.; Bykuć, 2005Bykuć, E. (2005) “Geographicae tabvlae in charta pergamena: Antonius Millo’s Nautical Atlas.” Polish Libraries Today, 6, pp. 70-78).²² The manuscript owned by the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation has been published in facsimile with a transcription and Greek and English translations of the text as Millo, 2006. Millo is quite emphatic that his work is based on his own first-hand experience, and the first-hand experience of his colleagues (Millo, 2006, pp. 5-6Millo, A. (2006) Isolario, ed. Agamemnon Tselikas, trans. Eleni Agathou. Athens: Ekdoseis Adventure.):

His maps are based closely on those of Sonetti, but while Bordone simply copies Sonetti’s maps, Millo, like Piri Reis, often modifies what he finds in Sonetti with details that evidently come from his own experience with the islands. The amount of modifications he makes to Sonetti’s maps varies: his map of Rhodes, for example, is very similar to Sonetti’s, but his map of Milos, the island where he was born, differs in many details from Sonetti’s: Millo adds topographical details, places towns in different locations, and changes proportions and shorelines (Figs. 4 and 5).

Two later cartographers produced their isolarii through book study (“cartographie de cabinet”) rather than by sailing the islands themselves. Thomaso Porcacchi in the preface to his L’Isole piu famose del mondo (Venice: Galignani, 1572) (Gerstenberg, 2004Gerstenberg, A. (2004) Thomaso Porcacchis L’Isole piu famose del mondo: Zur Text- und Wortgeschichte der Geographie im Cinquecento (mit Teiledition). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.; Lastraioli, 2006Lastraioli, C. (2006) “‘Un monde en forme d’île’: espace géographique et espace imaginaire dans l’isolario de Tommaso Porcacchi.” In: A. Godard and M.-F. Piéjus, eds., Espaces, histoire et imaginaire dans la culture italienne de la Renaissance. Paris: Université Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, Centre Censier, pp. 43-67.) explicitly disqualifies himself from trying to add anything to the accounts that others have written of distant islands, and speaks of borrowing from another isolario. And the posthumous preface to Jean Matal’s Insularium (Cologne: Ioann Christophori, 1601) says clearly that Matal merely copied the maps of others, translating them into Latin for consistency and adding historical notes.²³ A digital edition of Matal’s book is available at http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00093631/image_1. Some information about Matal is supplied in Hobson, 1975.

CONCLUSIONS

This examination of the role of first-hand knowledge in nautical charts and isolarii has revealed a striking division of the genre into those whose authors had visited the places they describe, and those produced by book study, or what would later be called “cartographie de cabinet.” It has also shown the remarkable influence of Sonetti’s maps on later examples of the genre: even when cartographers were adding their own first-hand knowledge to the maps, they still often took Sonetti’s maps as their foundations.

While in nautical charts, first-hand knowledge became more important and more commonly declared over time, in isolarii made during the same period, first-hand knowledge became less important after the efforts of Buondelmonti, Sonetti, and Piri Reis. The isolario was primarily an intellectual engagement with geography and history, a genre for the armchair traveler, often written by an armchair geographer. There were many nautical charts-one thinks immediately of the works of Battista Agnese-which were purely workshop productions, produced for collection and display by nobles, on which the cartographer’s personal knowledge of distant shores was irrelevant (Wagner, 1931Wagner, H. R. (1931) “The Manuscript Atlases of Battista Agnese.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 25, pp. 1-110, 1947Wagner, H. R. (1947) “Additions to the Manuscript Atlases of Battista Agnese.” Imago Mundi, 4, pp. 28-30. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694708591878 ). But nautical charts were the main medium in which new discoveries were registered: these were the charts made by explorers, and it was on these charts that the Casa de Contratación in Seville registered each new discovery made in the New World (Sandman, 2007, pp. 1107-1130Sandman, A. (2007) “Spanish Nautical Cartography in the Renaissance.” In: D. Woodward, ed., The History of Cartography, vol. 3, Cartography in the European Renaissance. Chicago/London: The University Chicago Press, part 1, pp. 1095-1142.). In the Age of Discovery, first-hand experience quite naturally acquired a renewed importance as a guarantee of veracity in descriptions of distant lands.