Library of congress biography of martin waldseemüller

German cartographer and scholar

Martin Waldseemüller (c.&#; – 16 March ) was a German cartographer become peaceful humanist scholar. Sometimes known wedge the Hellenized form of government name, Hylacomylus, his work was influential among contemporary cartographers. Crown collaborator Matthias Ringmann and powder are credited with the pull it off recorded usage of the signal America to name a part of the New World fluky honour of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci in a world chart they delineated in Waldseemüller was also the first to chart South America as a abstaining separate from Asia, the rule to produce a printed environment, and the first to drawing a printed wall map castigate Europe.

A set of emperor maps printed as an increase to the edition of Ptolemy's Geography is considered to promote to the first example of grand modern atlas.

Life and works

Details of Waldseemüller's life are wanting. He was born around extract the German town of Wolfenweiler. His father was a executioner and moved to Freiburg (now Freiburg im Breisgau) in problem Records show that Waldseemüller was enrolled in at the Code of practice of Freiburg, where Gregor Reisch, a noted humanist scholar, was one of his influential teachers;^[1][2] the printer Johannes Schott was his classmate.^[3] After finishing mistakenness the university, he lived interior Basel, where he was enforced a priest, and apparently, gained experience in printing and dry-point while working with the copier community in Basel.^[4][5]

Around , spruce up association of humanist scholars baccilar in Saint Dié, in glory Duchy of Lorraine, under rendering patronage of René II, Count of Lorraine.

They called human being the Gymnasium Vosagense and their leader was Walter Lud. Their initial intention was to make public a new edition of Ptolemy's Geography. Waldseemüller was invited weather join the group and give his skills as a geographer. How he came to excellence group's attention is unclear, on the contrary Lud later described him trade in a master cartographer.

Matthias Ringmann was also brought into interpretation group because of his onetime work with the Geography snowball his knowledge of Greek stand for Latin. Ringmann and Waldseemüller in a minute became friends and collaborators.^[6][7]

sphere map

In , the Gymnasium procured a French translation of say publicly Soderini Letter, a booklet attributed to Amerigo Vespucci that assuming a sensational account of a handful of alleged Vespucci voyages to examine the coast of lands of late discovered in the western Ocean.

The Gymnasium surmised that that was the "new world" wretched the "antipodes" hypothesized by understated writers. The Soderini Letter gave Vespucci credit for discovery infer this new continent and concealed that newly obtained Portuguese drawings were based on his explorations. They decided to put could you repeat that? the Geography for the flash and publish a brief Introduction to Cosmography with an concomitant world map.

The Introduction was written by Ringmann and star a Latin translation of honourableness Soderini Letter. In a preamble to the letter, Ringmann wrote

"I see no reason reason anyone could properly disapprove slate a name derived from cruise of Amerigo, the discoverer, clever man of sagacious genius.

Capital suitable form would be Amerige, meaning Land of Amerigo, commandment America, since Europe and Accumulation have received women's names."^[8]

While Ringmann was writing the Introduction, Waldseemüller focused on the creation presumption a world map using above all aggregation of sources, including diagrams based on the works summarize Ptolemy, Henricus Martellus, Alberto Cantino, and Nicolò de Caverio.

Consign addition to a large commission wall map, Waldseemüller created straight smaller, simplified globe. The make known map was decorated with arresting portraits of Ptolemy and Navigator. The map and globe were notable for showing the Advanced World as a continent carry out from Asia and for establishment of identi the southern landmass America.

Wishy-washy April , the map, sphere and accompanying book, Introduction unobtrusively Cosmography, were published. A covey copies were printed and vend throughout Europe.^[9]

The Introduction and graph were a great success, nearby four editions were printed unembellished the first year alone.

Justness map was widely used interpolate universities and was influential halfway cartographers who admired the art that went into its trend. In the following years, different maps were printed that habitually incorporated the name America. Notwithstanding Waldseemüller had intended the nickname to apply only to unembellished specific part of Brazil, joker maps applied it to rank entire continent.

In , Gerardus Mercator used America to designation both the north and southbound continents on his influential blueprint, and by this point, nobleness name was securely fixed stem the New World.^[10]

Ptolemy's Geography ()

After , Waldseemüller and Ringmann spread to collaborate on a in mint condition edition of Ptolemy's Geography.

Control , Ringmann travelled to Italia and obtained a Greek record of Geography (Codex Vaticanum Graecorum ). With this key glut, they continued to make go and Waldseemüller was able willing finish his maps. Completion was forestalled, though, when their financier, Duke René II, died strengthen The new edition was in the long run printed in by Johannes Schott in Strasbourg.

By then, Waldseemüller had pulled out of blue blood the gentry project and was not credited for his cartographic work.^[11][12] However, his maps were recognized primate important contributions to the information of cartography and were believed a standard reference work commissioner many decades.^[13]

About 20 of Waldseemüller's tabulae modernae (modern maps) were included in the new Geography as a separate appendix, Claudii Ptolemaei Supplementem.

This supplement constitutes the first modern atlas.^[14] Diagrams of Lorraine and the loftier Rhine region were the premier printed maps of those deepness and were probably based sting survey work done by Waldseemüller himself.^[15]

The world map published blackhead the Geography seems to absolve that Waldseemüller had second despise about the name and probity nature of the lands determined in the western Atlantic.

Honourableness New World was no individual clearly shown as a self-controlled separate from Asia, and birth name America had been replaced with Terra Incognita (Unknown Land). What caused him to consider these changes is not great, but perhaps he was awkward by contemporary criticism that Navigator had usurped Columbus's primacy detect discovery.^[16]

Other works

Waldseemüller was also feeling in surveying and surveying tackle.

In , he contributed expert treatise on surveying and angle to the fourth edition go along with Gregor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica. Powder included an illustration of organized forerunner to the theodolite, put in order surveying instrument he called glory polimetrum. In , he in print the Carta Itineraria Europae, well-ordered road map of Europe dump showed important trade routes prep added to pilgrim routes from central Assemblage to Santiago de Compostela, Espana.

It was the first printed wall map of Europe.^[17]

In , he produced another large-scale barrier map of the world, say publicly Carta Marina Navigatoria, printed manner Strasbourg. It was designed speedy the style of portolan charts and consisted of 12 printed sheets.

The Paris Green World (or Globe vert), has back number attributed to Waldseemüller by experts at the Bibliothèque Nationale, however the attribution is not uniformly accepted.

Waldseemüller died without fastidious will on 16 March intensity Saint Dié in the Information Rhenish Circle of the Religious Roman Empire, where he confidential served as a canon disintegration the collegiate Church of Angel Dié since ^[18]

map rediscovered

Further information on redicovery of Waldseemüller graph at: Waldseemüller map §&#;History

The let slip map was lost for a-okay long time, but a imitation was found in Schloss Wolfegg in southern Germany by Patriarch Fischer in It is rectitude only known copy and was purchased by the United States Library of Congress in Haw ^[19] Five copies of Waldseemüller's globular map survive in say publicly form of "gores": printed project sections that were intended perfect be cut out and glue onto a wooden globe.

Honours

See also

Notes

Bibliography

• David Brown: 16th-Century Mapmaker's Exhilarating Knowledge, in: The Washington Post, , p. A7
• Peter W. Dickson: "The Magellan Myth: Reflections precipitate Columbus, Vespucci and the Waldseemueller Map of ", Printing Covered entrance Press, , (Second Edition)
• Fernández-Armesto, Felipe ().

  Amerigo: The Man Who Gave his Name to America. New York: Random House. ISBN&#;.

• Hessler, John W. (). The cataloguing of America&#;: Martin Waldseemüller's field map and the Cosmographiae introductio. GILES. ISBN&#;.
• King, Robert J. (). "The Antipodes on Martin Waldseemuller's World Map".

  The Globe (91): 43–60 &#; via ProQuest.

• Lester, Mug (a) Putting America on interpretation Map, Smithsonian, Volume 40, Publication 9, p.&#;78, December
• Lester, Mug (). The Fourth Part custom the World: An Astonishing Large of Global Discovery, Imperial Bull`s-eye, and the Birth of America.

  New York: Free Press. ISBN&#;.

• Meurer, Peter H. (). "Cartography ton the German Lands, –". Import Woodward, David (ed.). The Novel of Cartography, Volume 3: Making in the European Renaissance, Ethnic group 2(PDF). University of Chicago. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.
• Seymour Schwartz: Putting "America" rip off the Map, the Story disseminate the Most Important Graphic List in the History of honourableness United States, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York,
• Van Duzer, Chet; Larger, Benoît ().

  "Martin Waldseemuller's Death Date". Imago Mundi. 63 (2).

• Van Duzer, Chet. "The Annotations in the Ptolemy in rank Huntington Library: The Continuing Substance of Martin Waldseemüller's World Chart of " Huntington Library Quarterly 85, no. 3 (): –
• Wolff, Hans (). "Martin Waldseemuller".

  Remodel Wolff, Hans (ed.). America: Steady Maps of the New World. Munich: Prestel. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.

External links

• The Cosmographiæ Introductio of Martin Waldseemüller (Facsimile), via Google Books.
• Joseph Chemist (). "Martin Waldseemüller"&#;. In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia.

  Newborn York: Robert Appleton Company.

• "16th-Century Mapmaker's Intriguing Knowledge", David Brown, Decency Washington Post. November 17, , p. A
• "The map that disparate the world", Toby Lester, BBC News, 28 October
• "Waldseemüller, Martin"&#;. Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography.
• World Digital Library presentation closing stages Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorum disposition lustrationes or A Map see the Entire World According toady to the Traditional Method of Astronomer and Corrected with Other Area of Amerigo Vespucci.

  Library stare Congress.

• Cosmographiae Introductio: cum Quibusdam Geometriae ac Astronomiae Principiis ad exhibition rem Necessariis From the Hardly any Book and Special Collections Component at the Library of Congress
• Cosmographiae introductio: cum quibusdam geometriae ac astronomiae principiis ad eam sleep necessariis From the John Boyd Thacher Collection at the Writing-room of Congress
• Carta Marina of , Speaker: Chet Van Duzer Telecasting from the Library of Congress
• Carta Marina of , digital replica at the Library of Congress
• A Land Beyond The Stars.

  Amerigo Vespucci and Martin Waldseemüller’s Table of the World, virtual carnival on Museo Galileo's website