Visconte Maggiolo
Visconte Maggiolo (1478 – after 1549), also spelled Maiollo and Maiolo, was a Genoese cartographer.
He was born in Genoa and maybe he was a fellow sailor of explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. In 1511 he moved to Naples, where he produced three extant nautical atlases.<ref>Template:Cite book, p.162</ref> Some historians say that he died of malaria in 1530; but archival documents show that he was still alive, in Genoa, at least in 1549, although he certainly was already dead in 1561.<ref>Astengo, 2007, p. 72</ref>
In 1527, he created a map depicting Verrazzano's travels. This map had a major error (the eponymous "Verrazzano Sea" and "Verrazzano Isthmus", which depicted a large sea, believed to be the Pacific Ocean, across a narrow isthmus on the eastern coast of North America) as Verrazzano did not accurately describe the North American continent.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This error continued to show up in maps for over a century. A copy of this 1527 map was destroyed during World War II.<ref>"Geographical News". The Geographical Review. Volume XLI (1), January 1951, page 167. "It has been learned with much regret that the manuscript world chart of Vesconte de Maiollo, 1527, in the Ambrosiana Library and Art Gallery in Milan, Italy, (the Biblioteca Ambrosiana)was lost through war damage. A number of libraries, including the American Geographical Society Library at UW Milwaukee, have a full size reproduction of the famous map that was issued in 1905 by the Hispanic Society of America."</ref>
There are numerous portolan charts, atlases and at least two other world maps made by Vesconte Maggiolo: one dated Genoa, 1531;<ref>Astengo, 2007, p. 73: 14: “Vesconte de maiollo [SIC] composuit hanc cartam In Janua anno dominy 1531 die VIII novembri”.</ref> another kept at a public library in Treviso (in Italian), is dated Genoa, 1549.
Although he specialized in the mapping of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, Maggiolo was the first to report in his atlas of 1548 the toponym of the South American river Rio de Amaxones.<ref name="l925">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
GalleryEdit
- Maggiolo Italy as far as the mouth of the Tiber River, western Sicily, and the Adriatic coast.jpg
Italy, western Sicily and the Adriatic coast
- Maggiolo North Africa, Europe, and part of Asia.jpg
North Africa, Europe and part of Asia
- Maggiolo Africa, Asia, Europe, and the northeast extremity of the New World.jpg
Africa, Asia, Europe and part of the New World
- Maggiolo Atlantic coast of Africa and Europe, the British Isles, and Iceland, including the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores.jpg
Atlantic coast of Africa and Europe, the British Isles, and Iceland
- Maggiolo Cosmographical planisphere, with Africa, Asia, and Europe in the center.jpg
Cosmographical planisphere, with Africa, Asia, and Europe in the center
- Maggiolo Dedication leaf and Map of the island of Corsica.jpg
Dedication leaf and map of Corsica
- Maggiolo Greek Islands and the Aegean Sea.jpg
Greek Islands and the Aegean Sea
- Maggiolo west coast of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to 17⁰ south, including the Cape Verde Islands, and the Atlantic islands of São Tomé, Príncipe, and Annobón.jpg
West coast of Africa, including Cape Verde Islands, São Tomé, Príncipe, and Annobón
- Maggiolo western Mediterranean.jpg
Western Mediterranean
- Maggiolo Map of Western Hemisphere.tif
Western hemisphere
See alsoEdit
- Egerton 2803 maps, portolan atlas attributed to Maggiolo
ReferencesEdit
Notes Template:Reflist
Bibliography
- Navigazione e carte nautiche nei secoli XIII-XVI, Genova, SAGEP, 1983.
- Corradino Astengo, Der genuesische Kartograph V. M. und sein Werk, in ‘’Cartographica Helvetica’’, 1996, n. 13, pp. 9-17.
- Corradino Astengo, La cartografia nautica mediterranea dei secoli XVI e XVII, Genova 2000, pp. 80-88 e 149-192.
- Corradino Astengo, "The Renaissance Chart Tradition in the Mediterranean", in The History of Cartography, Volume Three (Part 1): Cartography in the European Renaissance, Edited by David Woodward, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 174-262.
- Corradino Astengo, "Vesconte Maggiolo (alias Vesconte de Maiolo, Vesconte de Maiollo", in Cartografi in Liguria (secoli XIV-XIX) a cura di Massimo Quaini, Genova, Brigati, 2007, pp. 72–75.