AMERIGO VESPUCCI-navigator and cartographer

[Anatol]

Аmerigo Vespucci; (Florence, 1454 - Seville, 1512) Italian navigator whose name would originate the name of the American continent. As is well known, Christopher Columbus died believing that he had reached the Indies, without suspecting that those islands that he had taken possession of in the name of the Crown of Castile belonged to a new continent. A friend of his, Américo Vespucci, was in charge of telling old Europe that the lands found by Columbus were not Asian, but were part of a "fourth pars" of the world to which he would involuntarily give his name. This man, insignificant compared to the great figure of Columbus, also died without knowing the effects of the revolutionary news about him: the posthumous glory, derived from that casual baptism, for him and his lineage.
Amerigo Vespucci was a Florentine who had arrived in Spain as a trade clerk shortly before Columbus's first departure. The banking house of the Medicis sent him to Castile for a commercial mission on behalf of a certain Beraldi, and the Italian settled in the vicinity of the court establishing contacts and planning businesses with some prominent gentlemen. When Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage on March 15, 1493 and spoke of the immense riches found, the commercial houses of Genoa and Venice began to speculate on the possibility of opening new routes for the transport of spices, a highly coveted product at that time. epoch. The Medicis also tried to find out with a view to directing their future business, and possibly the first news of Columbus's feat reached them through the more or less precise letters of Vespucci. Beraldi's sudden death, however, left Américo without an employer and without a livelihood. Thus was born his intention to undertake the voyage himself to the Indies, which he did in 1497 and then in May 1499. In this second expedition, led by Alonso de Ojeda, he followed the route of Columbus's third voyage: on May 4, In 1499, the ships set sail from Puerto de Santa María and, after twenty-five days of navigation, they reached the mouth of the Orinoco, already discovered by Columbus, and began the journey along the coast in a northerly direction.
The geographical characteristics of the low and flooded coast, as well as the accidents prior to the entrance to Lake Maracaibo, reminded Américo Vespucci of Venice and, for this reason, he called those lands Venezuela or Little Venice. Ojeda's expedition continued its exploration until it reached Cabo de Vela, in present-day Colombia, and cartographers fixed part of the outline of the discovered lands for the first time. Upon his return, Vespucci continued his informative work for the Medicis and, it seems, he set out to undertake new voyages. Although the authenticity of his subsequent expeditions has been questioned by numerous historians, Vespucci himself reports two more in his letters. On his third trip, at the service of the King of Portugal, he claims to have paid for Brazil and returned to Lisbon in July 1502; and in the fourth, also on behalf of the Portuguese, he must have toured the Brazilian coasts again at the end of 1503, confirming his suspicions that that continent was not Asia. The truth is that in 1504 the booklet Mundus Novus (New World) was published in Augsburg, where a letter from Vespucci to Lorenzo de Médicis was reproduced in which he narrated his travels, and the following year his second work, Lettera di Amerigo, was printed. Vespucci delle isole nuovamente ritrovate in quattro suoi viaggi, in which he expressed his conviction that new lands existed between Europe and Asia.
Such extraordinary revelations fascinated the German cosmographer Martin Waldseemüller, who decided to publish Vespucci's letters in 1507 together with his Cosmographiae Introductio. In this work he included the portraits of Ptolemy and Vespucci, and in his preface he wrote: "Now that those parts of the world have been extensively examined and another quarter discovered by Amerigo Vespucci, I see no reason why we should not call it America, it is In other words, the land of Americo, its discoverer, as well as Europe, Africa and Asia were named after women." The name of America began to spread and flood everything. Shortly before, in 1505, Amerigo Vespucci had become Américo Vespucci when he was granted naturalization in the kingdoms of Castilla y León. His fame as a sailor and merchant had grown considerably, to the point of leading him to participate in the Junta de Burgos alongside sailors, discoverers and cartographers as illustrious as Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, Juan Díaz de Solís and Juan de la Cosa in 1507, and be appointed senior pilot of the House of Recruitment the following year.
At his death in 1512, the New World had definitely become America. After a few years, Waldseemüller heard about the true discoverer of the fourth continent and wanted to correct his mistake in a new edition of his work that saw the light of day in 1516. It was too late: almost a quarter of a century had passed since the discovery of America, the The pace of the explorations was frantic and no one listened to him. Only one piece of American land adopted the surname of the pioneer admiral: Colombia. At the beginning of the 19th century, Simón Bolívar dreamed of a vast country called Gran Colombia and tried unsuccessfully to bring his dream to life. It would have been a moderate compensation for the man who starred in the most dazzling epic of the Modern Era, but fate did not allow it either.
See also viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6213.
Mocambique 2012; 50000MT;Ms.(3x30000)MT;Ms.
Grenada 2012;(3x3$);Ms.
Dominica 2012; 5$;Ms.
PMR 2012; [P].
Source: https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biogra ... spucio.htm.