Slide #329
TITLE: Ingolstadt/Nordenskiöld Gores
DATE: 1518
AUTHOR: unknown
DESCRIPTION: Printed on a single sheet in two rows of six are twelve
separate woodcut globe gores destined to be mounted on a globe. The famous
scholar Nordenskiöld believed that the map was probably drawn between
1511 and 1515. Other scholars such as Harrisse ascribe the date of 1518
to these globe gores on account of the legend inscribed on the island of
Hispaniola, viz.: lnsula in qua reperitur lignum Guaiacum, which
can not be older than the time when Guaiacum wood began to be known in Germany,
and to be considered as a panacea for lues venerea. Ulrich de Hutten
says that it was in 1517, which is corroborated by Leonard Schmaus, who,
writing in 1518, states that the substance then was scarcely known in Germany.
At all events, Augsburg is the place from which the notion spread in Northern
Europe, apparently through the instrumentality of Paulus Ricius, the physician
of Charles V., then exercising in that city. It was first made known in
print by an anonymous pamphlet published at Augsburg on the 1st of December,
1518; and soon afterwards by the Lucubratincula of Schmaus, issued
apparently from the same press. Ulrich de Hutten's celebrated dissertation,
printed the year following, and so often reprinted, rendered the belief
universal, and made of Guaiacum almost a household word everywhere. It was
followed by a number of works on that substance, printed in France and Germany,
which have singularly enriched the Bibliotheca Medicina.
In this globe there is, as in Canerio, a continental land stretching from
about 12° to 60° north latitude, corresponding with the continent
of North America, and bearing two inscriptions, viz.: Terra Cuba
and Parias. The southern continent assumes a sort of pyramidal form,
and bears the following inscriptions: AMERICA, and Terra Noua
Inuenta est Anno 1497. Those configurations, the peculiar date of 1497,
the distinctive German woodcutting style and the fact that the only two
European cities inscribed are Ingolstadt and Santiago de Compostella (S.
Iacobus), all of which peculiarities, save one, are also noticeable
in the cordiform map of Apianus (1520), render it cerain that the present
globe is either the work of the celebrated Ingolstadt geographer, or that
it proceeds from the prototype whence he has borrowed those data. There
are strong resemblances, particularly in the shape of Africa and in the
selection of placve names, to Sylvanus' map of 1511 (Slide #320.1),
although both are drawn on very different projections. In the gore map the
form of South America closely follows that on Schöner's globe of 1515
(Slide #323 ) but no indication is given of
the extensive antarctic continent clearly displayed on Schöner's globe.
As to the date of 1497, the probability is that it appeared for the first
time in the present gores. It was, doubtless, derived from the accounts
of the first voyage of Americus Vespuccius. Be that as it may, the date
of I497 has prevailed for a long time, even where we least expect to find
it, as, for instance, in an engraved map bearing the name of a Spanish royal
cosmographer of note :
Americæ, sive quartæ orbis partis, nova et exactissima descriptio.
Auct. Diego Gvtiero Philippi regis Hisp Cosmographo. Hiero Cock excuda.
1562.
We read thereon the following inscription:
Quarta hec orbis pars geographis omnibus usque in annum 1497 incognita permansit,
quo tempore iussu Regis Castellæ ab Americo Vespucio inuenta est,
a quo tanquam ab inuentore etiam nomen [accepit?].
We now possess three specimens of those gores, issued from the same plate;
one (ex-Hauslab) in the collection of Prince Liechtenstein at Vienna, a
second in that of Dr. Nordenskiöld, who has facsimiled it, and the
third, in the Geographical Department of the Paris National Library.
LOCATIONS: Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Helsinki, Finland
John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I.
Harvard College Library
REFERENCES:
*Brown, L.A., The World Encompassed, No. 59, Plate XVIII
*Harrisse, H., The Discovery of North America, pp. 496-497, no. 115
*Nordenskiöld, A.E., Facsimile Atlas, p 76, Plate XXXVII
*Shirley, R.W., The Mapping of the World, p. 43, #43
*Stevens, E.L., Terrestrial and Celestrial Globes, pp. 77-78, Figure39
*illustrated