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I. Memoir on a Mappemonde by Leonardo da Vinci, being the earliest Map hitherto known containing the name of America; now in the Royal Collections at Windsor: in a Letter addressed to Augustus Wollaston Franks, Esq., Director

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2012

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Extract

I have had placed in my hands by B. B. Woodward, Esq., F.S.A., the Queen's Librarian, a Map of the World, which he has found in Her Majesty's Library at Windsor, in the collection of papers in the handwriting of Leonardo da Vinci. Mr. Woodward's object in sending it to me was that I might ascertain as nearly as possible the date of its construction, from the nature of the geographical information which it contained. It was evident at a glance that, apart from the value attaching to it from its connection with so illustrious a name as that of Leonardo da Vinci, the map possessed an intrinsic interest in connection with the history of geography and cartography, inasmuch as it not only belonged to a period fertile in geographical discoveries, though scantily represented by maps which have come to our knowledge, but contained delineations of a stage in those discoveries not represented at all in any map with which I am acquainted. Independently of this, it happens to possess some special points of priority of information, which have led me to think it desirable to submit it, with the following notice of its contents, to the attention of the Society of Antiquaries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1866

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References

page 2 note a See Plates I. and II., executed by photo-lithography, and of the same size as the originals.

page 13 note a Nautæ Lusitani partem hanc terræ hujus observarunt et usque ad elevationem poli antarctici 50 graduum pervenerunt, nondum tamen ad ejus finem austrinum.

page 13 note b See Cazal, Corografia Brazilica, tom. i. p. 207.

page 24 note a I do not hesitate to call Leonardo a Florentine, as Vinci, his native place, was but five leagues west of Florence.

page 25 note a The work has been erroneously attributed by Panzer to Henricus Loritus Glaucanus, born in 1488, author of “Geographiæ Liber.” Basil, 1527.

page 28 note a In this word “patragne,” which means “fabulous stories,” in Spanish “patrañnas,” we have an example of Vespucci's Italianized Spanish.

page 28 note b He should have said, “Catullus to Cornelius Nepos.”