TOSCANELLI DAL POZZO, PAOLO (Paulus Florentinus). - Mathematician, astronomer, geographer, born in Florence in 1397 and died there on 10 May 1482.
He studied in Padua with his brother Piero, obtaining his doctorate in 1424; he then returned to Florence where he was enrolled in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, though there is no evidence that he practiced medicine. A humanist of vast learning, he was on friendly and scholarly terms with F. Bruno, in antiquity, C. Landino, P. Bracciolini, L. B. Alberti, Nicholas of Cusa, G. Müller (Regiomontanus), and other scholars. His mathematical and astronomical works are lost (as is one on agriculture); a manuscript survives containing valuable observations on comets, entirely original, which alone would suffice to establish his reputation, which was unanimously recognized and attested by his contemporaries. With a gnomon constructed in Santa Maria del Fiore, he succeeded in determining the obliquity of the ecliptic. Toscanelli was also a geographer, no longer strictly bound to Ptolemaic tradition but eager to keep abreast of the results of contemporary voyages and navigations, as evidenced by his interrogations of people who came to Florence from distant lands: Tartars from the Don, Ethiopians who arrived for the Council of 1441, etc.
But his best-known geographical speculations are those that led him to propose to the Portuguese court (through an ecclesiastic he had met during a stay in Rome) a plan to reach the Indies, i.e., East Asia, by sailing directly from the Iberian coasts westward across the Atlantic Ocean. The plan, presented to Portugal in 1474 along with a demonstrative map, was not adopted, but later it would serve as the basis for Columbus’s initiatives. The question has given rise to endless controversies among modern critics. It can now be considered certain that Toscanelli’s plan existed, as did the map (now lost; its identification with an anonymous map preserved in Florence lacks substance) that accompanied II. It is also certain that Columbus knew Toscanelli’s plan, though direct correspondence between the two seems unlikely.