VERRAZANO, Giovanni. - Florentine navigator, born around 1485 into a family originally from the Val di Greve; killed on an expedition in 1528.
Nothing is known of his youth, except that, having early devoted himself to travel, he had long resided in Cairo and other places in the Levant. By at least 1522 he was established in France, and in 1524 he undertook, at the behest of King Francis I, a memorable expedition along the coasts of North America, about which—other documents having been lost—there survives an important letter-report from the navigator to the Sovereign, sent in copy also to a Florentine merchant settled in Lyon and by him transmitted to Florence. The purpose of the expedition was to find a passage to reach Cathay, that is, northern China, by a route shorter than the one, now known to be extremely long, taken by Magellan across the Pacific.
Of the four ships that were to make up the expedition, only one remained, the *Delfina*, which secretly departed from a deserted rock near Madeira on 17 January 1524, and, having reached the coasts of present-day Carolina on 7 March, after a brief push southward, sailed the entire coastline up to near Cape Breton, venturing into numerous jagged inlets and making frequent stops (among them in the Bay of New York, for which the first exact description is provided). During the long voyage it was even believed that the westward passage had been glimpsed in the lagoon region now called Pamilico Sound: indeed, some maps, which, together with the aforementioned report, constitute our only authentic sources, hypothetically represent a strait there. The *Delfina* was back in France, at Dieppe, in the early days of July 1524. Verrazano’s navigation provided definitive proof that the lands discovered across the Atlantic formed a single mass, from the Arctic Circle to the Strait of Magellan, entirely isolated from the Old World; hence its exceptional importance.
Verrazano also captained a second transoceanic expedition that set out in 1528, about which, however, very little is known. It seems that it was bound for the Caribbean Sea and Darién, and that Verrazano met his death on an unidentified islet, massacred and devoured by the natives. The horrendous scene, it is said, was witnessed from afar by his brother Gerolamo, also a navigator and cartographer, author, among other works, of a great planisphere in which the discoveries of his brother are represented (Bibl. Apost. Vaticana).