VESPUCCI, AMERIGO. - Navigator, one of the greatest, indeed the greatest among the followers of Columbus, b. in Florence in March 1454, third of four sons of ser Nastagio the notary, d. at Seville on 22 Feb. 1512.
The name, which was destined thereafter to remain forever attached to the New Continent, was traditional in the family. V. received a humanistic education as a youth; in 1479 he accompanied, as a "garzone" [apprentice], a relative of his sent by the Medici as orator to the King of France, and on his return he entered the "banco" [bank] of Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pier Francesco de' Medici, acquiring there the full trust of his principals. These sent him, at the end of 1491, to Seville, where they had an active agency, directed by a certain Giannotto Berardi, which dealt in various businesses but above all, it appears, in the fitting out of ships. Accordingly V. was in all likelihood present at Columbus's return from the first expedition, which Berardi had helped; later he must have collaborated, again with Berardi, in the preparation of a ship for Columbus's second expedition and of others for the third; on this occasion V. and Columbus came to know each other personally. On Berardi's death at the end of 1495 or in the early days of 1496, V. became his executor and thereafter remained the effective head of the Seville agency.
The period in which V. carried out his voyages falls between 1497 and 1504. In the early days of 1505, summoned to the Spanish Court for a consultation on confidential matters, V. was engaged as an expert at the famous Casa de Contratación de las Indias, established two years earlier at Seville, and subsequently in 1508 he was appointed piloto mayor at that same Casa: a very high office and one of great trust, to which was attached the function of examining all pilots and sea captains who aspired to a licence for overseas navigation, and the further one of preparing the official chart of the newly discovered lands and of the routes leading to them (padron real), sifting and coordinating all the elements that pilots and sea captains were obliged to furnish: this chart represented a jealous secret, and its custodian had to be a man of scrupulous conscience and fidelity. This office V., who had obtained Spanish citizenship, held until his death; to his widow, Maria Cerezo, a pension was granted in recognition of the high services rendered by her husband.
On V.'s voyages two series of documents are extant. The first consists of: a letter by V. himself dated from Lisbon 4 Sept. 1504, in the Italian language, addressed perhaps to the gonfaloniere Pier Soderini, printed at Florence in 1505; and two Latin versions or reworkings of that letter put into circulation in print under the title Quatuor Americi navigationes and Mundus Novus; the second series consists of three private letters (that is, not intended for the press) addressed by V. to his patrons Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pier Francesco de' Medici. In the documents of the first series four voyages of V. are spoken of, in those of the second only two. Until a few years ago the documents of the first series were held to be authentic, although the succession of the four voyages gave rise to an infinity of uncertainties and doubts; according to a hypothesis formulated by Alberto Magnaghi, however, those documents would be the result of skilful manipulations (to which V. would have been a stranger) and the only authentic documents would on the contrary be the private letters, so that the established voyages would be reduced to two. The question, fundamental for the evaluation of V.'s work, has given rise to heated polemics and is not yet closed. The attempt to reconcile the two series of documents, repeated even recently by an Argentine historian, R. Levillier, cannot be considered successful.
Certainly authentic is the voyage made by V. between May 1499 and June 1500 as pilot in an expedition of four ships sent by Spain and commanded by Alonso de Ojeda (it is the second expedition of the traditional series). Since V. took part in it as pilot, it must be held as certain that this was not his first trial; but a previous navigation (1497-98), which would have had as its theatre the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coasts from Florida to Chesapeake Bay, seems absolutely impossible to admit as having really taken place.
In the navigation of 1499-1500, V. separated from Ojeda after reaching the coasts of present-day Guiana and sailed southward, discovering the mouths of the Rio de las Amazonas, then proceeded along the coasts of present-day Brazil as far as C. de la Consolación or C. S. Agostino (about 6° S. lat.), then retraced his steps, reached Trinidad, saw the mouths of the Orinoco and rejoined Ojeda's ships at Haiti. The voyage was, from the scientific point of view, of enormous importance: V. believed he had sailed along the coasts of an extreme eastern peninsula of Asia, the one in which Ptolemy placed the commercial emporium of Catticara; indeed he sought the western extremity of that peninsula, the Cape of Catticara, as V. says, after passing which the ships would, according to his ideas, have reached the seas of southern Asia. And as soon as he returned to Spain he set about preparing a new expedition (in competition with the one fitted out at that time by Vasco de Gama) with the objective of reaching the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of the Ganges and the Island of Taprobane. But the Spanish government did not accept V.'s proposals; and toward the end of 1500 he passed, for reasons unknown, into the service of Portugal, and under the auspices of Portugal made a second expedition, which departed from Lisbon on 13 May 1501. After a stop at the Cape Verde Islands the ships crossed the ocean in a south-westerly direction, reached the coasts of Brazil near C. Agostino, discovered (in Jan. 1502) the bay called Rio de Janeiro, and certainly sailed as far as the Rio de la Plata, of which V. must be considered the first discoverer. In all probability a rapid run carried the ships even farther south along the coasts of Patagonia, as far as the Gulf of S. Giuliano or perhaps beyond. The itinerary of the return is unknown. The ships reached Lisbon on 22 July 1502.
Whatever the farthest point reached to the south by V., this navigation has in the history of geographical discoveries a fundamental and decisive importance, in that it rooted in V. himself and spread among the community of the learned the conviction that the newly discovered lands were not part of Asia but constituted a "New World." It is therefore no wonder that in a circle of German scholars at St-Dié in Lorraine, a humanist, Martin Waldseemüller, reprinting in 1507 the Quatuor Americi navigationes, preceded by a brief pamphlet entitled Cosmographiae Introductio, launched the proposal that the new world just revealed be named "ab Americo inventore... Amerigen quasi Americi terram sive Americam." The proposal is also consecrated in a great planisphere by the same Waldseemüller, in which the name America appears for the first time, applied, however, only to South America. The proposal met with a perhaps unexpected success; but the extension of the name to North America is later. In the upper part of the map, corresponding to the hemisphere embracing the Old Continent, there appears the portrait of Ptolemy; corresponding to the one where the New World is delineated, the portrait of V.
Whether he took part in yet another expedition on behalf of the Portuguese government (it is said in the one, highly doubtful, commanded by G. Coelho) is uncertain, indeed improbable. In any case this expedition brought no contribution of new knowledge. Subsequently V. returned to the service of Spain and certainly, in the capacity of piloto mayor, contributed to the preparation of other expeditions, but he took part personally in none of them.
The most diverse judgments have been pronounced on V.: there has been no lack of those who considered him an ignoramus, a forger, a charlatan usurper of other men's minds, etc. To refute these accusations it suffices that Spain entrusted to him, a foreigner, in preference to any fellow countryman, the very high office of piloto mayor, which implies that there were recognized in him eminent scientific and practical qualities in matters of navigation, moral uprightness, and a scrupulousness such that he could be the custodian of materials and elements of exceptional importance and most confidential. Whatever the reasons for his temporary transfer to the service of Portugal, it is certain that the Spanish government held nothing of this against him. The fame of V. is by now definitively established as that of a seaman and navigator of the highest worth, such as to be able to stand on a par with Columbus, who likewise held him, as appears from an autograph letter, in the greatest esteem. The antagonism by which in the past the two great Italians were set in opposition to each other has by now long been definitively settled: to Columbus belongs the incomparable merit of having been the first to cross the western Ocean, held for millennia to be impassable, and of having discovered the lands of the "other shore"; to V. that of having demonstrated that these lands did not belong to Asia, but constituted a new Continent.
V. carried out the survey of the coasts discovered by him and constructed the map of them, but this has been lost, as have the ships' logs. There remain, however, some maps
(besides the one already cited by Waldseemüller) of direct or indirect Vespuccian provenance.
Bibliography8 works
Roberto Almagià