It is ingeniously argued that the Joannes referred to was none other than John Schöner, who later became famous as mathematician and as map and globe maker, and that the globe referred to by Acciaioli was one in the construction of which the globe gores of Rosselli had been used, since “Joannes teutonicus” in all probability would not have thought of receiving from Italy a manuscript globe.
For the history of globe making as practiced in Florence in these early years, there is in the record of the deliberations of the Florentine Signoria, dated December 30, 1515, an entry of interest.[137] The Priors and Gonfaloniers directed attention to the sphere, which had been placed in the orologia or clock room, noting that the terrestrial orb which had been painted thereon was greatly damaged, “... super qua depicta est figura et situs orbis terrarum ... devastata et male picta.” They expressed a desire that it should be fully repaired and be made suitable as an adornment of the wonderful clock, and in keeping with the remarkable celestial sphere which was placed near by: “ut similis sit et non discrepet, in sua qualitate, a mirabili orologio predicto, et a convicina et mirabili palla, ubi apparet figura et ambitus celi.” Having knowledge of the ability and skill of Friar Giuliano Vannelli, it was decided to entrust the reconstruction to him. We learn that on June 28, 1516, the Signoria directed payment of fifty large florins be made to Friar Giuliano, in addition to the six already paid, for the painted sphere; that on July 17, 1516, the officers of the Monte Comune directed the payment of fifty-six large gold florins to “Don Giuliani Vanegli” “in appreciation of his work, and as a reward for having made one of the two balls of the clock, which is in the large room of the Signoria, which ball he both designed and painted, showing on it the entire universe, according to Ptolemy and other authors who deal with the subject.” Fiorini notes that as at this time the terrestrial sphere was damaged it probably was several years old, and that if badly painted (male picta) the inference is, it failed to record the latest discoveries. If the exact date of the construction of the spheres which adorn this clock cannot be ascertained, it was at least before 1500.[138]
We have further evidence of Vannelli’s interest in globe construction contained in a letter dated Rome, November, 1524, and addressed to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, a legate of Lombardy. “Your Excellency has asked me to make for you a small ball de situ orbis, of the size and character of that of Giovanni Ruccellai.... I have made the said ball, and have varnished it, but the weather being bad it will not be dry for eight or ten days.... Your Excellency also tells me that you would like to have a large globe similar to that of Mons. R. Rodulphis, which I have begun. If you desire that I should go on with the work, I shall willingly do so, putting aside all other work to serve you.”[139]
To the interest in globe making north of the Alps in the first quarter of the sixteenth century attention may next be directed. In a letter written by Johannes Trithemius to Vuilhelmus Veldicus Monapius, dated August 12, 1507, may be found an early allusion to globes. He says: “Orbem terrae marisqui et insularum quem pulchre depictum in Vuormotia scribis esse venalem, me quidem consequi posse obtarum, sed quadraginta pro illo expendere florenos, nemo mihi facile persuadet. Comparavi autem mihi, ante paucos dies, pro aere modico sphaeram orbis pulchram in quantitate parva ...” “I wanted to buy a finely painted globe of the earth, seas, and islands, which I wrote was for sale in Worms, but I could hardly be induced to give such a price for it as forty florins. I purchased, however, a few days since at a low price, a beautiful terrestrial globe of small size.”[140] He wrote further, “Henricum de Bunau dies vita audini defunctum, sed libros eius et globum cosmographiae quem alim comparavit ex officina tua remanisse apud Saxoniae Principes, quod tu existimas non audini.” “I am informed that Henry Bunau died some time ago, but I never heard it said that his books and the cosmographical globe which he bought in your work-shop remained with the Princes of Saxony, as you believe.”[141] It has been thought by some that the globe referred to as having been purchased in Worms was the globe of Waldseemüller.
Since the discovery in 1902 of the long-lost Waldseemüller maps of 1507 and of 1516 by Professor Joseph Fischer, S.J., in the library of Prince de Waldburg-Wolfegg (Fig. [30]), great interest has centered especially in the work of that early German map maker. As the new transatlantic discoveries of the Spanish and the Portuguese greatly quickened interest in geographical science and made necessary the construction of new maps in rapid succession, Germany, already a land in which the renaissance spirit had found an enthusiastic reception, and whose people were awake to every new interest, soon became a center for the spread of information concerning the new regions. Commercially important trade cities of this country had been for some time in intimate touch with the important maritime trade centers of Spain and Portugal. Word of the newest discoveries was quickly carried over the Alps to France and to Germany, and the latest publication of the writer on matters geographical had its references to the parts of the world newly found of which Ptolemy had not known.
Fig. 30. Castle of Prince Waldburg de Wolfegg.
One of the first German geographers of the century, and now justly famed as one of the most distinguished of the period, was Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1470-1522 ca.), whose name, according to the practice of the time, was classicized as Hylacomylus.[142] So significant was the influence of Waldseemüller in the mapping of the New World that a somewhat detailed word concerning him may here well be given. When Duke René of Lorraine (1451-1508) became a patron of learning, with particular interest in cosmography or geography, the cartographical studies of the Germans began to have a place of far-reaching importance. It was under this enlightened duke that the little town of St. Dié became a center of culture. Here was organized the Vosgian Gymnasium,[143] a society of learned men not unlike the Platonic Academy of Florence or the Danubian Society, Vienna. Of this St. Dié coterie none was more prominent than Jean Bassin de Sandacourt,[144] the translator of the ‘Four Voyages’ of Amerigo Vespucci from the French into the Latin, Lud, the ducal secretary and author of an important little work of but few pages, which he called ‘Speculi orbis succinciss ...,’[145] and Waldseemüller, the professor of cosmography, the author of the ‘Cosmographiae Introductio ...,’[146] and a cartographer of great skill, who, with Ringmann, planned and carried well on toward completion, as early as 1507 or 1508, an edition of Ptolemy, which in 1513 was printed in the city of Strassburg.[147] It probably was as early as 1505 that the plan was under consideration for a new translation of Ptolemy from the Greek into the Latin, and that thought perhaps had its inspiration in the letters of Vespucci, in which he gave an account of his four voyages, and in the new chart which but recently had fallen into the hands of Ringmann. These charts, says Lud, in his ‘Speculum,’ came from Portugal, which, if true, leads one to the belief that they exhibited genuine Vespucian data.[148] Whatever the truth concerning the origin of these charts, that determination became a starting point for a most important evolution in cartographical history of the world.[149] In April, 1507, Waldseemüller had written to his friend, Amerbach, in Basel, “Non credo te latere nos Ptholomei cosmographiam, recognitio et adiectis quibusdam novis tabulis impressuros in oppido Divi Deodati.... Solidum quod ad generale Ptholomei paravimus nondum impressum est, erit autem impressum infra mensis spacium.”[150] “I think you know already that I am on the point of printing in the town of St. Dié (Lorraine), the Cosmography of Ptolemy, after having added to the same some new maps.... the globe comprising Ptolemy in general, which we have prepared, is not yet printed, but will be so in a month.” While great interest centers in these “new maps,” prepared for the proposed edition of Ptolemy, a greater interest now centers in the map to which Waldseemüller repeatedly alludes in the years 1507-1511, especially in his ‘Cosmographiae Introductio’ (Fig. [31]), which map it was the good fortune of Professor Joseph Fischer, S. J., to bring to light in the year 1902, as noted above.[151] In the dedication of his little book to the Emperor Maximilian, he says, “Hinc factū est ṽt me libros Ptholomei ad exēplar Grecū quorunda ope p virili recognoscēte & quatuor Americi Vespucii navigationū lustratioēs adiiciēte: totius orbis typū tā in solido q̄ȝplano (velut preuiam quandā ysagogen) p cōmuno studiosorū vtilitate parauerim.”[152] “Therefore studying to the best of my ability and with the aid of several persons, the Books of Ptolemy from a Greek copy, and adding the Relations of the Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, I have prepared for the general use of scholars a map of the whole world, like an introduction, so to speak, both in the solid and on a plane.” Waldseemüller says further, wherein he gives a description of his new map, “Propositum est hoc libello quandam Cosmographie introductionē scribere; quam nos tam in solido q̄ȝ plano depinximus. In solido quidem spacio exclusi strictissime. Sed latius in plano....”[153] “The purpose of this little book is to write a description of the world map, which we have designed, both as a globe and as a projection. The globe I have designed on a small scale, the map on a larger.”