Chapter VII
Globes of the Second Quarter of the Sixteenth Century
Globes indicating (a) an Asiatic connection of the New World, (b) globes expressing a doubt of such Old World connection, (c) globes showing an independent position of the New World.—Franciscus Monachus.—Hakluyt’s reference.—The Gilt globe.—Parmentier.—Francesco Libri.—Nancy globe.—Globes of Gemma Frisius.—Robertus de Bailly.—Schöner globe of 1533.—Scheipp.—Furtembach.—Paris Wooden globe.—Vopel globes.—Santa Cruz.—Hartmann gores.—Important globe of Ulpius.—Cardinal Bembo’s globes.—Mercator’s epoch-making activity.—Fracastro.—Ramusio’s references to globes.—Gianelli.—Florence celestial globe.
AS in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, so in the second we find engraved brass and copper globes, globes with manuscript maps, and those with printed or engraved gore maps. Since the latter in this period have especially found favor, attention is more and more directed toward the shaping of the segments or gores with that mathematical nicety which, as previously stated, would admit of a perfect or almost perfect adjustment when they were applied to the surface of a prepared ball.
To the independent position of the New World as represented on the globe maps prior to 1525 attention has been called in the preceding chapter, but the idea of such independence, it may here be noted, is one contrary to that very generally though erroneously entertained by historians who have written of the period, an error doubtless in large measure due to a failure on their part to give proper heed to the record of the maps as expressing the geographical notions commonly accepted. Harrisse has well stated the case in referring to the geographical opinions of the earliest explorers, observing that the moment search began for a waterway leading from Oceanus Occidentalis to Oceanus Orientalis, that moment opinion began to become conviction that a new continental region had been found, that a New World had been discovered,[198] and practically all of the early explorers had hope of finding such a waterway. It is very true that more than two hundred years passed from Columbus’ day before there was positive proof of an independence of the newly found land, but the earliest map makers outlined it as if believing in its independence of an Old World or Asiatic connection.[199] The so-called Bartholomew Columbus sketch maps,[200] probably drawn in the first decade of the sixteenth century (Fig. [47]), alone can be cited, among the maps of any particular importance in the first quarter of this century, as distinctly indicating a belief in an Asiatic connection. Attention was likewise called in the preceding chapter to the fact that toward the close of the century’s first quarter the idea that a veritably independent new continent had been found was beginning to be doubted.[201] This doubt seemed to follow close upon the publication of the report of Magellan’s expedition.[202] It indeed appears to be generally accepted that to the report of that remarkable circumnavigation, to the letters of Cortes respecting his Mexican expedition,[203] and to the failure of his and of other Spanish attempts to find a strait north of the equator through which one might pass from Oceanus Occidentalis to Oceanus Orientalis,[204] the changed conception of the geography of the New World was due.
Fig. 47. Bartholomew Columbus Sketch Map, 1506.