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The Cantino planisphere or world map is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese geographic discoveries in the east and west. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for the Duke of Ferrara, who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502. The map is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast, discovered in 1500 by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, and for depicting the African coast of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans with a remarkable accuracy and detail. It was valuable at the beginning of the sixteenth century because it showed detailed and up-to-date strategic information in a time when geographic knowledge of the world was growing at a fast pace. It contains unique historical information about the maritime exploration and the evolution of nautical cartography. The Cantino planisphere is the earliest extant nautical chart where places (in Africa and parts of Brazil and India) are depicted according to their astronomically observed latitudes. ==History== In the beginning of the 16th century, Lisbon was a buzzing metropolis where people from diverse backgrounds came in search of work, glory or fortune. There were also many undercover agents looking for the secrets brought by the Portuguese voyages to remote lands. Among them was Alberto Cantino, who was sent to Portugal by the Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, with the formal intention of horse trading, while secretly collecting information on the Portuguese Discoveries. Cantino’s diligence is shown in two of his letters to the Duke, dated from 17th and 18 October 1501, where he describes, amongst other things, hearing Gaspar Corte-Real detailing his latest voyage to Newfoundland (Terra Nova) to King Manuel I of Portugal. A popular theory, introduced in the earliest studies of the map,〔Duarte Leite (1923), 225-32〕 suggests that the Cantino Planisphere was ordered to an official Portuguese mapmaker, who made a copy of the royal cartographic pattern, the so-called ''Padrão Real'', kept in the ''Armazéns da Índia''. However, there is no historical evidence that such order was ever made and the theory is weakened by the presence of numerous mistakes. One would expect a carefully made copy of an official standard, if it existed in Portugal at that time, would be accurate.〔Gaspar (2012), 181-82〕 A more plausible explanation is that the map was surreptitiously acquired shortly after it was made for some nobleman or official client.〔Gaspar (2010), 182; 195〕 From a letter sent by Cantino to its patron, the Duke of Ferrara, on the 19th of November 1502, we know that he paid 12 golden ducats for it, which was a considerable amount for the time. An Italian inscription in the back of the map reads: ''Carta de navigar per le Isole nouam trovate in le parte de India: dono Alberto Cantino al S. Duca Hercole'', which translates as 'Navigational chart of the islands recently ()... in part of the Indies: from Alberto Cantino to Duke Hercole'. While it enlightened the Italians to many new territories yet unknown to them, it was obsolete within months due to subsequent mapping voyages by the Portuguese. Nevertheless, its importance to the Portuguese–Italian trade relations should not be understated; this map provided the Italians with knowledge of Brazil's coastline and that of much of the Atlantic Coast of South America long before other nations even knew South America extended so far to the south. It also supplied great details of the Indian Ocean. It also maps the east coast of North America, at least from Florida to New York, and includes descriptive place names such as Rio de las Almadias (River of Rafts), which describes the unique vegetation rafts in the St. Johns River in Florida. Others argue that this peninsula was actually intended to represent part of China, Cuba, or the Yucatan Peninsula. The geographical information given on the Cantino map was copied into the Italian-made Canerio (or Caveri) map shortly after the Cantino map arrived in Italy and the Canerio, in turn, became the primary source for the design of the newly discovered western lands on the highly influential wall map of the world produced by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 under the auspices of Rene, Duke of Lorraine. This old map, made-up by 6 glued parchment sheets, was kept in the Ducal Library, Ferrara, for about 90 years, until Pope Clement VIII transferred it to another palace in Modena, Italy. More than two centuries later, in 1859, the palace was ransacked and the Cantino Map lost. It was found by Giuseppe Boni, Director of the Biblioteca Estense, in that same year, in a butcher’s store in Modena. The Cantino world map can currently be found in Modena, Italy, at the Biblioteca Estense. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cantino planisphere」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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