Freducci Map

The Freducci map is an Italian portolan chart of the Atlantic Ocean depicting portions of both the Old and New Worlds, drafted in Ancona in 1514–1515 or in the first half of the 16th century by Conte di Ottomanno Freducci. It is regarded as the earliest map of Florida, and one of the earliest non-Amerindian maps of northern Central America. It is now held at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze in Florence.

Background

Details of the map's creation are not certain, other than that it was signed by Conte di Ottomanno Freducci in Ancona sometime during the first half of the 16th century. The map, thought to have been held 'for a long time' in the private archives of the Istituto de' Bardi, was in 1891 deposited in the public Archivio di Stato di Firenze. It was first brought to scholarly attention by Eugenio Casanova's 1894 monograph, ''La carta nautica''.

Contents

The map encompasses parts of both the Old and New Worlds. Of the former is included Western Europe (from Gdańsk to Naples) and Africa (from Ras Amusa, in Tripolitania, to the Bight of Benin, on the Slave Coast). Of the New World are (imperfectly) charted the Atlantic coasts of North and South America between 50º N and 15º S, approximately (from Newfoundland to ''rio da bestrelas'', past Porto Seguro, Bahía).

Toponyms are written in black, except where they were deemed to be of greater importance, in which case they were marked in vermilion ink.

The map features a 32-wind compass rose, a windrose network with a central ring of 16 vertices, two scales on a legend (no indication of the unit of measurement), and a rectilinear series of small numbered discs (through the Azores, along the Tordesillas meridian) marking the latitudes from 60º N to 15º S. The map is signed in the legend, but the date marked therein has been shorn off, and therefore lost.

Analysis

Dating

Since damage to the parchment has resulted in loss of the map's date, it has taken a bit of work to infer one. Casanova proposed to date the map by inference from extrinsic and intrinsic characteristics. Among the former is the map's author, whose birth and death would place lower and upper bounds on the map's date of creation. Among the intrinsic factors are the geographical features charted and toponyms marked in the map, which would place a lower bound before which the map could not have been created.

Freducci lived from the last quarter of the 15th to the first half of the 16th centuries, and was active as a cartographer at least during 1497–1539. One of his relatives, Angelo Freducci, produced an atlas in 1556 whose New World coastlines closely match those of this map. Casanova deems it more likely that Angelo copied Freducci rather than vice versa, thus accepting 1556 as the upper bound for the map's creation. The 1513 Ponce de Leon discovery of Florida is the latest one evident in the map, with the 1513 Balboa discovery of the Gulf of San Miguel being the earliest one omitted, according to Casanova. Assuming news of these discoveries did not take too long in reaching Freducci, Casanova proffers a creation date in 1513–1516 as acceptable, with one in 1514–1515 as probable.

Recently, some scholarship has pushed the map's probable creation date past 1515, however. For instance, of the 19 toponyms in and about Florida, Peck traces only six of them back to the 1513 Ponce de Leon voyage, noting that the remaining 13 'can easily be traced to much later voyages and later cartography.' Similarly, Peck identifies in the map geographical features of Florida which were not discovered until 1513, like Lake Okeechobee, the St Lucie River, the Thousand Islands, and Cape Canaveral. Some historians also contend that the delineation of Newfoundland on the map is post-1519, and the toponyms are after about 1525.

Distortion

New World coasts and features in the northern hemisphere are shifted a number of degrees north from their true location, with an even greater northerly shift than that in contemporaneous maps. For instance, the ''portos de las igueas'' in the Bay of Honduras is placed at 28º 15' N, despite contemporaries placing it at 14º 30' N and 15º 30' N. Similarly, ''cavo de graba dios'' is laid at 21º N, whereas others placed it at 13º 30' N, 14º N, and 15º N. In contrast, New World coasts and features in the hemisphere are shifted some degrees from their true position.

Additional non-shift distortions evident in the map include scaling. For instance, the Antilles are enlarged by a factor of circa 1.65 relative to Europe.

Scale

The map's legend provides two scales, but does not indicate a unit of measurement. Casanova, with reference to the latitudes marked at the Tordesillas meridian, assuming each such degree spans 111,111 metres, calculates 1:12,044,444 and 1:6,260,106 for the coarser and finer scales provided in the legend, respectively. He further opines that the Old World was charted to the finer scale, and the New World to the coarser one.

Sources

Casanova argues that the New World portion of the map was not copied from a single source chart, but rather compiled from a myriad such sources. For instance, while the Newfoundland portion of the map is 'exactly similar, point for point,' to that of the 1529 Ribero map, the Florida and Cuba portions are , both being rather unique for the period.

Furthermore, Casanova deems Spanish charts, rather than Portuguese ones, as generally the more influential sources evident in the New World portion of the Freducci map. For instance, the mainland Central and South American coastlines on the Caribbean follow the 'much more exact' Spanish rather than Portuguese maps of the period.

Toponyms

The map's New World toponyms are notably 'very copious and in many parts completely new.' More than three quarters of these are drawn from Spanish sources, with fewer than one quarter of them from Portuguese ones. Most placenames were written proximally to the place they name, however, and some were even misspelt or otherwise corrupted.

Legacy

Casanova deemed the map 'among the most notable cartographic treasures discovered in recent years.' It is regarded as the earliest map to depict Florida, and one of the earliest to depict 'a coastline west of Hispaniola that is recognisable as part of Central America.' It has been studied 'by a considerable number of scholars.'

Tables

Toponyms

See also

* Weimar map, 15th century map attributed to Freducci
* Egerton 2803 maps, early map depicting Central America
* ''Suma de Geographia'', early pilot's manual to New World

Notes and references

Explanatory footnotes

Short citations

Full citations

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16th-century maps and globes
Historic maps of the Americas
History of cartography