Europe's confused transmutation: the realignment of moral cartography in Juan de la Cosa's Mappa Mundi (1500)

Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the New World of the Americas entered the cartographic and moral consciousness of Europe. In the 1500 mappa mundi of Juan de la Cosa, navigator and map-maker, we see Europe as a hybrid moral entity, a transitional blend of the medieval and the modern at the crossroads between two mappings of Europe. This paper argues that the Juan De la Cosa map represents a blurred transition between map-making traditions and a mixed moral rhetoric of European identity. The De la Cosa map operates across two sets of imagined axes: held horizontally, the map is set to a Ptolemaic grid with Europe straddling the Prime Meridian, and yet when held vertically it presents a medieval moral continuum in which the Americas occupy an ascendant position, a verdant new Jerusalem in contrast to the Babylon of the Old World. Europe is both drawn to the centre of a new world order, and also pushed to the moral margins in an echo of the medieval mappa mundi still imperfectly resolved

Todas as criaturas do mundo: a arte dos mapas como elemento de orientação geográfica

Vague in the outlines and abounding in figures of real or fabulous creatures, the iconography of medieval maps played a significant role in helping users to recognize lands that were virtually unknown to Christendom. In a world with no reliable latitudes and longitudes, the land contours, inhabitants and even certain elements of fauna and flora could become variables of utmost importance for geographic orientation. Notwithstanding the higher levels of precision achieved in their efforts to represent geographic space, the considerable advancements made in latitude determination, and their continuous pursuit of a practical method for the establishment of longitudes, the cartographers of the Age of Discoveries still went to the trouble of depicting notable elements - whether real or imaginary - to help travelers get their bearings around different regions of the globe. As the presence of Europeans continued to expand and an authentic scientific revolution took place in the 17th century, the lengthy notes and eye¿catching representations of nature and local inhabitants soon lost their utility as points of reference on 17th-century maps to become mere accessories of aesthetic and commercial value. The advent of the 18th century consolidated, once and for all, the transformation of such illustrations into essentially decorative elements with no other relevant role to play in mapmaking. In addition to decreasing in number, the figures became more stylized and moved to the borders of the maps as ornamental motifs. Although they often maintained some sort of relation with the geographic space depicted on the map, the motifs chosen could also constitute a rather independent element. In fact, allegories, compositions with a variety of mythological figures, and historical representations were often used to underscore the power of certain political agents

Do oceano dos clássicos aos mares dos impérios: transformações cartográficas do Atlântico sul

This article explores the various place-names given to the geographic localities in the South Atlantic by European cartographers in the 16th and 17th centuries. Despite of the fact that representation of continental space seem to have been more common in mapmaking at the time than the depiction of oceans and seas, oceanic waters often received particular names - regional seas - depending on the coastline in combination to the classical names. A series of connections can be established between this fact and the process of consolidation of slave trading and competition between empires