The Italians and the Creation of America (Published Catalogue)

The prominent part played by Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and the other Italians involved with new geographical discoveries is not an historical coincidence. The great explorers flourished in a society and a culture which produced attitudes and skills which these talented men required.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Italian city-republics had developed economies that generated surplus capital. Such inventions as double-entry bookkeeping and letters of credit enabled Italian bankers to manage money and direct it to constructive and profitable use.

Europeans eagerly sought Italian capital, and Italian merchants and bankers were attracted to all the commercial centers of the West. But investments made beyond their own jurisdictions were dangerous: not only were there normal commercial risks, but they lacked political protection beyond their own city. Intelligence and training were required for survival: Italian businessmen were trained to calculate instantly, judge shrewdly, observe broadly, and reason acutely. These skills—-the genius of Italy— permeated all levels of cultures: they were as much a part of the manner in which Italians looked at paintings as they were of Italian methods of looking at new lands and new maps.

The geographical questions that Columbus asked represent the culmination of an intellectual process that had begun and flourished in Italy. Columbus had read the books of Marco Polo and Pius II (from whom he learned his Ptolemy) as well as those of other geographers. He had obtained a copy of a letter written in 1474 by Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli, the leading Florentine geographer, who thought a western ocean passage to China was feasible. He knew merchants and pilots who had sailed the African coast. From his reading and discussion Columbus became convinced that Asia could be reached by sailing to the West. Ships and navigation had advanced to such a point that long oceanic voyages became possible. In the summer of 1492 Spain’s political situation enabled the release of funds to pay for the ships Columbus needed. He had the opportunity of proving his theory. When he encountered land where he had projected Japan to be, Columbus believed that he had demonstrated his idea to be correct.

Amerigo Vespucci may not have been the first to realize that a new continent had been discovered, but his letters were the first revelations of that startling fact that were read by a large audience throughout Europe. The letters attracted readers not only because of the news of a New World, but because of their vivid descriptions of the cannibalism and sexual promiscuity of the natives. Vespucci placed himself at the center of action and attention and this brought him rapid and lasting fame, but it also makes him, in Samuel Eliot Morison’s words, “the most controversial character in the history of discovery.”

Vespucci was born in Florence in 1451 of a leading family and worked for the Medici bank from his youth. In 1491 the bank sent him to work in its Seville affiliate where he was a merchant banker and ship chandler. As chandler, at the port from which Columbus and all the following Spanish voyagers to America set sail and to which they returned, Vespucci had detailed information about the earliest voyages of discovery. Vespucci made three voyages to America. In 1499 he accompanied a Spaniard, Alonso de Hojeda, who sailed along the Spanish Main. Then, forbidden to sail in a Spanish ship, he went out as a member of two Portuguese fleets both commanded by Gonçalo Coelho in 1501-1502 and again in 1503. What makes Vespucci so controversial is that he claimed to have made an earlier voyage, in 1497—a voyage which only his keenest partisans have believed ever took place. Furthermore, he wrote as if he had led the three voyages he did go on—he gave credit to no one but himself, and this discredited him among his contemporaries beginning with Sebastian Cabot in 1515.

The discovery of a new world broke down centuries-old concepts which Europeans held concerning the earth they lived on. As ideas about the relationship of the parts of the earth changed, so did ideas of the place of an individual on the earth and in the cosmos. This required adjustments not merely in geographical thinking but in metaphysical, political, and religious attitudes as well. This section includes books which reveal the way in which Italian thinkers confronted the breakdown of old ideas and worked to replace them with new.

Information about the New World reached Italy in many ways: through travelers’ stories, personal letters, reports by merchants, dispatches of Italian ambassadors to European courts (and of their spies), reports of missionaries to their superiors. The first writers to assimilate the information on America and to present it to the public were Italians.

The letters of Columbus and Vespucci are the best-known Italian personal narratives of the discovery period but by no means the only ones. Besides the three described below, this catalogue also contains the account of Verrazzano found in Ramusio’s 1556 collection of voyages.

News tended to gravitate to Italy during the fifteenth century, and Italy was a conduit through which much of the news of America passed to the rest of Europe. Northern Europeans often learned of Spanish activities through Italian translations such as the early account of the conquest of Peru which follows.

Columbus's reputation, at first eclipsed by the fame of Vespucci, steadily improved once it was realized that the Indies of Columbus were Vespucci’s Mundus Novus. Fifty years after his death Columbus was recognized as a hero. The following works represent some of the stages of his elevation.

It took several generations to gain the perspective to appreciate the significance of Columbus and his discoveries and still longer for them to be celebrated in verse. Leicester Bradner, now Professor of English Emeritus at Brown University, has studied sixteenth-century Latin poems using Columbus as a theme.

Vespucci's reputation in the sixteenth century declined as Columbus’s rose. There was no biography of him written then—none in fact until Angelo Maria Bandini published Vita e lettere at Florence in 1745. In such works as Leandro Alberti's Descrittione Di Tutta Italia (the Library has the first edition, Bologna, 1550) the man who is known above all for his first name is mentioned as the prominent Florentine Alberigo Vespucci. Florentines were most concerned with the memory of Vespucci. The following group of poems are all by Florentines; Bandini and Stanislao Canovai, who took up Amerigo’s cause in the eighteenth century, were Florentine as well.

The discovery of America had significant medical ramifications. New diseases were encountered here, although Europeans, hardened by over a century of bouts with the plague, carried with them many more to America. Oceanic travel presented health hazards and spread diseases across the seas. New medicinal plants were found in America and helped solve some medical problems.

Italian physicians were involved in solving some of the problems and disseminated some of the medicines. This is to be expected as Italian medical schools, traditionally the best in Europe, made enormous contributions to advances in the whole range of medical science during the period 1500-1800. The following section is a sampling with two books on an American disease, syphilis, and two on an American medicine, quinine.

The seventeenth century was a period of consolidation, growth, and expansion for the missionary orders. By this time they had reached to all parts of Spanish, Portuguese, and French America. Italians were involved as missionaries in all orders and in all regions, and their work and writings are an important legacy.

Information about frontier areas from non-Italian missionaries often appeared first in Rome because, as the place where the orders’ headquarters were located, reports of activities were sent there regularly.

During the seventeenth century there were no startling discoveries of unexpected new lands, new peoples, or new wealth to catch the attention of Italians as in the previous century. Italy itself was caught up in problems of its own. Furthermore, access to America was controlled by the enormous power of Spain. As a result there are fewer books, certainly fewer which contain direct, accurate, and important news from America, printed in Italy during this century than in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless when opportunity presented itself, there were enterprising individuals who seized it.

The role of early Italian scholars and collectors in preserving the manuscripts and artifacts of American Indian cultures is not appreciated, yet without these acts of preservation the study by later generations would have been impossible.

Throughout the period 1500-1800 Italian collectors continued the great tradition established in previous centuries of forming private collections of objects. The Medici, Grand Dukes of Tuscany, formed extensive collections of paintings, precious stones, scientific instruments, stuffed animals, and manuscripts, which are the basis of several national museums. A recent study by Detlef Heikamp, Mexico avid the Medici, Florence, 1972, reveals the extent of the Medici collections in one area. Heikamp also contributed an article on our theme, American Objects in Italian Collections of the Renaissance and Baroque: A Survey, to the book First Images in America.

The place of Italy in the history of opera, music, and architecture requires no comment, but what is not as well known is how and when the tradition of Italian art began to be imported into the New World. Three items, all known only in the copies in this exhibition (as far as we can determine), represent Italian contributions in three arts. One book was printed at Lima, one at Mexico City, one at Boston: they stand at the beginning at the vast impact Italian art has had in all of America.

In 1608 the Jesuits were granted permission to organize the Guarani Indians of Paraguay. By the mid-eighteenth century, under their direction, a self-contained agricultural society flourished. In the 1740’s, settlers from Spanish Argentina and Portuguese Brazil sought to acquire the productive Jesuit/Indian lands. Raids were staged. The Jesuits armed the natives and trained them to defend themselves. Battles ensued. Spain and Portugal came to terms, ignoring the Jesuits and Indians, splitting the lands between themselves in the Treaty of Madrid, 13 January 1750.

The Jesuits, outraged at the injustice, resisted implementation of the Treaty. Spain sent troops who removed the missionaries from Paraguay and, in the decade that followed, Spain and Portugal (and later France) expelled all Jesuits from their domains.

The Jesuits came from various countries, many were Italian, but there were few countries to which they could go freely in their exile. Many of them took refuge in the Papal States of Italy where in exile they wrote works which have become basic studies of much of South America.

The growth of the English colonies in North America seems to have gone unnoticed throughout most of Europe. In 1755, just before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, it has been said that in France all but a few individuals were “almost completely ignorant of conditions there.” The same was true in Italy: we know of few Italian books printed before 1750 that even mention the settlements which were to become the United States. The outbreak of a war for empire between England and France over which nation would control North America—the Seven Years’ War, 1756-1763—made Europeans aware of how powerful a resource the English colonies had become.

For many Italians in the second half of the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin represented Anglo-America. They became aware of him in 1752, as a result of his electrical experiments, at the same time as they were becoming aware of the potential of English North America. For the next forty years Franklin’s writings and character made deep impressions on Italians.

The founders of the American republic owed much to Italians. At one level there were the writers on political and social problems. Then there were the examples of the Italian republics which survived into the eighteenth century—Venice, Genoa, San Marino, and Lucca. Finally, in the 1760’s there was the stirring struggle of Pasquale Paoli’s Corsicans to free their island from foreign domination. Paoli, Pennsylvania, not far from Valley Forge, was named by its settlers for a patriot they were soon to emulate.

The American war was at first perceived by Frenchmen, Italians, and other Europeans as the overthrow of British political and economic domination. To this theme Italians were particularly sympathetic, and the example of the thirteen American colonies—each with its own interests, each maintaining a degree of sovereign power but working together to accomplish common goals—had special meaning. As the war continued and Italians learned more about it, perceptions of its significance changed. The struggle was also seen as a revolt of an entire people against the tyranny of absolute power, a mass assertion of the inalienable rights of man. This social aspect of the Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm or regretted, according to the individual’s political vantage.

There were three reasons for Italian superiority in cartography: a centuries-old tradition of portolan chartmaking; access to abundant and accurate information; and a skill in the art of engraving which advanced concurrently with the increase of information about America. Portolani were books of sailing directions, with charts of harbors, seacoasts, etc. They were designed solely for mariners and contained coastal details, but information about the interior is neglected or omitted entirely. By the time of the Age of Discovery, portolan maps had been made for several centuries, and their makers had achieved a conventional, geometrical style recognized by all.

The art of engraving was developed by goldsmiths, who first used the technique to record their ornate designs. In about 1450 some goldsmiths began making copperplate prints. During the next century Italian artists elevated copperplate engravings to very high levels. The technique was most appropriate for mapmaking as it allowed great detail to be recorded with clarity and precision.
The contributions which Italian mapmakers made toward the concept of the American continent and the dissemination of knowledge of America are so considerable as to deserve their own separate section.

During the migration of our legacy catalogs and past exhibitions into Americana, there are occasionally items that cannot be immediately included in our new environment. This may happen for two reasons: the item in question is not yet cataloged, or it was lent by another institution.
Any items that are not integrated into Americana are included in this section and added to our processing queue.

CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAEUS
Cosmographia.
Bologna [1477].
The works of the geographer Ptolemy (lived second century a.d.) became available to Italy in 1406 when a Florentine merchant, Palla Strozzi, paid to have a Greek manuscript translated into Latin. Ptolemy provided the concept of a grid system for geographical measurement as well as the mathematical procedures for measuring the size of the earth and for making maps of large land areas. Ptolemy also determined the latitudes of locations throughout the Mediterranean area. He tried as well to approximate exact locations of sites in more remote regions of the world. Italian scholars adopted Ptolemy’s rigorous mathematical system as a basis for their own studies. Just as Florentine artists combined a mastery of abstract principles of mathematical perspective with a grasp of practical, empirical elements to create a new kind of painting, so too the humanistic scholars combined the technical, mathematical procedures of Ptolemy with the increasingly available records of travelers’ observations to create a new analytical geography. This is the first edition of Ptolemy with maps and it is the first book to be illustrated with copperplate engravings. The world map shows Ptolemy’s second-century concept of a land mass connecting Africa and Asia, making the Indian Ocean an enclosed sea, which was the starting point of fifteenth-century discussions of the remote islands.
jcb (3)1:11; j cb Collection s Progress 47; Sabin 66471; R. A. Skelton, “Bibliographical Note” to facsimile published Amsterdam, 1963, by Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; World Encompassed, 34 (plate x); Samuel Y. Edgerton, “Florentine interest in Ptolemaic cartography as background for renaissance painting, architecture, and the discovery of America Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxxm, Dec. 1974, pp. 275-292.
Acquired 1900 by John Nicholas Brown, the donor.

CRISTOFORO COLOMBO, 1446 /51-1506
[Manuscript extracts of his capitulations with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.]
[Spain, November 1504 or after.]
This manuscript is a contemporary summary of the privileges Columbus received from Ferdinand and Isabella between the years 1492 and 1502. As discoverer of the West Indies, Columbus sought and was granted grandiose titles, such as Admiral of the Ocean Sea, which reflected his ambition to obtain feudal control in lands he discovered. As the dimensions of his discoveries became apparent and the crown became aware of the consequent power that he would command, the monarchs—whose life work was consolidating power and reducing feudal privilege—refused to allow Columbus the absolute authority and revenues in the New World he thought were his. This document asserts Columbus’s claims as they existed after the fourth voyage. It was compiled either by him at the end of his life or by his heirs shortly after his death. Generations of his descendants tried, with very limited success, to obtain his privileges. A century and a half later they were given Jamaica as a settlement. In 1655 an English invasion took even that from them.
jcb (3)1:16; S. De Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1937), vol. n, pp. 2145-46.
Acquired 1890 by John Nicholas Brown, the donor.

GIOVANNI BATTISTA STROZZI, 1551-1634 [First canto of a poem on Amerigo Vespucci, in 93 octaves.]
[Manuscript, Florence, before 1601 .]
This is the first known poem to use Amerigo Vespucci as a subject. It is the first canto—possibly the only one ever completed—by a poet active in Florentine literary circles at the end of the sixteenth century. The poem’s existence was known because of early references to it by Strozzi’s literary friends. A distant relative in the eighteenth century believed that there was a copy in the Magliabecchi Collection, which became part of the National Library in Florence, but the copy is no longer there. This manuscript, probably a contemporary secretarial copy, seems to be the sole copy still extant.
A. S. Barbi, Un Accademico Mercante e Poeta, Firenze, 1900; the poem is published by Professor Franco Fido in the Stanford Italian Review, number 2, September 1979. Acquired 1977. Obtained with a gift from Mrs. Marion Brewington and funds from the Benefactors of the John Carter Brown Library.

[VITTORIO ALFIERI] 1749-1803 La Guerra in America.
[Italy? or Paris? ca. 1784 . Manuscript.]
This manuscript version of Alfieri’s L’ America Libera may have been prepared for sending to America. We know that Alfieri sent manuscript copies of his odes to Washington and to other American leaders, and this may be one of those manuscripts. Alfieri changed his text several times before it was printed for the first time at Kehl; the text in this manuscript is one of the intermediary versions before the printing.
Franco Fido, “A proposito di un manoscritto dell ‘America libera’,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 149 (1972), pp. 469-475; Ernest Hatch Wilkins, “Alfieri in America,” in The Invention of the Sonnet and Other Studies in Italian Literature, Rome, 1959, pp. 295-313. Acquired 1966. The gift of Mrs. Roger Amore Laudati.