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Article ID: CBB087232591

No, Mapmaker Juan Vespucci Was Not a Medici Spy (2020)

Macías, Luis A. Robles (Author)

Imago Mundi: A Review of Early Cartography
Volume: 72
Issue: 1
Pages: 41-46

DOI: 10.1080/03085694.2020.1675341

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2020.1675341

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Juan Vespucci (born Giovanni di Antonio Vespucci in Florence in 1486, and usually called Juan Vespuche or Vespuchi in official Spanish documents) was a mapmaker, navigator and merchant best known as the nephew of the world-famous navigator Amerigo Vespucci.1 Juan Vespucci worked from 1512 to 1525 as a royal pilot for the Casa de la Contratación de las Indias in Seville, Spain. The Casa was in charge, among other tasks, of the exploration and mapping of the lands now called America. Juan Vespucci took part in a transatlantic expedition in 1514 to Castilla del Oro (now Panama).2 He also signed at least two extant manuscript maps: a portolan chart of Europe and the Mediterranean in 1520 and a planisphere in 1526.3 A printed world map in polar equidistant projection was published under his name in Italy in 1524.4 Juan Vespucci was dismissed from the Casa in 1525 and thereafter devoted himself fully to trade with the Indies. He disappears from the records in 1527, after having completed at least one more voyage to New Spain.5 A startling discovery about Juan Vespucci was reported by historian Consuelo Varela in 1988.6 Based on letters she had unearthed in the Mediceo avanti il Principato collection at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Varela concluded that Vespucci had been a spy for the powerful Medici family of Florence. These letters at the Archivio di Stato, signed by a Giovanni Vespucci between 1513 and 1515, were addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici, ‘patrono mío singularissimo in Firenze’, and several of them were encrypted. The letter fragments that Varela could make out revealed information about a truce between Spain and France and about fleet movements in the Mediterranean. Since then, the image of Juan Vespucci as a spy has been repeated in numerous publications.7 However, no one has published new research regarding this alleged spying. As part of my ongoing doctoral thesis on Juan Vespucci, I undertook the study of the letters in Florence since they could shed light not only on the life and work of Vespucci, but also more broadly on the activities of the Casa de la Contratación at one of the most eventful periods of the Age of Discoveries.

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