A historical map that first draws lines such as Ecuador and the tropics or trips of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral forever changed the history of cartography.
Coastal lines, ports, rivers, resources. THE “Mapa Cantino” It represents the world as it was seen by a Portuguese in 1502 – yes, in the period of the discoveries.
It is just the second map that there are records representing the New World, and, according to, included unprecedented information about Portuguese commercial routes and the discovery in progress of the coast of Brazil.
Composed of six pieces of scroll attached to a large screen with about one meter and eighty, the “Planisphere of Cantino” was created in Lisbon, and it is not known who was the author. It is now considered a historic piece, and is “saved” at Galleria Estense of Modena. But harsh crossings have passed, and has lived countless adventures.
Of course, at a time when the Portuguese were pioneers of the discovery beyond, many were the international competitors who tried to lie their hand to everything that could give him more information about the “seas never before navigated.”
That’s why Italian spy Alberto Cantinowho worked in Portugal as an infiltrated agent, infiltrated a nautical card repository, where he stole or copied an existing map (other stories say he had bought it).
Almost a century later, in 1592, the planisphere was taken from Ferrara, to Cantino he had taken him to the Italian city of Modena.
Nineteenth -century, it turned out to be – again – stolen, and was only found a few years later… hanging on the wall of a butcher from the city.
Estense Library University, Modena / Wkimedia Commons
O Mapa de Cantino complete
But why is this map so important?
The Cantino Map is the first of which there are records to include the Ecuadoros tropics and the Arctic Circle. It also shows the “line of Toesillas“, Due to the treaty that divided the whole world between Portugal and Spain.
This map dictates a crucial moment for cartography: the transition to the Astronavegation, That is, a navigation that takes into account the guidance of the stars.
The map also contains rich and distinctive illustrations on the various places in the world that the Portuguese began to explore: the nature represented is different in America or Africa.
The trips of the European explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries are also represented on the Cantino map, since AA Vasco da Gama’s first trip in search of a maritime path to India (1497-99) to discovery of Brazil, in 1500, by Pedro Álvares Cabral, passing through the trips of Colombo.
