Vespucci
ACHIEVEMENTS: Explorer after whom America is named.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: March 1454, Florence, Italy.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 22ndFebruary 1512, Seville, Spain. Aged 58.
DISCIPLINE: Navigator.
FIELD: Exploration.
LANGUAGE: Italian.
PARENTS: Nastagio Vespucci and Elisabetta.
SIBLINGS: Bernado, Girolamo, Antonio and Agnoletta.
SPOUSE: Maria Cerezo.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Humanist school of Giorgio Antonio, Florence.
MAJOR WORK:
LIFE AND TIMES: Vespucci was given his education by his uncle, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, a brilliant humanist scholar, Dean of Florence Cathedral, and who taught Vespucci Latin, Greek, mathematics, geography, and astronomy. In 1478, Vespucci left Italy and went to France with his cousin, Guidantonio Vespucci, for two years. When he came back he found that his father was working as Chancellor of the Exchange.
He started gaining business experience under his father but, in 1482, his father died and Vespucci became the family breadwinner. The following year, he was given the job of managing the fortune held by the junior branch of the Medici family. Lorenzo the Magnificent died in 1492, leaving his cousins, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pier Francesco as the chief members of the branch. Vespucci was taken on board to handle the mercantile business for the Medicis. He lived in Florence in the Medici house and began to earn big rewards for generating profits for his employers.
In 1491, he was sent to Spain, staying in Barcelona and Cadiz before settling in Seville, where he met Giannotto Berardi, a leading ships chandler. He collaborated with Berardi to re-fit a ship for Columbus*, who had returned from the West Indies in 1493 and was getting ready for a second expedition.
Vespucci was eager to become a part of this lucrative enterprise and when Berardi died in 1495 he took over the agency that Berardi had been running for the Medicis. By May 1499, he had organised an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda. The fleet left Spain with Vespucci navigating his own ship.
As they reached the coast of Guyana in Africa, he separated from Ojeda’s fleet and sailed South-West towards the coast of Brazil. His journey took him north past the island of Trinidad, and he believed he was sailing along the coast of the Eastern Peninsula of Asia. He sighted the mouth of the Orinoco River when making for Haiti, before returning to Spain in June 1500. This is when he heard of da Gama's* successful Portuguese voyage to the East.
Vespucci proposed an expedition to find a western route to the Orient. After being turned down by the Spanish government, he went to the Portuguese, who gave him three ships which left Lisbon, Portugal, on 13thMay 1501.
At Cape Verde, he met Cabral's* fleet returning from India, following da Gama’s route, and they exchanged information. Vespucci was using information taken from maps by Ptolemy*, but this data did not tally with what Cabral described. Later, Ptolemy’s maps were shown to be inaccurate. Vespucci’s fleet left Cape Verde, heading southwest, and eventually sighted the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, and continued to the Rio de Plata. Vespucci was the first European to discover these places and it is thought that he might have gone as far south as Patagonia.
On 22ndJuly 1502, Vespucci arrived back in Lisbon, convinced that the lands he had seen were not the same as those seen by Cabral and da Gama. This was also when he realized the huge significance of what he had found. The different flora and fauna, the inhabitants, and the size of the land suggested to Vespucci that he had discovered not just an island, but a massive unknown continent, blocking the way to the East.
Suffering from malaria, Vespucci went home to Seville just before Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de'Medici died in 1503. At this point, a forged letter from Vespucci to Lorenzo became public knowledge, angering the supporters of Columbus. In it Vespucci claimed to have discovered the “New World.”
In 1505, he became a consultant to the Board of Trade in Seville. His job was to provision the ships, plan routes and make the charts. Two years later, the German cartographer <“America” named by> Waldseemulleer* produced a map which named the new continent (after Vespucci): “America.”
Poor health prevented Vespucci going on any more expeditions, so in 1508 the King of Spain named him Pilot Major of Spain, a newly-created position which he held until his death in 1512.
ASSESSMENT: Vespucci’s realization that the western land mass was a new continent completely changed the map of the world and revolutionised geography.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: His family knew Vasari*
ONELINER: Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America is named
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Arciniegas, German, trans. Onis, de H., Amerigo and the New World, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1955.
Pohl, Frederick J., Amerigo Vespucci, Pilot Major, Columbia University Press, New York, 1945.