Sea creatures in the North Atlantic

Cosmographo. Hiero Cock Excude. 1562, the map depicts the eastern coast of North America, all of Central and South America, and portions of the western coasts of Europe and Africa. While only a longitude scale appears, it is clear that the map covers an area bounded between 0° and 115° longitude west of Greenwich, and 57° north and 70° south latitude. While a latitude scale does not appear, the Equator and the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are clearly shown and measurements between these fixed latitudes can assist in determining distances for the entire map. Six engraved sheets are neatly joined to form a single map which measures 93 by 86 centimeters. Because this map ends abruptly on the east and the west and the ornamental border on the Library of Congress copy appears only at the top and the bottom of the map, one might believe that a world map was planned, of which only the American part was completed. However, this map contains a unique title identifying America as the fourth part of the world. It seems logical that only a map of the Western Hemisphere was intended and rendered. It is apparent that one of the intentions in preparing the map was to define clearly Spain's America for the other European powers who might have designs on the region.

Giants of Patagonia

The map provides a richly illustrated view of an America filled with images and names that had been popularized in Europe following Columbus's 1492 voyage of discovery. Images of parrots, monkeys, mermaids, fearsome sea creatures, cannibals, Patagonian giants, and an erupting volcano in central Mexico complement the numerous settlements, rivers, mountains, and capes named. According to Ruth Putnam, in California: The Name (Berkeley, 1917), the Gutiérrez map contains one of the earliest references to California, for on it " C. California" is located on the southern tip of Baja California. The map correctly recognizes the presence of the Amazon River system, other rivers of South America, Lake Titicaca, the location of Potosí and Mexico City, Florida and the greater southeastern part of the United States, and myriad coastal features of South, Central, North, and Caribbean America. It was to be the largest printed Spanish map of America to appear before the late eighteenth century.

There are three coats of arms on the Gutiérrez map: in the lower right, in the Atlantic Ocean east of Argentina is the coat of arms of the crown of Portugal, and Portuguese interests in India are noted in the Eastern Atlantic "La Flota De Portugal Que Va Par Calicute". In the southeastern and southwestern parts of what is now the United States are two coats of arms: the one on the left is that of the Spanish Habsburg Empire; to its right is that of the French crown. Gutiérrez's Americae is an official map, recognizing both Philip II, King of Spain from 1556 to 1598, and his half-sister Margarita de Parma, Regent of the Netherlands from 1559 to 1562.

The following inscription (in Latin on the map) gives evidence, seventy years after Columbus's historic voyage, of the popular belief that Americus Vespucius discovered America in 1497: "This fourth part of the world remained unknown to all geographers until the year 1497, at which time it was discovered by Americus Vespucius serving the King of Castile, whereupon it also obtained a name from the discoverer."

Early reference to California

The map has been used as evidence in two South American boundary disputes. It was reproduced in part in Frontières entre le Brésil et la Guyane Française. Mémoire présenté par les États Unis de Brésil. Atlas (Paris, 1899) and Juicio de límites entre el Perú y Bolivia. Prueba peruana presentada al gobierno de la República Argentina por Víctor M. Maurtua. Atlas (Barcelona, 1906). A tracing of it was made in the nineteenth century by Johann Georg Kohl for his hand-copied collection of maps in European libraries and archives for the study of the discovery, exploration, and mapping of North America, now in the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress's copy of the Gutiérrez map was formerly in the collection of the Duke of Gotha in Germany. Sold at a 1932 auction in Munich, it was subsequently acquired by an American book dealer who sold it to Lessing J. Rosenwald, the well-known collector of illustrated books. The Gutiérrez map was among the items received when Mr. Rosenwald gave a portion of his collection to the Library of Congress in 1949.

Detail of the fine engraving of Hieronymus

Diego Gutiérrez was a cosmographer at the Casa de la Contratación, in its office of Pilot Major. His father, also named Diego Gutiérrez, was the head of a Sevillean family map- and instrument-making business from the early part of the sixteenth century until his death in 1554. The elder Diego Gutiérrez, also a map maker of note, became associated with the work of the Casa de la Contratación and catered to the navigational information needs of navigators and pilots engaged in that extraordinary time of exploration and travel to America, practically at its inception in the early part of the sixteenth century.

The mapmaker Diego Gutiérrez had been named cosmographer in the Casa de la Contratación by a royal appointment on October 22, 1554, following the death of his father Diego in January 1554. He received a salary of 6,000 maravedis because of his known ability to make navigational charts and other nautical instruments. On the famous 1562 map of America he is identified as the "Auctore Diego Gutiero Philippi Regis Hisp. Etc." That is, "Diego Gutiérrez, cosmographer at the time of the reign of Philip II of Spain." He served as a cosmographer in the Casa de la Contratación from 1554 to at least 1569, according to documents in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. He was among a number of cartographers in the Casa de la Contratación known as cosmographers, including Alonso de Chaves (Pilot Major), Francisco Falero, Jerónimo de Chaves, Sancho Gutiérrez (Diego's brother), and Alonso de Santa Cruz. Diego Gutiérrez was distinguished from the rest as "oficial de hacer cartas de marear" ["an official who makes sea charts"]). Diego's brother, Sancho Gutiérrez, became a cosmographer in the Casa on May 18, 1553.

The engraver of the map, Hieronymus Cock, was a Flemish artist of recognized talent who worked in Antwerp. He has been considered one of the most important engravers and printmakers in Europe in the sixteenth century. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Antwerp became the major center for the production of prints and books in the Low Countries. Cock was the son of Jan Wellens or Willems, alias Cock, and had a brother, Mathias Cock; they were both noted painters. Born at Antwerp in 1510, Cock was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke as a master painter in 1545 and later engaged in engraving and print selling. Between 1546 and 1548 he studied in Rome, where he was influenced by the work of the noted artists and printmakers Antonio Salamanca and Antonio Lafrery. In Antwerp in 1548 Cock established the shop Aux Quatre Vents [To the The Four Winds]. Between 1548 and the time of his death in 1570 he carried on a very successful business, popularizing art through his engravings of the finest works of the Dutch masters.

In 1550 Cock prepared his first engraving of ruins of Ancient Rome, followed by twenty-four plates of the ruins in May 1554. He engraved various works in honor of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, including the "Pompa funebris" in 1559, depicting the funeral cortege organized in Brussels in 1558 by Philip II in honor of his father. Cock in 1555 engraved portraits of Philip II and Maria and Maximillian II of Austria. He engraved a portrait of Charles V in 1556 and produced the Divi Caroli V imp. opt. max. victoriae, in 1563, a series of twelve engravings illustrating the triumphs of that emperor.

Cock engraved several maps, including those of Leiden (1550), Piedmont (1551), Sicily (1553), Turkey and Persia by Castaldo (1555), Siena (1555), Ostia (1557), an Antwerp bird's-eye view (1557), Siege de Saint-Quentin (1557), Ypres (1562), Hableneuf (1563), Malta (1565), Bourgogne by Ferdinand de Launoy (1562), and the Holy Land by Petru Laicksteen (1562) in addition to the 1562 America map. He engraved several of the maps for Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570 by the Plantin Press in Antwerp and is cited in Ortelius's Catalogus Auctorum Tabularum Geographicarum. His engravings also appeared in Jacob van Deventer's Nederlansche Steden, Braun and Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum, and Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia.

In order to invest his business with an official status and obtain privileges, Cock had as his patron the powerful Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal de Granvelle (1517-1586), to whom some of Cock's prints are dedicated. His widow carried on the business after his death in 1570.

Facts concerning the distribution of the 1562 map of America or the number of copies prepared are not known. It would seem that a

Coats of arms of Spain and France

substantial number of copies of the map must have been printed since it was intended to define authoritatively boundaries of Spain's sphere of influence in America while, simultaneously, recognizing the French and Portuguese presence. It is ironic that in the 1560s, following the issuance of the map, Spain was forced to reinforce its presence along the northern Atlantic coast in North America. In 1562 France began to colonize sites in what are now South Carolina and Florida, threatening Spain's exclusive control in the area.

It is possible that the map was produced, at the request of official Spain, through Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle who was the Spanish negotiator of the 1559 Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis. As was mentioned earlier, Granvelle was the patron of much of Cock's printing in Antwerp. That treaty between France and Spain, and a separate one by the same name between France and England brought to a close nearly thirty years of constant warfare in Western Europe. And the recognition of Philip II on the map, to whom Gutiérrez was cosmographer, indicated that the map itself probably was prepared after 1556, when Charles V abdicated the throne in favor of Philip II and retired to the Monastery of Yuste in Extremadura. Charles died on September 21, 1558.

Fleets fighting for dominance in the South Atlantic

The April 3, 1559 Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis between Spain and France is a key event in the map's preparation. That treaty and another signed on April 2, 1559 between France and England are known collectively as the Peace of Cateau Cambrésis. Those treaties contained the most comprehensive agreements drawn up before the Peace of Westphalia in the seventeenth century, thus effectively establishing legal and political status quo for Western Europe for ninety years. Concluded with the treaty was a French-Spanish agreement, namely the marriage of Elizabeth of Valois, daughter of Henry II, King of France, to Philip II in the summer of 1559. The marriage alliance between the two kingdoms is possibly an explanation for the very close positioning of the coats of arms of Spain and France on the Gutiérrez map.

An apparent oral agreement between French and Spanish negotiators at Cateau Cambrésis concluded that the geographical parameters of the treaty were not to extend to non-European areas, for example, in America, where the French claimed the right to trade, which Spain denied.

One of the noteworthy omissions in the Gutiérrez map of America is the absence of the famous line of demarcation. This hypothetical vertical line in the Atlantic Ocean served as the division between Spanish and Portuguese possessions in America. West of the line were Spain's areas of influence. In the Gutiérrez map the most prominent line of demarcation is not a vertical line but rather a parallel or horizontal line, representing the Tropic of Cancer at 23° 30' N. One would have expected instead the parallel of Cape Bojador at 26 ° N, which passes south of the Canaries, and was used by Pope Martin V in the fifteenth century to grant exclusive privileges to the Portuguese southwards down the African coast, and by Pope Nicholas V in Romanus Pontifex (1455) and in all subsequent bulls on the subject of spheres of influence. But the latitudinal line mentioned in the 1559 Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis and prominently shown on the Gutiérrez map was that of the Tropic of Cancer.

But why was the famous vertical line of demarcation, that line separating Europe from America, not referred to in the treaty of

Portugal's coat of arms

Cateau Cambrésis and on the map? Diplomatic documents after the 1559 treaty state simply that Spain's sphere of influence is south of the Tropic of Cancer and west of the prime meridian. But not knowing what prime meridian creates a problem with ascertaining the location of the line of demarcation. Was it to be the line given in the Papal Bull of 1493 or that in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494; and for that matter which island in the Atlantic Ocean was to be used as the eastern terminus from which the distance to the line of demarcation was to be determined? There was no agreement upon which privilege was to be accepted, and even individual treaties remained unclear when references were made to the easternmost starting point, whether west of the meridian of Ferro or Pico in the Azores or one of the Cape Verde Islands.

In the sixteenth century, no one could determine longitudes across the oceans with more than a rough approximation of accuracy. From the outset of the diplomatic history of the Americas, it was concluded by diplomats, as well as distinguished Spanish jurists and theologians, that the Pope in Rome had no right to give away what did not belong to him, and that the only valid claim that Spain could assert to any part of America was to those areas it effectively occupied. In their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century relations with Spain, other European powers, with the exception of Portugal, recognized only one line, and that was the Tropic of Cancer. And Spain had chosen to use that line without regard for papal donations, for practical reasons. Navigators could easily ascertain the location of the Tropic of Cancer. What made it particularly useful was that Cancer ran through the Straits of Florida with the safest channel well on its Cuban, or southern, side. So no ship could enter West Indian or Caribbean waters, not even the Gulf of Mexico, without crossing the Tropic of Cancer. Spain was vitally interested in preserving the monopoly of its American trade and the safety of its silver and gold fleets. Until 1559 the only serious threat to its monopoly was France, and no sooner did French interlopers and corsairs begin to be a nuisance than measures began to be taken to pursue and eliminate them anywhere below the Tropic of Cancer. The normal relation between Spain and France, especially before 1559, had been war.

The long snaking path of the Amazon River

Above the Tropic of Cancer, Spain's interests and ambitions were more limited. It at times lay claim, through expeditions and colonization attempts, to that area and its offshore islands on the grounds of Pope Alexander's 1493 bull. But its primary concern was to safeguard its treasure fleets and prevent the establishment of potentially hostile bases.

With the map and the treaty of Cateau Cambrésis, Spain and France acknowledged areas of possession in America. At the time of the map the ill-fated French settlement of Nicolas de Villegaignon in Portugal's Brazil, following France's 1555 establishment of its "La France Antarctique" in Guanabara Bay, was under continuous attack by the Portuguese until it was removed in 1567. South of the Tropic of Cancer. Spain had firm control in its America. But from the Florida Keys northward Spain had not effectively placed its flag. In the 1560's in present-day South Carolina and Florida, the most ambitious effort to test Spanish resolve occurred. In 1562 a new French colony was established in Florida under Jean Ribaut and René de Laudonniére only to be destroyed by the Spanish in 1565 with the subsequent establishment of the first permanent settlement in what is now the United States, Saint Augustine, as a protective station for the Spanish gold fleet returning from America to Spain.

Gutiérrez's magnificent

Animals of Africa

1562 map of America was not intended to be a scientifically or navigationally exacting document, although it was of large scale and remained the largest map of America for a century. It was, rather, a ceremonial map, a diplomatic map, as identified by the coats of arms proclaiming possession. Through the map, Spain proclaimed to the nations of Western Europe its American territory, clearly outlining its sphere of control, not by degrees, but with the appearance of a very broad line for the Tropic of Cancer clearly drawn on the map

The Gutiérrez map of America has rarely gained the recognition and the study that it deserves. Perhaps its uniqueness, with only two known copies extant, has contributed to its relative obscurity in cartographic literature. Or, it is possible that the controversy over who actually made the map, whether the father or less well-known son, has confused researchers. But, for whatever reason that limited information is known about this large map of America, it is hoped that this facsimile of the map in the Library of Congress's Geography and Map Division can generate interest in further research on Diego Gutiérrez and his 1562 map of America. Perhaps then this magnificent map can enter its proper rank among the cartographic treasures of the early years of European exploration of America.

Dr. John R. Hébert
Chief Geography and Map Division
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.