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Mr. Philip D. Burden
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The Gutierrez-Cock map is a truly unique production, the only large format map of America recording detail published directly from Spanish sources in the sixteenth century. The whole is entitled ‘America Sive Qvartae Orbis Partis, Nova et Exactissima Descriptio’. Gutierrez’s wall map highlights the sovereignty of King Philip II of Spain, who is depicted gliding over the waves among sumptuously engraved sea monsters. Originally published in 1562, the complete wall map in 6 sheets survives in only 2 known examples. The present example was re-issued in Paris in 1630 as a single sheet map, this being the only known example in private hands (the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, holds the only known institutional example (2)). There is an argument that, with this being the only loose sheet known, it was intentionally published, and not just a loose survivor. This particular sheet is notable for several areas depicted:
Florida
The map includes a number of early place names, mostly drawn from manuscript sources. No earlier printed map includes such detail. The names include:
Costa de Caracoles (Coastline of Sea Shells — first used in the 1530s — Alonso de Chaves)
Rio de canoas (on Alonso de Santa Cruz manuscript, c1544)
La florida
Bay de S. Iuseph
Ba. de Iua ponce (on Alonso de Santa Cruz manuscript, c1544)
R. de Lapas (on Alonso de Santa Cruz manuscript, c1544)
B. de la guaro di Martiles
Costa de fuego
Texas & Gulf Coast
Along the Gulf Coast, the map extends north and east to Cabo de Crux. This would appear to be the ‘Cabo de X’ which appears on the 1548 Gastaldi map of the Southwest, immediately west of the Bay of Espiritu Santo. On May 8, 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became the first recorded European to reach the Mississippi River, which he called Río del Espíritu Santo (‘River of the Holy Spirit’). As such, the present map would seem to show virtually the entire Gulf Coast, west of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Cabo de Cruz may also be related to the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez. In 1528, Narváez undertook the first known exploration of Tampa Bay. In 1527, he had received permission from Emperor Charles V to conquer and colonize the lands between the Cape of Florida and the Río de Las Palmas in Mexico. Launching his expedition from Cuba in 1528, he landed on the Pinellas peninsula, marched overland to Old Tampa Bay and gave it the name Bahía de la Cruz (Bay of the Cross, later changed to Bahía de Espíritu Santo or Bay of the Holy Spirit.
Other place names typically seen in Texas on maps from the 16th Century include the Rio de Loro, Rio de Pescatores, and Rio Escondido.Costa de Arboleadas and Cabo Bravo.
California
The map shows the east coast of Lower California and names the Mare Vermeio, the so called Red Sea which was the early name for the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez. Of greatest importance is the appearance of ‘C. California’, the first appearance of the name California on a printed map.
Gutierrez’s Six-Sheet Map of the New World. 1562
This remarkable map of the Americas was originally created in 1562 by Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez and Flemish artist Hieronymus Cock. The map encompasses the eastern coast of North America, the entire Central and South America and parts of the western coasts of Europe and Africa. The map is the earliest large-scale wall map of the New World and the first to use the name ‘California’. Curiously, the map omits the Tordesillas meridian, demarcating the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World. The 1562 map survives in 2 known examples, one in the Library of Congress and the other in the British Library. The British Library example was acquired from Henry Stevens in 1870. The Library of Congress copy was formerly in the collection of the Duke of Gotha until its sale at a 1932 auction in Munich. It was then acquired by an American book dealer who in turn sold it to Lessing J. Rosenwald. In 1949 Rosenwald gave the map to the Library of Congress.
The map is reflective of the life of Gutierrez, its maker, in that there are no discoveries shown on the map which post-date his death in 1554. Amerigo Vespucci is credited as the discoverer of America in 1497.
The single sheet example offered here contains a legend which reads: ‘Peru regio Caroli V. mandato et auspitijs Ao. 1530 perlustrata est inventaque et olim hac Tenus repertarum auri ditissima; adeo ut in quoda oppido ibi inventorut domum solido auro tec tam 1630’. The date 1630 is added to the plate, it is not present on either of the complete wall maps.
Survival of the Map
As noted above, the six-sheet map was originally engraved in Antwerp by Hieronymus Cock. Following Cock’s death, it is known that some of his copperplates were later acquired by the French engraver Paul van der Houve. Van Der Houve, for example, issued an example of the Cock’s 1553 four-sheet map of Spain, ‘Nova Descriptio Hispaniae’. Later, some of van der Houve’s plates came into the possession of Michael van Lochom (1601-1647), who for example re-issued the four-sheet map of Spain with his imprint (4 surviving examples; British Library, Bibliotheque National de France (2 examples) and a private collection). We note that the colour used on this map matches well with the colour used in the first part of the 17th Century by French mapmakers and by Van Lochom.
Known states of the map
The original six-sheet Gutierrez map survives in 2 known examples (Library of Congress and British Library). The British Library example is in a later state, with at least two identified additional place names appearing in this sheet alone. Off the south coast of Central America appears the name ‘Malpelo’ below ‘Isla de buenaventnra’ southwest of Panama and ‘ysola di Perla’. This small island is recorded on Pierre Desceliers’ portolan map of 1550. The second addition is on the west coast of South America at the bottom of the sheet, the name ‘Po. de lobos’.
This single sheet survives in 3 known examples, 2 at the Bibliotheque National, Paris, and this one first recorded in 1967 in the ‘Map Collector’s Circle’ no.34, plate 23. Only this one is dated 1630 providing a reasonable date of publication, and a third state. We have been unable to determine yet whether the two French examples include the addition toponyms. Otherwise this sheet does not differ from the British Library example.
Hieronymus Cock Biography
Hieronymus Cock, or Hieronymus Wellens de Cock (1518 -1570), was a painter, etcher as well as a publisher and distributor of prints from the south of the Netherlands. Cock became known as the most important print publisher of his time in northern Europe and his widow Volcxken Diericx, played a key role in the transformation of printmaking from an activity of individual artists and craftsmen into an industry based on division of labour.
Cock’s publishing house issued more than 1,100 prints between 1548 and his death in 1570, a vast number by early standards. Although far more important as a publisher, Cock was an artist of talent, best seen in his last series of 12 landscape etchings of 1558, which are somewhat in the fantastic style of the paintings of his brother Matthys Cock. Altogether he etched 62 plates.
Cock was born into an artistic family. His father, Jan Wellens de Cock and his brother Matthys Cock, were both painters and draftsmen. He was admitted to the painters’ guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1545. He resided in Rome from 1546 to 1547. When he returned to Antwerp in 1547, he married and together with his wife founded their own publishing house in 1548, ‘Aux quatre vents or In de Vier Winden’ (the ‘House of the Four Winds’). They issued their first prints there in 1548. The majority of Cock’s engravings were made after paintings by artists from the Low Countries such as Frans Floris, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Lambert Lombard, Maarten van Heemskerck and Hieronymus Bosch as well as architectural and ornament designs by Cornelis Floris and Hans Vredeman de Vries. In 1559 and 1561 he published two series of landscape prints by an anonymous Flemish draughtsman now referred to as the Master of the Small Landscapes. The series of landscapes were drawn from nature in the vicinity of Antwerp and had an important influence on the development of Flemish and Dutch realist landscape art.
Their business played an important role in the spread of the Italian High Renaissance throughout northern Europe as Cock published prints made by prominent engravers such as Giorgio Ghisi, Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert and Cornelis Cort, after the work of leading Italian painters like Raphael, Primaticcio, Bronzino, Giulio Romano and Andrea del Sarto. The Italian historian of architecture Vincenzo Scamozzi copied many of the engravings published by Cock in 1551 for his volume on Rome entitled ‘Discorsi sopra L’antichita di Roma’ (Venice: Ziletti, 1583).
Cock collaborated with the Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez on a 1562 wall map of America. He worked with Antwerp architect and designer Cornelis Floris de Vriendt in the publishing of Cornelis Floris’ designs for monuments and ornaments: the ‘Veelderley niewe inuentien van antycksche sepultueren’ (‘The many new designs of antique sculptures’) which was published in 1557 and the ‘Veelderley veranderinghe van grotissen’ (‘Many varieties of grotesques’) in 1556. The publication of these books contributed to the spread of the so-called Floris style throughout the Netherlands. The Dutch publisher Philip Galle worked at Cock’s printing house from 1557 and succeeded him in 1570.
Diego Gutierrez Biography
Diego Gutiérrez was a Spanish cosmographer and cartographer of the Casa de la Contratación. He was given this post by royal appointment on October 22, 1554, after the death of his father Dylanger in January 1554, and worked on the Padrón Real.
In 1562 Gutiérrez published the six-sheet wall map in collaboration with the printer Hieronymus Cock. The reason it was published in Antwerp was because the Spanish engravers were not skilled enough to print such a complicated document.
Provenance: Sotheby’s 13 November 2003 lot 516 (£24,000). Burden (1996) ‘The Mapping of North America I no. 32; Burden (2007) ‘The Mapping of North America II p. ix; Caraci (1926-32) vol. 2, p. 40 n. 25; Cumming (1962) no. 2; Harrisse (1892) p. 720; Hébert, Dr John R. and Richard Pflederer (2000). ‘Like No Other. The 1562 Gutiérrez Map of America’, Mercator’s World, November/December 2000, pp. 46-51; Karrow (1993) pp. 285-7; Marcel (1893) Atlas pls. 31-3 (c.1550 manuscript of Gutiérrez in the BN, Paris); Schilder (1987) ‘Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica’ vol. 2, pp. 94-5 (van Lochom); Schilder (2007) ‘Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica’, vol. 8, pp. 236-8; Sotheby’s London Catalogue 13 November 2003 ‘Natural History, Travel, Atlases and Maps’, lot 516; Wagner (1937) p. 55 & no. 58; Winsor (1884) p. 29; World Encompassed, no. 229.
[Americae Sive Quartae Orbis Partis Nova et Exactissima Description]
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