Cornelius van Wytfliet

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Cornelius van Wytfliet (also Cornelis van Wytfliet ; * 1550 or 1555 ; † probably 1597 ) was a Flemish cartographer who mainly wrote maps of the New World .

Maps Wytfliet (1597). Some of them are contained in the work Gold des Kondors .

life and work

Map of Alaska 1597 in direct comparison to a modern map. Where did v. Wytfliet knew the existence of the Bering Strait and the course of the north coast is unclear.
This map of Wytfliets shows a section of Central America - Lake Atitlan in Guatemala and Lake Nicaragua are shown.

Van Wytfliet worked as secretary to the Brabant Council, which was also the Supreme Court of the Duchy of Brabant . It is unknown how he obtained information about America, he never traveled to these countries and very likely never left his home in the Netherlands. His cards were most likely drawn from other cards and can be assigned to him on the basis of the handwritten notes.

His 20 maps of the new world, compared to other contemporary maps, depict South America , the Caribbean islands , Central America and North America with great accuracy - the puzzling thing about Wytliet's work is that it reproduces the coastlines or rivers relatively precisely at the time they were created - According to the current state of knowledge - had never been seen by any European. This is especially true for the northern North American coastline and for the Antarctic continent.

Van Wytfielt also made some maps of the Far East, at least two different depictions of Japan have survived.

He dedicated his atlas to the discovery of America to King Philip III. of Spain , which at that time also ruled Brabant. In addition to the maps contained in the atlas, he also wrote travel reports that he probably received from returnees from the New World in the port of Antwerp . He published these reports and his 20 maps in the presumed year of his death in 1597 under the title Atlas for the Discovery of America . This Atlant deals with the history of the first European encounter with the New World and its inhabitants, presents a relatively precise geography of the New World and sometimes imaginatively tells the natural history of these new countries. In addition to reports from travelers, van Wytfliet also evaluated the writings of contemporary authors who had traveled to the New World. In this context, José de Acosta , Richard Hakluyt , Theodore de Bry and Giovanni Battista Ramusio are mentioned .

Van Wytfielt extensively describes the history of the discoveries and names some of the discoverers and conquerors. He expressly denies Christopher Columbus the fame of his discovery of the new world and refers to Spanish shipwrecked people who had reached the new continent years before him and who were stranded on Madeira on their return voyage and all died of exhaustion in Columbus' house. From these Columbus would have learned about the new world and the distance to the European continent. Wytfliet also reports on Frisian fishermen (presumably Greenlandic Vikings are meant) who allegedly discovered and settled large lands in the north-west of the Atlantic Ocean 200 years earlier. As further discoverers of a North American region called Estotiland (east coast of North America - Canada - Hudson Bay ) van Wytfliet leads the Venetian sailors Nicola and Antonius Zeno (1390). He also mentions a Polish navigator named Johannes Scotius who is said to have explored North American coasts in 1486 - probably referring to the legendary explorer Johannes Scolvus who traveled the New World in the 1470s.

History of his Atlas for the Discovery of America

The southern continent (Terra Australis-Antarctica) in Wytfliet's Atlas from 1597.

The Atlant was first printed in Latin in 1596 in Leuven - a reprint in Low German followed in 1597, also in Leuven. Its reprint appeared in Douai, France, in 1603 and in Arnhem in 1615 . The first French translation took place again in Douai in 1604, this edition was published again in 1607 and 1615.

The plagiarists from Cologne delivered a German translation of Wytfliet's work as early as 1604 and combined this translation in 1605 with the German Acosta translation which was published in German under the title America, or as one calls it in German Die Neuwe Welt / or West India . This combination made this book the first American encyclopedia, according to the historian Peter H. Meurer. In 1991 it was published again as a second book by Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, im Gold des Kondors .

Only eight complete copies of the historical atlases have survived. Individual maps of the original print runs are now available in art dealers.

literature

  • José de Acosta: The gold of the condor. Reports from the New World 1590 and atlas on the history of its discovery. Edited and translated by Rudolf Kroboth and Peter H. Meurer, Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart et al. 1991, ISBN 3-522-60750-3 (Original edition: America, Or how mans to Teutsch calls Die Neuwe Welt / or West India . Described by Mr. Josepho De Acosta in seven books / one partly in Latin / and one partly in Hispanic language / Described. Sutorius, Ursel 1605. Based on the copy of the State Library of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin)
  • Peter H. Meurer : Atlantes Coloniensis - The Cologne School of Atlas Catography 1570–1610 (= Fundamenta Cartographies Histirica I). Bad Neustadt an der Saale 1988.

Web links

Commons : Maps by Cornelius van Wytfliet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b José de Acosta : The gold of the condor. Reports from the New World 1590 and atlas on the history of its discovery. Edited and translated by Rudolf Kroboth and Peter H. Meurer, Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart et al. 1991, ISBN 3-522-60750-3 (Original edition: America, Or how mans to Teutsch calls Die Neuwe Welt / or West India . Described by Mr. Josepho De Acosta in seven books / one partly in Latin / and one partly in Hispanic language / Sutorius, Ursel 1605. Based on the copy of the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin p. 355).
  2. ^ Wytfielt in historical literature (1755)
  3. ↑ José de Acosta : The gold of the condor. Reports from the New World 1590 and atlas on the history of its discovery. Edited and translated by Rudolf Kroboth and Peter H. Meurer, Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart et al. 1991, ISBN 3-522-60750-3 (Original edition: America, Or how mans to Teutsch calls Die Neuwe Welt / or West India . Described by Mr. Josepho De Acosta in seven books / one partly in Latin / and one partly in Hispanic language /. Sutorius, Ursel 1605. Based on the copy of the State Library of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin p. 356.)
  4. ↑ Swedish newspaper reports on the theft of one of the last eight original atlases Wytfielts: Rare stolen Swedish Wytfliet atlas, missing a decade, recovered at New York City gallery
personal data
SURNAME Wytfliet, Cornelius van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Flemish cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1550 or 1555
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: 1597