The Venetian Discovery of the New World before Columbus?

The 1783 Arguments of Vincenzio Antonio Formaleoni

Here’s another little blip that I’ve had to cut out of Maps, History, Theory, that can sort of stand by itself. Some of the following has to stay in the book, but only as it sustains my particular argument there about the origins of map history; this short essay addresses the bigger context, which I find fascinating but not 100% relevant.

The Venetian antiquary Vincenzio Antonio Formaleoni (1752–97) argued in 1783 that medieval Venetian sailors had reached the new world well before Columbus. The crux of his argument was the delineation of a large, rectangular island called Antilia far out in the western ocean, as shown on a 1463 chart by the Venetian mariner, Andrea Bianco:

Andrea Bianco, untitled chart of the Straits of Gibraltar and the western ocean, as reproduced by Vincenzio Antonio Formaleoni (1783b, 2: between 40–41). Inverted so north is at top, to make the geography recognizable. “La Antilia” is the large, rectangular island at the very left (west) of the map. Bianco’s 1436 original is Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS. Fondo Ant. It. Z.76 [=4783], carta 5r. Copper engraving, 26 × 37 cm. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, R.I. (H788 F723e); click on image for high-res image.

Formaleoni’s argument was simple: this great island does not exist, yet it is present on Bianco’s chart, in a work of great accuracy and high quality, so it must derive from some partial memory, sustained by Venetian mariners, of large lands across the ocean that had been previously encountered.

Formaleoni’s was not the first venture into the history of voyages for the purpose of claiming Venetian priority in the discovery of the new world. Famously, the sixteenth-century Venetian patrician Nicolò Zen [n1] had published an account of the voyages that two of his forebears had supposedly taken, in the 1380s, into the northern Atlantic, where they had found many islands, notably Frisland and Estotiland. Zen also provided a map, supposedly drawn, just like the account, from his memory of fragmentary manuscripts he had read as a young man but that had long since been lost (Zen 1558):

Nicolò Zen’s map of his forebears’ supposed voyages: Carta da navegar de Nicolo et Antonio Zeni fvrono III tramontana lano M.CCC.LXXX., from Zen (1558). Woodcut, 28 × 38 cm, with late color. Courtesy of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine (Osher Collection); cick on image for high-res version.

Zen identified Estotiland as Newfoundland or Labrador, demonstrating that these Venetians had reached the new world a full century before Columbus. There were some factual elements to Zen’s narrative—in particular, Frisland, or Frixlandia, appeared on charts from the late fifteenth century (Campbell 1987, 414)—but it has to be accepted that Zen’s account was thoroughly spurious. Its fabrication must be read in terms of Zen’s whole book, which Zen began with a narrative of his father’s travels into Persia (see Formaleoni 1783a). Zen thus positioned Venice, and more particularly the Zeni, as the hinge of east and west and of the past and future of commercial success (Horodowich 2017, 143–72).

Zen’s map was reproduced, in a copper engraved derivative, in Girolamo Ruscelli’s edition of Ptolemy’s Geography (Venice, 1561) and its fictitious geography adopted by Gerhard Mercator, Abraham Ortelius, and other geographers (Karrow 1993, 600–2; Burden 1996, nos. 26, 29, 45). The map’s precise placement of the fictitious islands of Frisland and Estotiland, by latitude and longitude, gave them a stable location when absorbed into other geographical maps. Of course, writing from the vantage point of the present, the fact that this map is structured by latitude and longitude screams that it was not made by medieval or even early modern mariners. Zen’s map does not look like a marine chart and cannot be taken as one.

It might be argued that Nicolò Zen or a predecessor had constructed a geographical map from oral or written traditions. R. A. Skelton (1972, 69), for example, insisted that even if the account was fake, the map was genuine and that the original “had to have been a map of the North drawn in the later fifteenth century” by Nicolas Germanus, Henricus Martellus Germanus, or some other cosmographer (also Skelton 1965, 193, 197–99).

However, with no broader field of map history to guide him—the concerted study of map history began in the 1830s and 1840s—Formaleoni took Zen’s map as gospel truth. In seeking to substantiate the travels of the fourteenth-century Zeni, Formaleoni followed at least two threads of research. The first was to find the original, fourteenth-century map in one of Venice’s many libraries. The second was to show that late medieval Venetian mariners, or at least the Venetian patricians who sailed aboard the vessels, had the mathematical acumen to use astrolabes to determine latitude directly, as Zen’s map demanded.

Formaleoni did not find the original map by Zen’s forebears (how could he?) but in the process he did find other maps of interest, beyond those previously mentioned by Giovanni Francesco Zanetti (1758, 2:46–48) in a celebratory history of Venetian arts. Formaleoni was especially interested in a 1471 marine atlas by Grazioso Benincasa, which he found in the library of San Michele on Murano (i.e., Campbell 1986, no. 159; Campbell 1987, 450), because it included both Frisland and a scale of latitude. Even though the mistakes in the latitude scale led him to suggest that it was a late addition by “an ignorant monk,” Formaleoni (1783b, 1:26–27) nonetheless used it as evidence that the educated patricians of fourteenth-century Venice would indeed have known how to use the marine astrolabe to determine latitude (cf., Zurla 1806, 7–8; Zurla 1808, 143–44; also Campbell 1987, 386). This map evidence fueled Formaleoni’s larger discussion of the comparatively advanced mathematical knowledge of early Venetians.

Then, as Formaleoni pursued the study of early Venetian mathematical abilities, the librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana introduced him to Andrea Bianco’s 1436 atlas. Venetian mariner, Bianco is remembered as having helped Fra Mauro make his world maps in about 1450. The atlas contains one folio of geometrical diagrams, eight sea charts that together covered the Mediterranean, a circular mappamundi [n2], and a Ptolemaic map of the ecumene (Campbell 1986, no. 112; Campbell 1987, 451). The librarian brought the atlas to Formaleoni’s attention not because of the maps but because of its initial folio of geometrical diagrams. Formaleoni noted that he had recognized the diagrams as an explanation of the rule of three and had “immediately mentioned this fact” to the abbé [Jacopo (Giacomo)] Morelli [the librarian], when he had placed Bianco’s portolan [atlas] in my hand” (Formaleoni 1783b, 1:33, “…e lo accennai tosto al Sig. Abate Morelli, allorchè m’ ebbe posto in mano il Portolano del Bianco”).

[update 31 July] On consulting gallica.bnf.fr, I just found a French translation of Formaleoni’s study (Formaleoni 1788), which also includes a facsimile of Bianco’s folio of geometrical diagrams. The facsimile of this folio in Formaleoni (1783b) was not captured by either of my sources for that work: the John Carter Brown Library only imaged the map facsimiles; and the copy of the book digitized by Google did not, as ever, have the fold-outs unfurled for copying, so the facsimile of diagrams is not evident. Ho hum.

And in double-checking the JCB’s online image bank—and searching for “Bianco” as well as “Formaleoni”—an English version of Formaleoni’s facsimile of Bianco’s map of the western ocean popped up: “Accurate Copy of a Map in Parchment of Andrea Bianco a Venetian, of 1436; preserved in St. Mark’s library at Venice. | Published August 10th 1789, for F. Sastres. | S. Neele sculpt. 352 Strand.” A binding stub is present, and a bit more work on Eighteenth-Century Collections Online identified the parent work as Francesco Sastres’s Il Mercurio Italico: o sia, Ragguaglio generale intorno alla letteratura, bello arti, utili scoperte, ec. di tutta l'Italia = The Italian Mercury: or, A General Account Concerning the Literature, Fine Arts, Useful Discoveries, &c. of All Italy 2, no. 8 (August 1789): opp. 176 (i.e., at the end of the issue). The map lacks a “see page” reference, but the only essay in the issue that it might meaningfully accompany is the essay, “Viaggi e scoprimento dell’America = Voyages and Discovery of America,” extracted from Girolamo Tiraboschi’s ten-volume Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Rome, 1782–97). Sestres began to excerpt and translate this essay in 1, no. 3 (1789): 225–35; the sixth section is in 2, no. 8: 137–46 … and I am unable to find in the text of either volumes 1 or 2, any relevant reference to “Bianco,” “1436,” “Antilia” or “Antillia,” “island,” Formaleoni’s work, etc. The facsimile would seem to have been added as color.

Looking at the rest of Bianco’s atlas, or rather his eight charts, Formaleoni was struck by their accuracy and quality compared to the two earlier maps that he knew about: the Peutinger map, the medieval copy of a late Roman scroll-map of the ecumene (Talbert 2010); and Francesco Pizigano’s 1367 chart in the Biblioteca Palatina, Parma (Campbell 1986, no. 99; Campbell 1987, 454). So even as he downplayed the question of Frisland and Estotiland, neither of which appear on Bianco’s chart, Formaleoni played up the size and location of Antilia instead, preserving the primacy of the Venetian discovery of the new world.

The argument is so simple and straightforward that it would be independently echoed by later scholars, albeit with different nationalist underpinnings. H. Yule Oldham (1862–1951), a British geographer who taught at Cambridge (1893–1921) and who in 1901 had successfully repeated the Bedford Level experiment (Garwood 2007, 167–68), gave a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society on the equivalency of Antilia, on Bianco’s 1448 chart, to South America and therefore offered it as evidence of pre-Columbian voyages by the Portuguese (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan; Campbell 1986, no. 84). Oldham mentioned Bianco’s 1436 atlas but not Formaleoni’s work (Oldham 1895). The immediate response to Oldham’s paper were highly critical (Ravenstein et al. 1895), and the idea was further refuted by Carlo Errera (1867–1936), a young Italian geographer (Errera 1895). In all this heat, my favorite contribution was by the Portuguese diplomat, Jaime Batalha Reis (1847–1934), whose essay in support of Oldham excoriated his detractors by simply appealing to basic standards of historical criticism and logic:

And here it is opportune to point out another common fault of the historians of geography: Navigations and geographical discoveries are, to a great extent, unintelligible if we consider them apart from all the other manifestations of national activity. To properly study the history of geographical discovery, all history must be studied. (Batalha Reis 1897, 207)

Finally, I must note that the great Portuguese historian, Armando Cortesão (1953, esp. 3) made a similar argument for the Portuguese priority in the discovery of the Americas based on the presence of Antilia on a 1424 chart by Zuane Pizzigano (see Campbell 1987, 411).

Does Antilia reflect a folk memory or oral tradition of the existence of the new world before Columbus, handed down by Portuguese or Venetian mariners? I have no idea and I have none of the skills and knowledge necessary to come to even attempt a conclusion. But what is obvious is that such arguments are wrapped up in and motivated by nationalistic yearnings and the shading of the historical record that are otherwise common among map historians and historians of discovery, as Batalha Reis observed.

Notes

n1. There is much confusion over the writing of the last name of this family. As far as I can tell, the family name is Zen, one male family member is “Zeno,” multiple male family members are “Zeni.”

n2. The mappamundi, and Formaleoni’s facsimile, featured in my recent post, “Here Be Dragons.”

References

Batalha Reis, J. 1897. “The Supposed Discovery of South America before 1448, and the Critical Methods of the Historians of Geographical Discovery.” Geographical Journal 9, no. 2: 185–210.

Burden, Philip D. 1996. The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511–1670. Rickmansworth, Herts.: Raleigh Publications.

Campbell, Tony. 1986. “Census of Pre-Sixteenth-Century Portolan Charts.” Imago Mundi 38: 67–94.

———. 1987. “Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500.” In Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, edited by J. B. Harley, and David Woodward, 371–463. Vol. 1 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cortesão, Armando. 1953. “The North Atlantic Nautical Chart of 1424.” Imago Mundi 10: 1–13.

Errera, Carlo. 1895. “Della carta di Andrea Bianco del 1448 e di una supposta scoperta del Brasile nel 1447.” Memorie della Società Geografica ltaliana 5: 202–25. Reprinted, Acta Cartographica 2 (1968): 88–111.

Formaleoni, Vincenzio Antonio. 1783a. Catarino Zeno, storis curiosa delle sue avventure in Persia. Venice.

———. 1783b. Saggio sulla nautica antica de Veneziani, con una illustrazione d’alcune carte idrografiche antiche della Biblioteca di S. Marco, che dimostrano l’isole Antille prima della scoperta di Cristoforo Colombo. 2 parts in 1 vol. Venice: The Author.

———. 1788. Essai sur la marine ancienne des Vénitiens, dans lequel on a mis au jour plusieurs cartes tirées de la bibliothèque de St-Marc, antérieures à la découverte de Cristophe Colomb et qui indiquent clairement l’existence des isles Antilles. Translated by Étienne-Félix Hénin de Cuvillers. Venice: The Author.

Garwood, Christine. 2007. Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea. London: Macmillan.

Horodowich, Elizabeth. 2017. The Venetian Discovery of America: Geographic Imagination and Print Culture in the Age of Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Karrow, Robert W., Jr. 1993. Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps: Bio-Bibliographies of the Cartographers of Abraham Ortelius, 1570. Chicago: Speculum Orbis Press for The Newberry Library.

Oldham, H. Yule. 1895. “A Pre-Columbian Discovery of America.” Geographical Journal 5: 221–39. Reprinted, Acta Cartographica 1 (1967): 298–316.

Ravenstein, E. G., E. J. Payne, H. Yule Oldham, et al. 1895. “A Pre-Columban Discovery of America: Discussion.” Geographical Journal 5, no. 3: 233–39.

Skelton, R. A. 1965. “The Vinland Map.” In R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, 107–240. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

———. 1972. Maps: A Historical Survey of Their Study and Collecting. Edited by David Woodward. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Talbert, Richard J. A. 2010. Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zanetti, Girolamo Francesco. 1758. Dell’origine di alcune arti principali appresso i Viniziani. 2 vols. Venice: Stefano Orlandini.

Zen, Nicolò. 1558. De i commentarii del viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno il K. & delle guerre fatte nell’imperio Persiano, dal tempo di Vssuncassano in quà. Libri due. et dello scoprimento dell’isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrouelenda, Estotilanda, et Icaria, fatto sotto il polo Artico, da due fretelli zeni, M. Nicolò il K. e M. Antonio. Venice: Francesco Marcolini.

Zurla, Placido. 1806. Il mappemondo di fra Mauro camaldolese descritto ed illustrato. Venice.

———. 1808. Dissertazione intorno ai viaggi e scoperte settentrionali di Nicolo ed Antonio fratelli Zeno. Venice: Zerletti.