Amerigo Vespucci

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Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512) Son of a Florentine notary, who served in the household of Lorenzo de Medici, the powerful de facto ruler of late fifteenth century Florence. Vespucci was inspired by the voyages of Christopher Columbus and sought to undertake voyages of his own. Financed by the Medici, Vespucci made the first of his three voyages in 1499. He discovered and explored the mouth of the Amazon River. He also realized that South America was a continent, not a part of Asia—something that Columbus never understood. There are varying versions of how his name came to be applied to the “New World.” What is certain is that either through the error of a printer, or through design, Martin Waldseemuller, a mapmaker attached a letter of Vespucci’s which indicated that Vespucci had made his first voyage to South America in 1497, one year before Columbus landed on the coast of South America, to Cosmographie Introductio (1507), a new Latin edition, ironically, of Ptolemy’s Cosmography. Waldseemuller suggested that what was now recognized as a new continent should be named for Vespucci. In fact, as indicated above, Vespucci’s first voyage took place in 1499, not 1497. Vespucci’s descriptions of his efforts Letter on his Third Voyage (1503) may have inspired Thomas More’s Utopia (1516).

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