Iberian Influence in Southern Europe

Abstract

Cartographers everywhere had to deal with new information, at odds with received knowledge. They also worked within the theoretical context dictated by currents of Renaissance humanism and a fascination with Ptolemy’s Geography. Portuguese mapping practices spread rapidly in the first half of the sixteenth century. Many features of charts made in Portugal were familiar to map makers in France, the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Italy, and especially Spain because Portuguese cartographers shared with all of them precedents established earlier in Mediterranean cities and towns. The models for the Reinels and Homems and their Lisbon contemporaries were Catalan. Portuguese patterns were not at odds with what others did but rather a variation on the norm which had roots in thirteenth century Italy. Coming as it did embodying the struggle to reconcile the novel with the traditional and carrying the authority of new discoveries Portuguese cartographic forms and methods carried great weight throughout Europe.