Five hundred years ago the conquests of the great Italian navigators began to modify the idea of the New World and of the geography known until then. But it was the Florentine Giovanni Da Verrazzano – a name perhaps less known than Colombo and Vespucci – who opened it new horizons to Renaissance geography and cartography with his drawings and detailed accounts of his overseas explorations.
After his first voyage, commissioned in 1524 by the King of France but made possible by the Gondi, a family of Florentine bankers, new trade routes were traced for the merchants of the time while the geography began to be enriched with details on the morphology of the territories, the types of flora and fauna and even the habits of the local populations
“Thanks to the knowledge of Giovanni Da Verrazzano it was possible to build a new world map and produce new maps”, explained with enthusiasm the commander of the Military Geographic Institute of Florence, the General Massimo Panizzi among the first to join the project of an exhibition, curated by the professor and geographer Andrea Cantile coinciding with the transatlantic celebrations of the navigator-humanist who first sighted that “pleasant site between two small but prominent hills crossed by a very large river”, where New York would be built in 1665.
Firenze it inherited both the geographical culture and the cartographic tradition for having given birth to explorers of the caliber of Vespucci and Da Verrazzano. It is no coincidence that it is based in the Tuscan capital the Military Geographic Institute (IGM)body for the geotopocartographic support of the units and commands of the Italian Army. Inside, which already houses the Historical Museum of Italian Cartography the exhibition “The changing vision of a world yet to be discovered: cartography in the era of Giovanni Da Verrazzano” (open until May 31st, 1pm – 6pm).
At the inauguration, last April 24, civil and military authorities attended, including the governor of Tuscany, Eugenio Giani, together with Massimo Panizzi, commander of the Military Geographic Institute, the curator of the exhibition Andrea Cantile, president of the Ximenian Observatory Foundation and Daniele Ballard, American consul general in Florence. Also present was the president of the Association of Friends of Italian History and Culture (ACSI) Randa Eid who promoted the initiative together with Alan Friedman and Giuseppe Pedersoliproducer and director of a new docufilm on the journey of Giovanni da Verrazzano (already premiered in New York and Florence) which is an integral part of the project aimed at rediscovering the figure of the great Florentine explorer in all his complexity.
A project which, starting from documents and new research, finally puts Da Verrazzano’s decisive contribution to the knowledge of the time back into the right perspective. Because, as governor Giani highlighted, “that of Giovanni da Verrazzano is a fundamental historical figure: he was the first bridge between European culture and the new worlds.”
“He was undoubtedly the first explorer to give substance to the geographical knowledge of the time, in fact enriching it with precious details on the territories, their morphology and the populations that inhabited them”, continued Panizzi illustrating some of the maps, still preserved at the IGM , which were traced in the 16th century, based on the descriptions given by the navigator.
“World cartography – the general further observed – has experienced a very notable development following the great discoveries. The exhibition dedicated to the cartographic evolution between the 1300s and the 1600s also reflects our effort to spread geographical culture for the benefit of new generations“.
The exhibition offers the visitor the experience of a fascinating journey through time which begins in Florence, at the end of the 14th century, with the rediscovery and diffusion of the Geography of Claudius Ptolemy, and ends in the bay explored by the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the 16th century. As in a sort of short film, you will be able to appreciate the evolution of geographical knowledge, marked by adventurous overseas explorations, through aselection of world maps, drawings and prints of the time, produced in an anastatic form and ordered in a diachronic series. The result is an engaging journey capable of giving everyone the opportunity to reconstruct main stages of the explorations that led to the broadening of geographical horizons of Europeans. Remembering at the same time how, our Renaissance capital, Florence also inaugurated the first workshops of “paper painters” and became a renowned map production center of European fame.
The exhibition will remain open to visitors, with free entry, until May 31st from 1pm to 6pm (closed on holidays and weekends).
The docufilm “Giovanni Da Verrazzano: From the Renaissance to New York City”produced by Rai Documentari and Beaver Lake Pictures, will be broadcast by Rai Tre, Tuesday 7 May, at 11pm