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Americas/ Florida. WALDSEEMULLER, M./ FRIES, L. [Vienne-in-the-Dauphine, 1522/ 1541] Untitled Woodcut Map of the Americas. 11 ¼ x 14 7/8 inches. Excellent condition. The Waldseemuller and Fries maps were also among the earliest to represent the Gulf of Mexico and to show the Florida peninsula. Although Florida was not officially “discovered” until 1513 by Ponce de Leon, it is known that the Spanish had earlier made several trips there in search of slaves. Moreover, the shape and location of what would be Florida on the Waldseemuller and Fries maps roughly correspond with geographic reality. Of considerable importance, the text on the back of the map contains a strongly worded rejection of the use of “America” for the New World; significantly, the name does not appear on the maps itself. A regressive alteration on the map is Fries' moving "Parias," Columbus' name for the part of South America he explored, to North America.
Laurent Fries’s more elaborate edition of Waldseemuller's landmark "Tabula Terre Nove" (1513), the first separate, printed map of America. Although the Fries edition is geographically very close to Waldseemuller’s, it did make a number of meaningful changes that indicate a greater familiarity with the America and signal important shifts in attitude regarding who deserved credit for its discovery. Suggestive of the first point is a detail such as calling South America “Terra Nova” as opposed to “Terra Incognita,” as it appears on the Waldseemuller version, indicating greater certainty that America was indeed a separate continent rather than a part of Asia, as was generally held up when the Waldseemuller edition of the map appeared. Other changes by Fries include a new and prominent inscription concerning Columbus, crediting him with the initial discovery of America, new vignettes of cannibalistic Indians and of an opossum, a Spanish flag planted in Cuba, and corrected northern latitude numbers.
Burden 4.
Price: $12,500.00