1556 / 1565 Giovanni Battista Ramusio Map of Cuzco, Peru

Foundational First Printed Image of Cusco.

This is the scarce 1565 issue of Giovanni Battista Ramusio's map of Cusco (Cuzco), Peru; it is the second edition of the first printed plan of the city based on a firsthand report. This image served as the basis for most illustrations of the city for nearly two centuries. It results from the report of the then-secretary to Francisco Pizarro, Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, who accompanied Pizarro in the conquest of Peru and wrote the first account of it on his return to Spain in 1534. That account was not printed until 1556, when Ramusio translated it into Italian.

A Closer Look

The city is depicted as a square, walled city in a mountainous setting, with roads converging from the four quarters. Streams running through the streets can be seen flowing out of the neatly laid out city into two flanking rivers. Travelers on foot and on horseback approach the city, whose left-hand wall is dominated by a citadel and stepped pyramid. Other towns, without walls, appear in the background.

The view agrees closely with Sancho's description as represented by Ramusio in almost every respect: the mountainous terrain, the two rivers, the water channeled through the straight paved streets all appear in the text. The city's fine stone buildings, its square plaza, and the orderliness of the city overall also agree with the description, as does the stepped fortress. We are left with the mystery of whether the image was physically provided by Sancho, or whether it was Ramusio's interpretation of Sancho's verbal description - nevertheless, for centuries it was the foundational image of the city.

Publication History and Census

This map was first cut by Matteo Pagano for inclusion in the 1556 third volume of Ramusio's Navigationi et Viaggi. The woodblocks for this, and indeed all the maps of the 1556 edition, burned in a 1557 warehouse fire. It appears in only one known state. The blocks were all re-engraved, probably again by Pagano, for the 1565 edition of the Navigationi et Viaggi. The second block (the present example) is geographically identical to the first; the two blocks are most easily distinguished by the sharp differences in the fence posts in the bottom-right corner of the woodcut. This second block was used again in 1606. That edition is easily identifiable by the small worm-shaped blank areas. (Woodworm appears to have similarly infested all blocks of the 1606 edition.) The 1556 edition of the third volume of Navigationi et Viaggi is rare. Seven examples of the 1565 are listed in OCLC, while perhaps twenty of the 1606 edition appear in institutional collections. A single example of this separate map is cataloged in OCLC.

Cartographers

Giovanni Battista Ramusio (July 20, 1485 - July 10, 1557) was an Italian civil servant, humanist, scholar, historian, and geographer active in the middle part of the 16th century. Ramusio spent most of his life in the service of the Republic of Venice, first as part of that state's embassy to France, and later as a reporter on voyages and discoveries. He was born to an illustrious family in Treviso and moved to Vencie as a young man, where his father was a magistrate. He studied at the University of Padua but may not have received a full degree. He entered the civil service shortly after leaving the university and was immediately assigned to diplomatic service for his facility with languages, particularly French. His most significant contribution to cartography is his publication of Navigationi et Viaggi a collection of travel narratives he collected in his service to the state. The narratives include those of Marco Polo, Niccolò Da Conti, Magellan, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Giosafat Barbaro, and Tomé Pires, among others. Some of the voyages appearing in the Navigationi et Viaggi are otherwise unknown, marking it as an exceptionally important volume. Ramusio died in Venice in 1557.   Further Details...

Pedro Sancho de la Hoz (1514 - 1547) was a Spanish merchant, conquistador, and chronicler who served as secretary to Francisco Pizarro. Nothing is known of his childhood in Spain. He accompanied Pizarro on the conquest of Peru from 1530 to 1534, and produced the first written description of the conquest and the city of Cuzco on his return. He would then be appointed in 1539 by Emperor Charles V as governor of the then-undiscovered lands south of the Strait of Magellan, Terra Australis Incognita. Unfortunately, on his return to South America, he came to view an erstwhile partner, Pedro de Valdivia, as a rival for the largely imaginary position; on several occasions, he attempted to assassinate the man. Valdivia responded with remarkable tolerance, but his successor, Francisco de Villagra, had Pedro Sancho beheaded in 1547 for his conspiracies. Sancho's manuscript, which does not survive, was not committed to print until it appeared in the 1556 third volume of Giovanni Battista Ramusio's Navigationi et Viaggi.   Further Details...

Source

Ramusio, G. B., Delle Navigationi et Viaggi Raccolte da M. Gio. Battista Ramusio, (Venice: Appresso i Giunti) 1565.    

Condition

Excellent.

References

OCLC 1014006922.