Giovanni Battista Ramusio
gigatos | April 2, 2022
Summary
Giovanni Battista Ramusio (July 20, 1485, Treviso, Venice) was a Venetian geographer, historian, and statesman. The founder of the genre of compilation of travelogues popular in the epoch of great geographical discoveries (Gaklut, Purches.
He was born in Venice in 1485 into the family of a city magistrate. By the age of thirty he had become chancellor of the Republic of Venice, working closely with Doge Alvise Mocenigo. From 1515 he was secretary of the Council of Ten. He had a son, Paolo.
He carried out several diplomatic missions as ambassador to France, Switzerland and Rome. A refined diplomat and proficient in several languages, he was appointed ambassador of the Republic of Venice to the European court of Louis XII. During this period he became interested in French expansion in North America. At this time the Republic of Venice was interested in maritime routes to the Americas, which was seen as an attractive new market for Venetian trade, as the latter suffered from pressure and the Ottoman advance in the Mediterranean. Thanks to his diplomatic connections, he easily succeeded in obtaining reports of the travels of the Breton navigator Jacques Cartier, sent by King Francis I to New France.
At the same time he demonstrated his ability to draw geographical maps and made detailed maps of all the new trading ports. A map with the ports of the Mediterranean was drawn by him in the rooms of the Doge”s palace.
His major work, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, is the first collection of geographical treatises of the modern age.
The work was published in Venice in three volumes [vol. 1-1550, vol. 3-1556, vol. 2-1559 (published posthumously)]. The first volume was published in 1550, soon followed by the third volume in 1556. Publication of the second volume was delayed because the manuscript was destroyed in a fire before being sent to the printer, and was finally published in 1559, two years after the author”s death. “Delle navigationi et viaggi” was translated into several languages and reprinted several times, indicating the great popularity of the book on the continent.
This monumental work was one of the first to be written in the literary genre of the compilation travelogue. Like other authors of such works, Giovanni Ramusio himself never left Europe.
Delle navigationi et viaggi is a collection of geographic observations and descriptions by Marco Polo, Nicolo Conti, Fernand Magellan, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Josaphat Barbaro, and a translation of Leo the African”s Africa, the Third Part of the World. The work is a valuable source describing the histories of geographic discovery and exploration in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
It is in this work that the map La Terra De Hochelaga Nella Nova Francia first describes Mount Mont Royal as Monte Reale and gives a schematic representation of the Iroquois village of Hochelaga, the first agglomeration of the future city of Montreal. The Navigationi e Viaggi maps were created by Giacomo Gastaldi.
Marco Polo”s account can be found in the second (first edition) or third volumes of Navigazioni e Viaggi. The text is rewritten, with numerous modifications and additions, sometimes important (the assassination of Ahmat, the description of Hangzhou, the deletion of Marco”s name in the chapter on Xianyang). This text by Ramusio served as the basis for the first scholarly edition of Marco Polo, published by W. Marsden in 1812.
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