Explorer, born in Florence, NC Italy. He worked for the Medici family who sent him to Seville in 1491. He promoted a voyage to the New World in the track of Columbus, sailed with the explorer Alonso de Hojeda (1499), and explored the coast of Venezuela. In 1505 he was naturalized in Spain, and from 1508 was pilot-major of the kingdom. His name was given to America through an inaccurate account of his travels published in Lorraine (1507), in which he is represented as having discovered and reached the mainland in 1497.
For the ship, see Amerigo Vespucci (ship).Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1451 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer.
Vespucci's voyages became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticisms of Vespucci as trying to usurp Christopher Columbus's glory. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci has led to the view that the early published accounts were fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others.
Life
Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy, as the third child of a respected family. Amerigo Vespucci worked for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and his brother Giovanni and in 1491 they sent him to work at their agency in Seville, Spain.
In 1508, after at least two voyages to the Americas, the position of pilot major (chief of navigation) of Spain was created for Vespucci, with the responsibility of training pilots for ocean voyages.
Letters
Two letters attributed to Vespucci were published during his lifetime.
Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi ("Letter of Amerigo Vespucci concerning the isles newly discovered on his four voyages"), known as Lettera al Soderini or just Lettera, was a letter in Italian addressed to Piero Soderini. Printed in 1504 or 1505, it claimed to be an account of four voyages to the Americas made by Vespucci between 1497 and 1504. A Latin translation was published by the German Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 in Cosmographiae Introductio, a book on cosmography and geography, as Quattuor Americi Vespuccij navigationes ("Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci").
In the 18th century three unpublished "familiar" letters from Vespucci to Lorenzo de' Medici were rediscovered.
Some have suggested that Vespucci, in the two letters published in his lifetime, was exaggerating his role and constructed deliberate fabrications. However many scholars now believe that the two letters were not written by him but were fabrications by others based in part on genuine letters by Vespucci.
It was the publication and widespread circulation of the letters that led Martin Waldseemüller to name the new continent America on his world map of 1507 in Lorraine. Vespucci used a latinised form of his name, Americus Vespucius, in his Latin writings, which Waldseemüller used as a base for the new name, taking the feminine form America.
The two disputed letters claim that Vespucci made four voyages to America, while at most two can be verified from other sources.
Vespucci's real historical importance may well be more in his letters, whether he wrote them all or not, than in his discoveries.
Voyages
In 1499–1500, Vespucci joined an expedition in the service of Spain with Alonso de Ojeda (or Hojeda) as the fleet commander. Vespucci sailed southward, discovering the mouth of the Amazon River and reaching 6°S, before turning around and seeing Trinidad and the Orinoco River and returning to Spain by way of Hispaniola. Vespucci claimed, in a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, that he determined his longitude celestially on August 23, 1499, while on this voyage.
His last certain voyage was one led by Gonçalo Coelho in 1501–1502 in the service of Portugal. In a letter from Cape Verde, Vespucci says that he hopes to visit the same lands that Álvares Cabral had explored, suggesting that the intention is to sail west to Asia, as on the 1499-1500 voyage. Portuguese maps of South America following the voyage of Coelho and Vespucci do not show any land south of present-day Cananéia at 25º S, so this may represent the southernmost extent of their voyages. During the first half of this expedition in 1501, Vespucci mapped the two stars, Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri as well as the stars of the constellation Crux.
On return to Lisbon, Vespucci wrote in a letter to de' Medici that the land masses they explored were much larger than anticipated and unlike the Asia described by earlier Europeans and, therefore, must be a New World, that is, a previously unknown fourth continent, after Europe, Asia, and Africa.
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