Period

16th Century

Featured Items

Detail from a printed book shows text in Spanish reading "Los aguacates es uno fruta en las Indias muy preciada, y medicinal."

Secretos de chirurgia

Pedro Arias de Benavides
1567
Detail of a hand colored manuscript map shows flags and place names along a coastal region.

[Early representation of Newfoundland, Lower California, the Amazon, and the Ladrones]

António Pereira
circa 1546
Cover of Instructio[n]

Instructio[n], y memoria, de las relaciones que se han de hazer, para la descripcion de las Indias

Juan López de Velasco
1577
Detail of a printed text shows an illustration of four naked Natives surrounded by trees. One holds a cross bow and another holds a large stick. Text in Dutch is also visible.

Van der nieuwer werelt

Amerigo Vespucci
1509
Detail of a printed book shows a colored illustrated dragons on a circular diagram with text in Latin.

Astronomicum cæsareum

Peter Apian
1540
Detail of a fold-out printed map shows town square in the center, surrounding buildings, and ships at sea at the outer perimeter.

Praeclara Ferdina[n]di.

Hernán Cortés
1524
Detail of a colored manuscript map shows the Black Sea with labels. Decorative border includes red, blue, and green ink and gilded details.

Battista Agnese atlas

Battista Agnese
1543-1545
Detail from a printed texts shows a full-page illustration of Fort Caroline. Details include topography, trees, and text in French.

Plan of Fort Caroline

1565

Related

Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Guasteca (México, 1571), by Juan de la Cruz.
Collections Up Close

Early Mexican Imprints at the JCB

José Montelongo, January 15, 2023
An image of the map '“Delineatio Omnium Orarum Totius Australis Partis Americae'
Collections Up Close

Jan van Linschoten, “Delineatio Omnium Orarum Totius Australis Partis Americae …” in Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert…, Amsterdam: Cornelius Claesz, 1596

November 22, 2021
Engraving of two Nahua men speaking to one another. An angel hovers behind one of the men, preventing him from producing idolatrous speech, while the other has a snakes stemming from his mouth, which is representative of such language.
Fellow's Talk

"Brute animals" and "rational creatures": Defining humanity in the Indigenous-language vocabularies and pedagogies of New Spain

Image of an artificial flower clock, with two hands emerging from clouds on either side holding a numbered circle, and a thorn stemming from the flower's circle pointing at the time.
Fellow's Talk

Earthquakes and Timekeeping Practices in New England, 1600-1800

Detail from the Tovar Codex, showing a bearded Spanish man atop the symbol for house (calli), while holding a book that points to the letters of the Roman alphabet.
Fellow's Talk

Translating Late Medieval Classics into Nahuatl: The Imitatio Christi and How to Think About Latin-Nahuatl translation

Simple, printed map of the island of Sicily, showing Mount Etna, Palermo, Messina, Catania, and other cities, which have been labeled by the author.
Fellow's Talk

Comparative Colonialisms? Palermo and the Americas at the JCB

Three sixteenth-century maps. On the left is a map of the western coast of South America including Peru, on the top right a map of the southern part of North America from the Carolinas to the Mexican coast and on the bottom right a map of the northeastern part of Mexico.
Fellow's Talk

From South to North America: A New Perspective on Floridian Studies

A map showing the strait of Magellan
Fellow's Talk

The Strait of Magellan and the Construction of a Global habitability. Geopolitics and cosmography in the 16th century [in Spanish]

See Also

Mohawk

Caribbean