Diogo Ribero

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogo_Ribeiro

Diogo Ribeiro, also known as Diego Ribero, was a Portuguese cartographer and explorer who worked most of his life in Spain. He worked on the official maps of the Padrón Real (or Padrón General) from 1518-1532. He also made navigation instruments, including astrolabes and quadrants.^[1]

Career

By 1516, Diogo Ribeiro and other several Portuguese navigators and cartographers, conflicting with King Manuel I of Portugal, gathered in Seville to serve the newly crowned Charles V. Among them were explorers and cartographers Diogo and Duarte Barbosa, Estêvão Gomes, João Serrão, Ferdinand Magellan and Jorge Reinel, cosmographers Francisco and Ruy Faleiro and the Flemish merchant Christopher de Haro. Ribeiro started working for Charles I (and V of the Holy Roman Empire) in 1518, as a cartographer at the Casa de Contratación in Seville.^[2] Ferdinand Magellan took part in the development of the maps used in the first circumnavigation of the Earth.

On January 10, 1523, he was named Royal Cosmographer and "master in the art of creating maps, astrolabes, and other instruments". He eventually succeeded Sebastian Cabot(who left on a voyage) as the head cartographer. Cabot published his first map in 1544.

In 1524, Ribeiro participated in the Castilian (Spanish) delegation at the Conference of Badajoz, where Castile (Spain) and Portugal discussed whether the Philippines were on the Castilian or Portuguese side of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

In 1527, Ribeiro finished the Padrón Real, the official (and secret) Spanish map used as template for the maps present in all Spanish ships. It is considered the first scientific world map.

In 1531, he invented a bronze water pump that was able to pump water out ten times faster than the previous models.

Diogo Ribeiro died in 1533.

First scientific world map

Ribeiro's most important work is the 1527 Padrón Real. There are 6 copies attributed to Ribeiro,^[3] including at the Weimar Grand Ducal Library (1527 Mundus Novus) and at the Vatican Library, in Vatican City (1529 Propaganda Map or Carta Universal).^[3] The layout of the map (Mapamundi) is strongly influenced by the information obtained during the Magellan-Elcano trip around the world.

Diogo's map delineates very precisely the coasts of Central and South America. It shows the whole east coast of the Americas but of the west coast only the area from Guatemala to Ecuador. However, neither Australia nor Antarctica appear, and the Indian subcontinent appears too small. The map shows, for the first time, the real extension of the Pacific Ocean. It also shows, for the first time, the North American coast as a continuous one (probably influenced by Estêvão Gomes's exploration in 1524/25). It also shows the demarcation of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The absence of any large continent south of Asia is evidence that there had been no discovery of Australia at that date.

http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ren/Ren1/346mono.html

"...This map is justfiably considered by many scholars to be the finest cartographic production of its age. The mapmaker, whose name in its Portuguese form is Diogo Ribeiro, was a Portuguese [Lusitanian] at Seville in the service of King Charles V of Spain. For many years Ribero was recognized as one of the most expert cosmographers of his time. He was closely associated with all of the noted explorers who gathered about the Spanish court. He was a personal friend of the Pilot Major, Sebastian Cabot; was the royal cosmographer under Ferdinand Columbus; and made the maps which Magellan carried with him on his famous voyage across the Pacific. Ultimately Ribero suceeded Sebastian Cabot as Pilot Major, a position for which he was obviously highly qualified, having also navigated to India for both Vasco da Gama and Albuquerque.

As royal cosmographer, it was Ribero's duty to revise the patron real (padron general), the standard or official map, as new data was brought back by the pilots from their voyages of discovery. Therefore this map was the one that incorporated the most recent discoveries, corrections and revisions into one master map thereby providing the most accurate, continually updated delineation of the known world. The patron real had first been made, by order of Ferdinand in 1508, by a commission under Vespucci, and was put under the control of the Casa de Contratacion, a council which had been organized five years before to supervise discoveries. No copy of this important patron real is now known to exist, although the Pilot Major was authorized to make and sell copies to all pilots, who were ordered to take them on their voyages. Ribero's existing maps are the nearest example what these copies of what the official map probably looked like. They show the astonishing growth of detailed knowledge of the New World since the first voyage of Columbus thirty-seven years before. The entire east coast from Greenland to the Straits of Magellan had been explored, and reports of voyages along the Pacific coast were coming in rapidly.

In 1524 Ribero was also a member of the Conference of Badajos which was assembled to settle the dispute as to whether the Philippine Islands lay within the part of the world allotted by the Treaty of Tordesillas to Spain or to Portugal. This conference dissolved without agreement, but Spain retained control of both groups of islands until 1528, when Charles V sold his claim to the Spice [Moluccan] Islands to Portugal as part of the Treaty of Saragossa.

In 1526 Ribero was a prominent member of the junta of pilots at Seville, under the presidency of Ferdinand Columbus. This group was called together by Charles V to secure data for a revision to the patron real.

There are two well known world maps signed by Ribero; one, produced in 1529 is sometimes called the Propoganda, or Second Borgian map, formerly in the Museo Borgia of the Propoganda Fide, now in the Vatican Library at Rome; and the other, produced in 1527 is in the Grand Ducal Library at Weimar. A third map, produced in 1532 and closely resembling the other two, but unsigned, known as the Wolfenbüttel map, as it is in the Wolfenbüttel Grand Ducal Library, is also believed to be the work of Ribero. There is also a map produced in 1525 currentlt in the library at Manua, another map from 1529 also at Weimar and fragments of a world map produced in 1530 now preserved in Studienbibliothek, Dillingen on the Danube.

The map shown here, the Propoganda map, is the one now in the Biblioteca Apostalica Vaticana,Vatican City. It is an illustrated manuscript world map produced on vellum measuring 85 X 205 cm [33 X 80 inches]. The other two maps are drawn on parchment and measure 86 X 216 cm (Weimar)..."