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America’s Name Baptized on a Globe in 1510.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Blueprint for the Jagiellonian Armillary Sphere
Discovered.
ABSTRACT
The treasure room at the Collegium Maius of the Jagiellonian Museum in
Cracow contains an armillary sphere dating from 1510. This scientific object
of excellent French workmanship contains the Jagiellonian Globe, which
looks surprisingly like the Lenox Globe, a sibling of the da Vinci Globe.
The fact that the Jagiellonian Globe is mounted in an armillary sphere
supports the hypothesis that the Lenox, cast from reddish copper, was most
likely the central part of a lost armillary sphere. A horologist copied the
cartography of the Lenox Globe.
It is hypothesized that he also copied the decorative artistic design of the
armillary sphere as a blueprint. Using primary data in his research, the
author describes the compelling Jagiellonian instrument. He concentrates
on aspects of epigraphy, toponymy, orthography, iconography,
cosmography, ornamental history, visual arts, heraldry, kinematics,
geometry, didactics and astronomy.
The methodology used is based on analogy in the arts, stemmatics,
cartographic, historiographical and comparative analysis based on the latest
3D photographic scanning technology of the Lazarus Project of the
University of Rochester. Furthermore, more than 40 international experts
and researchers contained in the list of acknowledgements assisted in
making this research possible. The author attributes the Jagiellonian Globe
to Jean Coudray, Early Modern horologist active for successive French
Kings in Blois. This is substantiated by a monogram. It is a capital letter C
next to a reversed half-Moon on the bottom of the Jagiellonian Globe.
The author provides key evidence that this French horologist constructed
the instrument between 1507 and 1510 based on a model armillary sphere.
In making the Jagiellonian, Jean Coudray added the latest cartographic
news in the form of a Latin phrase “America noviter reperta” thereby
baptizing the name of America for the first time in Early Modern history
on a three-dimensional object. Compelling arguments and chronological
evidence are offered by the orthography, nomenclature, applied old French
dimensions, iconography of the instrument and the unique cartography of
the terrestrial globe contained at its center.
The specific didactic scheme of this universal armillary sphere, in addition
to the whirlpools adjacent to the orb, bear the visual signature of Leonardo
da Vinci. However, the French horologist was not only influenced by stylistic
Renaissance and didactical aspects used by Leonardo. He copied them.
These include the mirroring of the Roman numerals and of the order of the
hour band on the Equator reflecting the concaveness of the object based on
a Vitruvian design. In addition, the unique design of the throne of the
armillary sphere is influenced by Leonardo’s kinetics. The two scrolls of the
throne contained in a newly developed design, in this case one of life-giving
whirlpools, echoes the kinetic untamed energy and power of nature and of
the oceans in particular. The iconography of the world sphere, the cosmic
egg, in between the two scrolls means perfection, the primordial form which
contains all the possibilities of all the forms as Plato’s animus mundi, the
soul of the world.
The anonymous large mountainous island mirroring the Regio Pathalis of
Pliny and Bacon is used in the cartography of the da Vinci, Lenox and
Jagiellonian Globe. Finally, the author offers evidence of a bibliographical
reference to a specific astronomical clock instrument just like the
Jagiellonian Armillary Sphere. This reference is listed in a contemporary
French inventory of the famous Florimond Robertet, notorious client of
Leonardo da Vinci, dating from 1532.
