# Cantino planisphere > Unknown Portuguese chartmaker - 1502 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-portuguese-chartmaker-1502/cantino-planisphere/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-17 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Portuguese chartmaker - **Date:** 1502 - **Medium:** Ink, pigment and gold on parchment, six skins joined - **Dimensions:** About 105 x 220 cm - **Object type:** Map - **Period:** Portuguese, early sixteenth century - **Current location:** Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A Portuguese world chart of 1502 on six joined skins of parchment, about 105 by 220 cm, the earliest surviving map to show the Brazilian and Caribbean coasts and to mark the Tordesillas line. It is named not for the man who drew it, who is unknown, but for Alberto Cantino, the agent of Ercole I d'Este who had it made in Lisbon and sent it to Ferrara. His covering letter of 19 November 1502 survives and gives the only price this object has ever had: twelve gold ducats, by contract.What makes it a provenance record rather than a cartography lecture is what happened afterwards. The chart went with the Este library to Modena when the family lost Ferrara. At some point before 1859 an owner cut off its top margin, probably removing its title, and pasted the map onto the folds of a screen. In the upheaval of 1859 the ducal palace was invaded and the map stolen. A few years later Giuseppe Boni, the librarian of the Biblioteca Estense, walking down the Via Farini in Modena, saw it doing duty as a screen in the shop of a pork butcher named Giusti. He bought it, lifted the vellum off the screen, and gave it to the library in 1870.It has been in Modena ever since, shelfmark C.G.A.2. There is one of it. The version risk in this record is not another copy but the facsimiles, which have circulated since 1906 and are routinely reproduced as though they were the object. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1502** Alberto Cantino, agent of Ercole I d'Este at Lisbon `[documented]` (Chart made in Portugal for Cantino under contract at a cost of twelve gold ducats; left at Genoa with Francesco Cataneo, who advanced Cantino twenty narrow ducats) From Cantino's own letter to the Duke, written at Rome on 19 November 1502, one of five of his letters preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Modena. Whether its removal from Portugal breached a secrecy policy is an interpretation, held by the holding library, and not stated in the letter. - **1502-the 1590s** The House of Este, ducal archives, Ferrara `[documented]` (Received at the Este court and kept in the ducal archives) Acquired by Ercole I d'Este in 1502, per the holding library's provenance note. - **the 1590s-1859** The House of Este, Modena `[documented]` (Transferred to Modena with the whole ducal library when the Este lost Ferrara to the Papal States; in the Este collections thereafter) Harrisse gives the year as 1592 and attributes the transfer to Clement VIII dispossessing Cesare d'Este. The devolution of Ferrara is normally dated later in that decade, and this record does not substitute another year without a source. - **before 1859-1859** An unnamed private possessor `[disputed]` (The chart pasted onto the folds of a screen, its top margin cut off and thrown away) Harrisse calls this person the last possessor and does not name them, and does not explain how a chart in the ducal collections came to be made into furniture. The sequence he gives has the mutilation happening before the theft. - **1859-about 1868** Not established `[unknown]` (Stolen when the ducal palace at Modena was invaded by a crowd during the upheaval of 1859) No record of who took it or where it was between the theft and its appearance in a shop. - **about 1868-1870** Giuseppe Boni, librarian of the Biblioteca Estense `[documented]` (Recognised in the Via Farini in the shop of a pork butcher named Giusti, still serving as a screen; bought by Boni, who removed the vellum from the screen) Harrisse's account, written within a few decades of the event. He does not give a year, and he does not say what Boni paid. - **1870-present** Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena `[documented]` (Given to the library by Giuseppe Boni; shelfmark C.G.A.2) The library's own note reads: gift of Giuseppe Boni (1870), but already in the old Este collection. It returned as a donation because it had been bought back on the open market rather than recovered as stolen property. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This chart has never been at auction and no valuation for it has been published. Only two sums are attached to it in any source: twelve gold ducats, the contract cost of having it made in Portugal in 1502, and twenty narrow ducats of three libre each, which is not a price at all but an advance paid to Alberto Cantino at Genoa by Francesco Cataneo. The amount Giuseppe Boni paid the butcher in the Via Farini to get it back is not recorded. There is no hammer price and no buyer's premium anywhere in this object's history. ## Open questions - Who drew the chart? The maker is anonymous and no candidate has been established. - Was its removal from Portugal actually a breach of a secrecy policy? The holding library says it was smuggled out despite prohibitions; Cantino's surviving letter describes a contract and a delivery through Genoa and says nothing about evading anyone. - In what year did the Este collections move to Modena? Harrisse says 1592 and ties it to Clement VIII dispossessing Cesare d'Este; the devolution of Ferrara is normally dated later in that decade. The Este archive would settle it. - Who owned the chart when it was pasted onto a screen, and how did an item from the ducal collections come to be treated as upholstery? Harrisse calls the person the last possessor and names nobody. - In what year did Giuseppe Boni find it, and what did he pay the butcher? Harrisse says only 'a few years' after 1859, and the library records the gift in 1870. - How does this chart stand to the padrao real of 1502? The question is now the central one in the scholarship and the abstracts consulted here do not settle it. - Has the chart ever left Modena on loan, and what conservation has it had since the vellum was lifted off the screen? Nothing was found in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Modena, catalogue record for [Carta del Cantino], 1502, shelfmark C.G.A.2, in the Estense Digital Library. - [2] Henry Harrisse, The Discovery of North America (London and Paris, 1892), pp. 423-424, translating Alberto Cantino's letter of 19 November 1502 and recording the theft of 1859 and the recovery by Giuseppe Boni. Full text read directly from the Internet Archive scan. - [3] Il Bulino edizioni d'arte, Modena, description of its facsimile of the Carta del Cantino, produced with the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria: six parchments joined, 105 x 220 cm. - [4] Joaquim Alves Gaspar, 'Blunders, Errors and Entanglements: Scrutinizing the Cantino Planisphere with a Cartometric Eye', Imago Mundi 64:2 (2012). Abstract read from the OpenAlex record; the publisher refuses automated readers and the full text has not been read. - [5] Joaquim Alves Gaspar, 'The Mapping of Africa on the Nautical Charts of the Age of Discovery', Terrae Incognitae 53:3 (2021). Abstract read from the OpenAlex record. - [6] 'The Caverio Planisphere (c. 1506) Was Not Copied from the Cantino Planisphere (1502)', Terrae Incognitae 54:3 (2022). Abstract read from the OpenAlex record. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Cantino planisphere'. Tertiary, used only to locate the underlying references. Flagged for replacement with Ernesto Milano (ed.), La Carta del Cantino e la rappresentazione della Terra nei codici e nei libri a stampa della Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria (Modena, Il Bulino, 2012), which the holding library names as its own reference. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.