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 How to cite this paper: Missinne, S. (2021). America's Name Baptized on a Globe in 1510. Leonardo da Vinci's Blueprint for the Jagiellonian Armillary Sphere Discovered.