Cornelis van Wytfliet, Hispania Nova (New Spain), 1597-1615

Wytfliet’s handsomely engraved map of New Spain was one of nineteen that the Flemish lawyer cum cartographer published in his only known atlas, Descriptiones Ptolemaicae Augmentum (Supplement to Ptolemy’s Geography). In his introduction, Wytfliet announces that the atlas is intended to supplement the work of Ptolemy, the Greco-Egyptian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, by describing parts of the world that were unknown in the second century A.D. Alexandria. Since the scope of the Augmentum is restricted to the western hemisphere (it does not include the intervening discoveries in Africa and Asia), Wytfliet’s work is rightly considered to be the first separately published atlas devoted exclusively to the Americas. “Hispania Nova” is a superb example from this pivotal publication.

“Published in the first atlas of America … this map concentrated on the Spanish area of influence in present-day Mexico. Like a lot of his maps, [Wytfliet’s Hispania Nova] draws from Plancius’ world map of 1592 amongst others. The area covered takes in all of present-day southern Texas up to the latitude of 30º north.” — Philip D. Burden

Wytfliet’s map—published only 36 years after Girolomo Ruscelli’s famous Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova—illustrates the rapid evolution of the cartographic knowledge of the area. Whereas the Seven Cities of Cibola appear in Ruscelli’s map, they are missing in Wytfliet’s map. Mexico City has traveled to a more central, and accurate, location within the country. Texas was then little known, and that is reflected in the paucity of information on this map, where the borderlands region is labeled Floridae Pars and Medanos de la Magdalena. The rivers in the Texas area are Rio de las Palmas (modern Rio Soto la Marina, in northern Mexico), a large, unnamed river (Escondido?), Rio Bravo (Grande), and Rio del Oro. Topographic details reflect more precisely the contours of the country. Idiosyncratic elements remain, however, the most pronounced being the attribution of Spanish-held lands to “Gallicia Nova,” or New Gaul (France). The superb graphic details of this map include citadel symbols for settlements and stylized mountain ranges, contrasted with the stippled patterns in the ocean and gulf waters.

Wytfliet based his maps on a number of sources available to him, including Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. According to Martin and Martin, “As a compiler instead of a creator, his production has remained all the more valuable as an excellent summary of everything then known in the Spanish Netherlands concerning the New World.” Indeed, the importance of Wytfliet’s work is in that it helped to dispel many of the errors regarding the New World, and served as the first general geography of the Americas. Wytfliet’s atlas was first published by Johannus Bogardus in 1597. It proved very popular in its time, and six additional editions in Latin and French were published between 1597 and 1615. All editions include the same state of the present map.

Refs.: Burden, no. 105; Martin & Martin, Maps of Texas And The Southwest: 1513-1900, p. 75; Nordenskiöld, Facsimilie-Atlas, pp. 133–34, plate LI; Phillips Atlases, no 1140; Wolff, ed., America: Early Maps of the New World, no. 114.