Ramusio & Gastaldi Universale della Parti della Mondo 1556 UTA

Giovanni Battista Ramusio (; July 20, 1485 – July 10, 1557) was an Italian

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

and

travel writer The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern per ...

. Born in

Treviso Treviso ( , ; vec, Trevixo) is a city and '' comune'' in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 84,669 inhabitants (as of September 2017). Some 3,000 live within the Ven ...

, Italy, at that time in the

Republic of Venice The Republic of Venice ( vec, Repùblega de Venèsia) or Venetian Republic ( vec, Repùblega Vèneta, links=no), traditionally known as La Serenissima ( en, Most Serene Republic of Venice, italics=yes; vec, Serenìsima Repùblega de Venèsia, ...

, Ramusio was the son of Paolo Ramusio, a

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judic ...

of the Venetian city-state. In 1505 young Giovanni took a position as secretary to Aloisio Mocenigo, of the patrician

Mocenigo family The House of Mocenigo was a Venetian noble family of Lombard Dalmatian origin. Many of its members were doges, statesmen, and soldiers. Notable members * Tommaso Mocenigo (1343-1423), ''doge'' 1414-1423 * Pietro Mocenigo, ''doge'' from 1474 ...

, then serving as the Republic's ambassador to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. Ramusio would spend the rest of his career in Venetian service. He was keenly interested in geography, and his position ensured that he would receive news of all the latest discoveries from explorers around Europe as they were sent back to Venice. A learned man, fluent in several languages, he began to compile these documents and translated them into

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

, then the most widely understood of the European languages. He died in

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

Collection of travel books

Though he himself traveled little, Ramusio published ''Navigationi et Viaggi'' ("Navigations and Travels"); a collection of explorers' first-hand accounts of their travels. This was the first work of its kind. It included the accounts of Marco Polo,

Niccolò Da Conti Niccolò is an Italian male given name, derived from the Greek Nikolaos meaning "Victor of people" or "People's champion". There are several male variations of the name: Nicolò, Niccolò, Nicolas, and Nicola. The female equivalent is Nicole. The f ...

Magellan Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...

, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and

Giosafat Barbaro Giosafat Barbaro (also Giosaphat or Josaphat) (1413–1494) was a member of the Venetian Barbaro family. He was a diplomat, merchant, explorer and travel writer.

, as well as the Descrittione dell’ Africa. The description of China contains the first reference in European literature to

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and north ...

. He also published an excerpt of

Tomé Pires Tomé Pires (1465?–1524 or 1540)Madureira, 150–151. was a Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in Southeast As ...

' work on the Indies, which had come into his hands, though he did not know the name of its author.Armando Cortesão, ''The 'Suma Oriental' of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China,'' 2 vols, (1944) 1990:xviii. The first volume was published in 1550, quickly followed by the third volume in 1556. Publication of the second volume was delayed because the manuscript had been destroyed in a fire before being sent to the printer, and was finally published in 1559, two years after its compiler's death. ''Navigationi et Viaggi'' was translated into several languages and reprinted a number of times, indicating how popular such books were becoming on the Continent. It paved the way for a slew of other such works, including those of Richard Hakluyt.

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Exploration through the ages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramusio, Giovanni Battista 1485 births 1557 deaths Italian travel writers Italian male non-fiction writers Italian geographers 16th-century geographers 16th-century Italian writers 16th-century travel writers Ambassadors of the Republic of Venice to France 16th-century Italian diplomats

Collection of travel books

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