Giambattista Ramusio on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Giovanni Battista Ramusio (; July 20, 1485 – July 10, 1557) was an Italian
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
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 pe ...
.
Born in Treviso, 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 judici ...
of the Venetian city-state. In 1505 young Giovanni took a position as secretary to Aloisio Mocenigo, of the patrician Mocenigo family, 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 ar ...
. 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, 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 t ...
.
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 ...
, Magellan, 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.
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 A ...
' 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
Richard Hakluyt (; 1553 – 23 November 1616) was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonization of North America through his works, notably ''Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America'' (1582) and ''The Pri ...
.
See also
* Ramusio familyNotes
References
Further reading
;Editions of Navigationi et Viaggi * * * * * *External links
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