Conventional Wisdom and the Date of the Kunstmann I Chart

• Published in: Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization
• Main Author: McIntosh, Gregory
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2020
• Subjects: Kunstmann I; Pedro Reinel; João Álvares Fagundes; Newfoundland; latitude scale bar; oblique meridian; manuscript map; nautical chart
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3138/cart-2019-0005

It has long been accepted by most historians that the manuscript chart on parchment known as “Kunstmann I,” signed by the famous Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel, was made about 1504. The purpose of the present paper is to advocate c.1519 as a more likely date for the composition of the Kunstmann I chart. It will be seen that the original pronouncements of past historians for the earlier date were made before other documents found later in the nineteenth century shed light upon the Portuguese voyages to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Repeated by subsequent historians, the dating of c. 1504 become enshrined as conventional wisdom.