Um catálogo americano: a coleção de Ramusio / An American Catalogue: Ramusio’s Collection

Abstract

Published in Venice in the middle of the sixteenth century, the three volumes of Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, compiled, translated into Italian and annotated by Giovanni Battista Ramusio, gather in a single bibliographic monument a wide set of travel chronicles and maps. Even without having direct participation in the expansionist and colonizing projects promoted in that century by the Iberian empires, Venice maintained an important relationship with this world-system that was emerging, providing the work of cartographers, editors, cosmographers, translators and writers Caligrama, Belo Horizonte, v. 26, n. 1, p. 129-144, 2021 130 who disseminated and consolidated this knowledge about distant lands. Ramusio’s collection is part of this vast epistemological project; in this article I intend to analyze the conditions and antecedents that made possible the publication of this inventory of overseas explorations and achievements, particularly those relating to the New World, and their importance in the perception of new and modern natural and cultural realities that were redefining the orb.