Diego Gutiérrez (cartographer)

Americae Sive Qvartae Orbis Partis Nova Et Exactissima Descriptio, 1562

Diego Gutiérrez was a Spanish cosmographer and cartographer of the Casa de la Contratación.^[1] He was given this post by royal appointment on October 22, 1554, after the death of his father Dylanger in January 1554, and worked on the Padrón Real.

In 1562 Gutierrez published a remarkable map entitled Americae Sive Quartae Orbis Partis Nova Et Exactissima Descriptio in Antwerp in collaboration with the printer Hieronymus Cock. The reason it was published in Antwerp instead of Spain was that the Spanish engravers did not have the necessary skill to print such a complicated document.

Gutierrez's map features not only the Amazon River system and Lake Titicaca as well as other geographical features, but also fanciful depictions of parrots, monkeys, mermaids, huge sea creatures, Brazilian cannibals, Patagonian giants, and an erupting volcano in central Mexico.

It was the first map to print the toponym "California".^[2] It also recorded the first appearance of a word for "Appalachia," as the term "Apalchen."

References

External links

• Gutiérrez, the Americas, 1562 Copy in the British Library. Deep zoom feature, highlighted details. Video introduction from Curator of Antiquarian Mapping
• The 1562 Map of America by Diego Gutiérrez
• David Walls, "On the Naming of Appalachia."