In the course of European overseas expansion in the sixteenth-century, many travelogues were printed. Colonial discourse found expression in a flood of texts and images about the “New World”. The publisher Theodor de Bry started his successful multi-volume series about America in 1590. The sixth volume, published in 1596, has the coloured copper engraving of a world map that is no longer presented by allegorical personnel but by four “heroes of the seas”, complete with compass and sailing ship. They are Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and Francisco Pizarro.
Details