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During a visit to the
Netherlands, between 1667 and 1668, Prince Cosimo III de' Medici (1642‐1723) purchased sixty‐five
hand‐painted geographical maps and city views from Johannes Vingboons (1616‐1670), a
cartographer and copyist for the Dutch India Companies, through the book dealer and fine arts connoisseur
Pieter Blaeu (1636‐1706) who acted as a go‐between. To quote the travel journal written by
Marques Filippo Corsini, “they showed the plans of various ports, cities, fortresses and coasts of both
the East and West Indies”, from the coasts of the American continent to the west and east coasts of
Africa, the Indian Ocean, the seas of South East Asia, the Philippines, Japan and ‘New Spain’, on
the other side of the Pacific. Two years later, during a second and longer European journey that took him to
Portugal, Spain, England, Ireland, France and back to the Netherlands again, having arrived in Lisbon in
February 1669, Cosimo acted through the Portuguese mathematician and cosmographer Luís Serrão
Pimentel (1613‐1679) to purchase copies of nautical charts featuring large‐scale illustrations
of the coasts of Africa, Persia and the Indian subcontinent, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Strait of
Malacca.
Through the lenses of Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish cartography and landscapes gathered in the cartographic
collection of Cosimo III de' Medici, the project The Global Eye reconstructs how connected global world
of the mid‐17th century was taking shape and reveals a remarkable circulation of men and knowledge
between the Netherlands, Portugal and Tuscany during the modern era.
Angelo Cattaneo e Sabrina Corbellini
Site design: Floris Uithof, Sylvia de Boer in collaboration with Angelo Cattaneo and Sabrina Corbellini.
Project: Sylvia de Boer
Programming: Floris Uithof
Angelo Cattaneo e Sabrina Corbellini
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Firenze
Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese Maps in the Collections of the Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici