Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18043

    Outrigger canoe

    Date
    1801
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    After
    Antonio Pigafetta (1491 - 1531, Italian) , Explorer
    Object type
    Library reference
    59032
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 202mm
    width (page): 125mm
    Subject
    Content object
    map
    Description
    Primitive map showing three islands, the larger with a cartouche headed ‘ysole de li ladroni’ [‘islands of thieves’], the modern day Mariana Islands, including Guam. The illustration features an outrigger canoe, or Proa, equipped with a lateen sail and paddled by two figures.

    Plate 3 from the book Premier voyage au tour du monde, by Antonio Pigafetta (Paris, H J Jensen, 1801).

    Inscribed above: ‘Carte enluminée II Page 62.’ Inscribed below ‘1er. Voyage de Pigafetta. No. 3.’

    The accompanying text states that: ‘Leur amusement est de se promener avec leurs femmes dans des canots semblables aux gondoles de Fuisine près de Vénise…’ [Their entertainment is to wander with their wives in canoes similar to gondolas of Fuisine near Venice].

    This French version of Pigafetta’s account of the Magellan voyage was translated from a manuscript discovered in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. Only a small selection of the original images appeared in this book.

    Antonio Pigafetta (c.1491-c.1531) Italian explorer, survivor of the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan (c.1480-1521), the first voyage of circumnavigation of the globe led by the Portuguese explorer.
    Associated place
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