Americae et proximar[um] regionum orae descriptio

Giovanni Battista Mazza was an Italian engraver and publisher active in Rome in the late sixteenth century. This separately published map was issued in Venice by Donato Rascicotti in 1589. It belongs to a closely related group of late sixteenth-century maps of the Americas and the Pacific, alongside Frans Hogenberg’s Americae et proximarum regionum orae descriptio (130) and Abraham Ortelius’s Maris Pacifici (221). Richard Casten and Thomas Suárez have argued that Hogenberg’s map (130) was probably the earliest of this related group, followed by Mazza’s map and then Ortelius’s Maris Pacifici (221).

Mazza’s map contains far more geographical detail and more extensive annotations than the other two maps in this sequence. It presents the Americas within an expansive oceanic setting, extending from Europe and West Africa across the Atlantic to the Americas, the eastern Pacific, Japan, the Philippines, the Moluccas, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the northern edge of Terra Australis. The map therefore treats the Americas not as an isolated New World, but as part of a wider maritime geography linking the Atlantic, Pacific, Asia, and the southern continent. The geography closely follows the broad model also seen in Hogenberg’s map (130), but with denser engraving and more extensive annotations. North America includes Anian, Quivira, Totonteac, Cibola, and Nueva España, while the western coastline remains speculative. South America is shown with detailed coastal naming, including Peru, Brazil, Chile, Patagonia, and the Strait of Magellan. In the Pacific, the Philippines, the Moluccas, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands appear in relation to Spanish transpacific navigation and European expansion into Asian waters.

At lower right, Psitacorum regio, or “Region of Parrots, ” appears on the northern edge of Terra Australis. The inscription describes the land as rich in birds and separated from America by the Strait of Magellan. This connects the map to the sixteenth-century southern-continent tradition, in which the far south was imagined through classical geography, voyage reports, and natural-historical description. Two states of the map are known. In the first state, the lower left carries the imprints Venetiis Donati Rascicotti formis and Gio. Bat. Mazza fece, identifying Donato Rascicotti as publisher and Giovanni Battista Mazza as maker or engraver. In the second state, these imprints were erased, although traces remain visible.

Within the collection, this map should be read directly alongside Hogenberg’s map (130), with which it shares title, subject, and much of its geographical structure. It also provides an important comparison with Ortelius’s Maris Pacifici (221), which gives the Pacific itself greater prominence. Together, these three maps show how, in the late sixteenth century, the Americas were increasingly understood within a wider Pacific world linking Asia, New Guinea, Japan, the Philippines, the Spanish transpacific sphere, and the northern edge of Terra Australis.