Quick Facts
Biography
Visconte Maggiolo (1478 – after 1549), also spelled Maiollo and Maiolo, was a Genoese cartographer.
He was born in Genoa and maybe he was a fellow sailor of explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. In 1511 he moved to Naples, where he produced three extant nautical atlases. Some historians say that he died of malaria in 1530; but archival documents show that he was still alive, in Genoa, at least in 1549, although he certainly was already dead in 1561.
In 1527, he created a map depicting Verrazzano's travels. This map had a major error (so-called "Verrazzano Sea" with his "Verrazzano Isthmus", as Giovanni did not accurately describe the North American continent. This error kept on showing up in maps for over a century. A copy of this 1527 map was destroyed during World War II.
There are numerous portolan charts, atlases and at least two other world maps made by Vesconte Maggiolo: one dated Genoa, 1531; another kept at a public library in Treviso (in Italian), is dated Genoa, 1549.
