Affonso de Taunay and the two versions of the map of d. Luis de Céspedes Xeria (1628)

Abstract

The following paper aims to deepen the studies about the map of the travel made by D. Luis de Céspedes Xeria from the town of São Paulo de Piratininga to the Ciudad Real de Guayrá, in the Province of Paraguay, in 1628. For this, we used primary sources such as the manuscripts of the De Angelis Collection, kept in the National Library in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the manuscripts of the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville, including the extensive written documentation and, specially, the two available versions of the cartographic document made by Céspedes Xeria, in 1628. We then compared the copy commissioned by Affonso d’Escragnolle Taunay, in 1917, with both of the seventeenth-century remaining originals, concluding for its fidelity to one of them. In addition, we analyzed the cartographic representations of the settlements represented in the map, which aroused, in 1938, public discussions between Taunay and Benedito Carneiro Bastos Barreto, also known as Belmonte, coming up to the conclusion that all of them are cartographic symbols or standardized icons rather than representations based on the appearance of the buildings such as they were when they were visited by Céspedes Xeria in the first half of the seventeenth century. During this process it was possible to distinguish two different moments of the historian Taunay: the first, his concerning for fidelity in copying documents; and the second, a plasticity of interpretation in the moment of analyze and use these same documents.