El cielo austral en la cosmografía italiana del tardo Cinquecento (1571-1598)

In order to examine the description of the southern sky provided byJosé de Acosta in his influential Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) ,this study discusses the references to austral firmament in cosmographical treatises published in Italy between 1571 and 1598. The mentions of this subject, contained in Breve trattato del mondo (1571) by Giason Denores, La universal fabrica del mondo (1573) by Giovanni Lorenzo d'Anania, Theatrum mundi et temporis (1588) by Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, and in the commentaries on Ptolemy's Geography written by Girolamo Ruscelli, Giuseppe Rosaccio and Giovanni Antonio Magini, were mainly based onthe reports by Amerigo Vespucci and Andrea Corsali.

The informationwas introduced by emphasising either the singularity of the celestial features visible from southern latitudes or its symmetrical correspondence with the northern sky. Both these perspectives were related to the crisis of the generalist approach of cosmography and the emergence of a particularised focus on difference and peculiarity. [Publisher's text]