Giovanni da Verrazzano. Navigator and gentleman

It's not easy to reconstruct the life of the great explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485-1528), given the numerous difficulties encountered by historiography: lost or counterfeit documents, misunderstandings and mistaken identity, controversies and political exploitation.
This essay sheds light on the biography of the Tuscan navigator through a careful historical and philological investigation, focusing in particular on his autograph documents. After an analysis of geographical knowledge in the 15th century, from which prominent figures emerge such as Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli or Amerigo Vespucci, the narrative embraces the story of Giovanni, offering the portrait of a courageous traveler who was also a refine writer, and which in 1524 made an important transatlantic crossing to explore vast areas of the American coast.
A man of action, fully inserted in public life and in a well-structured network of political relations, Giovanni da Verrazzano was a geographer and sailor, the maximum expression of the figure of the navigator-humanist.