Diego Gutiérrez (cartographer)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Diego Gutiérrez was a Spanish cosmographer and cartographer of the Casa de la Contratación. He was given this post by royal appointment on October 22, 1554, after the death of his father Diego in January 1554, and worked on the Padrón Real.
In 1562 Gutierrez published a remarkable map entitled Americae Sive Qvartae Orbis Partis Nova Et Exactissima Descriptio in Antwerp in collaboration with the printer Hieronymus Cock. The reason it was published in Antwerp instead of Spain was that the Spanish engravers did not have the necessary skill to print such a complicated document.
Gutierrez's map features not only the Amazon River system and Lake Titicaca as well as other geographical features, but also fanciful depictions of parrots, monkeys, mermaids, huge sea creatures, Brazilian cannibals, Patagonian giants, and an erupting volcano in central Mexico.
It was the first map to print the toponym "California". [1] It also recorded the first appearance of a word for "Appalachia," as the term "Apalchen."
