Agostino Vespucci’s De situ totius Hispaniae (1520): The Earliest Antiquarian Description of Spain

Agostino Vespucci, secretary to the Florentine ambassador Giovanni Corsi during the latter’s embassy to Ferdinand II of Aragon (1513-1516), wrote in 1520 a Latin treatise on Iberia (De situ totius Hispaniae: BAV, MS Ott. lat. 2104), which constitutes the earliest antiquarian description of Spain. This paper considers Corsi and Vespucci’s approach to antiquity as attested by their correspondence; and it brings to light the archaeological and epigraphic information contained in Vespucci’s work, especially with regard to Mérida, Cádiz, Alcántara, Bilbilis and Clunia. Vespucci’s account is compared with other 16th-century sources, and contextualized within the Italian antiquarian tradition of the early Cinquecento.