The Ostrich Egg Globe or Da Vinci Globe is an Italian Renaissance object of historical importance. It dates from 1504 and was discovered by the globe and map collector S. Missinne in London in 2012. It is the prototype for the red copper cast Hunt-Lenox Globe at the New York Public Library. If identified correctly Da Vinci Globe is the oldest globe known to show the New World. This is in contrast to the large 51 cm Behaim Globe dating from 1492 at the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. A Leonardo preparatory drawing for this globe dating from 1503, showing the coast of the New World and Africa has been discovered in the Codex Arundel. It is seen as proof of Da Vinci's knowledge of the discovery of America. Until 2018, scholars erroneously believed this drawing to be the surface of the Moon. While in Florence, the Italian Renaissance genius wrote in the Codex Atlanticus about this globe and his desire to retrieve it from Giovanni Benci.
Description
The hollow globe is made from the conjoined lower halves of two ostrich eggs. In the bottom half of the lower part a counterweight made of calcium and glued with egg white was added to keep the globe upright as the globe has no mounting. The scale of the globe is 1:80.000.000 and its diameter is c. 11.2 cm. It weighs 134 grams. The North-South axis is vertical reflecting the ancient Aristotelian way. Its identical twin, the Lenox Globe intended to represent the earth in the center of an armillary sphere is a cast made of red copper. On the lower half of the globe, there is a red copper droplet that contains arsenic, a chemical substance that was prescribed by Da Vinci to be added to copper to maintain the red color of copper. Leonardo da Vinci, the inventor, writes in Codex Atlanticus page 1103 verso: “Metti nella mistura il rame arso, ovvero la corrompi collo arsenico, ma sarà frangibile”. The visual pictorial evidence of the Lenox Globe supports this corrosion effect as it does not portray any green or black patina. No other extant bibliographical chemical evidence from the mixing of arsenic into copper as a corrosion inhibitor during the Renaissance in Florence is documented. The yellow brassGlobe Jagellonian of French origin with a 7.35 cm diameter, part of an astronomical clock in Kraków dating from c. 1510, is based on the cartographic knowledge of the older Lenox Globe. The Ostrich Egg Globe is a distinct globe made by the left-handed Leonardo da Vinci with numerous images, such as ships, a volcano, sailors, a hybrid monster, pentimenti, ocean waves, conic individualized mountains, rivers, coastal lines, puns, chiaroscuro and a triangular anagram. The detailed analysis of the Italian researcher Elisabetta Gnignera of the engraved but amazingly detailed hairstyle of the dynamic portraiture of the drowning marine offers a date compatible with the date and provenance of the Leonardo da Vinci Globe.
Background
The globe was erroneously presented as a 19th-century scrimshaw and offered for sale in June 2012 at the Imcos fair at the venue of the Royal Geographical Society in London. The similarity of the Ostrich Egg Globe with the Lenox Globe was confirmed in 2012 by the former President of the Coronelli Society, Professor Rudolf Schmidt and confirmed by art expert Archduke Dr. Géza von Habsburg in 2013. In the same year, an article on this discovery entitled "A Newly Discovered Early Sixteenth-Century Globe Engraved on an Ostrich Egg. The Earliest Surviving Globe Showing the New World" was published. This discovery was made public by the Washington Post. On April 5, 2014, Professor Dr. Carlo Pedretti, a leading Italian Leonardo da Vinci Expert, inspected the research on this globe and congratulated the researcher for his Leonardo studies. On October 1, 2017, the results of the many years of research on the globe were presented at an international Symposium in Hamburg.
