Portolan Chart of the Pacific Ocean

On September 25, 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475–1519) was the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. With the previous, brutal and devastating crossing of the Central American isthmus, which today is called Panama, he proved Amerigo Vespucci's (1454–1512) assumption that the islands and lands in the west, still largely unknown to Europeans, were not – as initially assumed – parts of Asia, but rather a separate continent between Europe and Asia, between the Atlantic and the Pacific: America. The Portolan Chart of the Pacific Ocean in the Herzog August Library is an outstanding testimony to this finding. It represents part of the South American Atlantic coastline, the most important islands in the Gulf of Mexico and, above all, large parts of the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines of Central America, especially Panama. An inscription also makes an explicit reference to Balboa's expedition, which was undertaken on behalf of King Ferdinand II of Aragón (1452–1516).