A decade earlier, he had prompted a letter and a map on the subject from the famed Florentine mathematician and cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli. Toscanelli had proposed “a sea route from here to India, the land of spices; a route which is shorter than that via Guinea.” His reasoning was that because the world was spherical, it was possible to reach the Indies by sailing in either direction, and that it was a shorter voyage to sail west.
