Gabriel de Vallseca

Gabriel de Vallseca, also referred to as Gabriel de Valseca and Gabriel de Valsequa (before 1408 - after 1467) was a Catalan cartographer of Jewish descent connected to the Majorcan cartographic school. His most notable map is the portolan of 1439, containing the first depiction of the recently discovered Azores islands.

Gabriel de Valseca was born in Barcelona to a family of Jewish conversos. He is sometimes said to be the son of Haym ibn Risch (of the Cresques family), who, upon conversion, took the name Juan de Vallsecha. Alternatively, he had Majorcan relatives through his mother or his wife.

By 1433, Valseca had left Barcelona and was living in Palma, Majorca, where he soon made a name for himself as a master cartographer, instrument-maker and merchant. He lived in the parish of Santa Creu, in the marine and commercial district of the city. He married Floreta Miró and had two sons, Francesc and Joan, both of whom later had run-ins with the Spanish Inquisition for "judaizing", which suggests their father Gabriel may also have been a crypto-Jew. Valseca wrote out his last will in the city of Majorca in 1467 and died shortly after.

There are three existing portolan charts signed by Gabriel Vallseca

There are also two anonymous maps attributed to him:

Although his style conforms to the traditional Majorcan cartographic school, Vallseca incorporated some more contemporary innovations in cartography from Italy, Portugal and elsewhere, most notably from Francesco Beccario (e.g. the homogenization of the scale between the Mediterranean and Atlantic). Gabriel de Vallseca's charts retain some signature Majorcan decorative motifs, such as the wind rose, miniature humans,animals and plants, the Atlas Mountains shaped as a palm, the Alps as a chicken's foot, Bohemia as a horseshoe, the Danube as a chain, the Tagus as a shepherd's crook, the Red Sea colored red, and scattered notes and labels in the Catalan language.

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