as the official Spanish government pilot at Seville. In 1524, Juan Vespucci was appointed examinador de pilotos (Examiner of Pilots), replacing Sebastian Cabot who was then leading an expedition in Brazil. In the 1530s and 1540s, the principal mapmakers (known as "cosmographers") in the Casa de Contratación working on the Padrón Real included Alonso de Santa Cruz, Sebastian Cabot, and Pedro de Medina. The mapmaker Diego Gutiérrez was appointed as cosmographer in the Casa on October 22, 1554, after the death of his father Diego in January 1554; he also worked on the Padrón Real. In 1562, Gutierrez published the map entitled "Americae ... Descriptio" in Antwerp. It was published in Antwerp instead of Spain because the Spanish engravers did not have the necessary skill to print such a complicated document. Other cosmographers included Alonso de Chaves, Jerónimo de Chaves, and Sancho Gutiérrez (Diego's brother). In the late 16th century, Juan López de Velasco was the first Cosmógrafo-Cronista Mayor (Cosmographer-Chronicler Major) of the Council of the Indies in Seville. He produced a master map and twelve subsidiary maps portraying the worldwide Spanish empire in cartographic form. Although these maps are not especially accurate or detailed, his work represented the apogee of Spanish mapmaking in that period, and surpassed anything done by the other European powers. Cartographers in England, the Low Countries, and Germany, however, continued to improve their skills in making maps and in organizing and presenting geographic information, until by the end of the 17th century, even Spanish intellectuals were lamenting that the maps produced by foreigners were superior to those made in Spain. See also The Virgin of the Navigators, the first painting depicting the discovery of the Americas, is in a Casa de Contratación chapel. Llotja Consulado de Cargadores an Indias (Sevilla y Cádiz) References Further reading Barrera Osorio, Antonio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006). Buisseret, David. "Spain Maps Her 'New World'", ncounter, February 1992, No. 8, pp. 14–19. Collins, Edward. "Portuguese Pilots at the Casa de la Contratación and the Examenes de Pilotos". The International Journal of Maritime History 26 (2014): 179–92. ---. "Francisco Faleiro and Scientific Methodology at the Casa de la Contratación in the Sixteenth Century". Imago Mundi 65 (2013): 25–36. Fisher, John R. "Casa de Contratación" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1, pp. 589–90. New York: Charles