Paolo dal PozzoToscanelli, or Paolo the physicist, in a fresco by Giorgio Vasari in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a great Florentine scientist, geographer, and cosmographer, wrote a letter to Canon Martins in Lisbon expressing his conviction that the east coast of Asia-Chipange (Japan) and Cataio (China)-must be beyond the Atlantic Ocean. The Genoese finds scientific support for his brilliant intuition conceived during his travels in the Atlantic of buscar el Levante per el Poniente.