PTOLEMAEUS (CLAUDIUS)


La Geografia... con alcuni comenti & aggiunte fattevi da Sebastiano Munstero... con le tavole... altre nuove aggiuntevi di Messer Iacopo Gastaldo, title within historiated woodcut side-borders, woodcut portrait of Ptolemy as astronomer, 60 double-page engraved maps by Giacomo Gastaldi, woodcut diagrams and illustrations, woodcut printer's device on DD7r and h8v, woodcut historiated initials, with blank DD8, light dampstain throughout, worming at lower margin of 18 leaves (just touching extreme corner of 4 maps, small scuff mark to map 13, maps 57-60 with small area of worming in central gutter), later limp vellum [Adams P2234; Burden America 16; Phillips 369; Sabin 66502], 8vo (164 x 100mm.), Venice, [Niccolo Bascarini for] Giovanni Battista Pederzano, 1548
|FIRST ITALIAN EDITION OF PTOLEMY, THE FIRST SMALL FORMAT ATLAS EVER PRINTED AND THE FIRST TO CONTAIN REGIONAL MAPS OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. "The most comprehensive atlas produced between Martin Waldseemüller's Geographiae of 1513, and the Abraham Ortelius Theatrum of 1570. Giacomo Gastaldi had the maps beautifully engraved on copper. This marks a turning point, from now on the majority of cartographic works used this medium... it gave the engraver the ability to render more detail" (Burden)The thirty-four modern maps were of Gastaldi's own design and contain significant innovation, while his interspersed engravings of the twenty-six Ptolemaic maps were based on Münster's woodcut versions. Five maps are devoted to the Americas, including the first separate printed maps of the Mississippi and Florida region, the east coast of North America, and the present Southwestern United States. There are two world maps (Shirley 87 and 88, a "navigator's chart").