Beschreibung:

Apianus, Petrus. Libro de la Cosmographia de Pedro Apiano, el qual trata description del Mundo y sus partes, por muy claro y lindo artificio, augmentado por el doctissimo varon Gemma Frisio, doctor en Medecina, y Mathematico excellentissimo con otros dos libros del dicho Gemma, de la materia mesma. Agora nueuamente traduzidos en Romance Castellano. Vendese en Envers [Antwerp]: en casa de Gregorio Bontio, 1548
First edition in Spanish of a best-selling compendium of astronomy, geography, cartography, navigation, and instrument-making, written by Apianus (Peter Bienewitz, 1495–1552), professor at Ingolstadt, and greatly expanded by his pupil, Gemma Frisius (1508–1555). It is based on the Latin edition of 1545, with some slight differences (Hoogendoorn). Included as usual are “paper instruments” enabling readers to make their own measurements and calculations, and a folding, woodcut cordiform world map indicating the direction of the winds across the globe, one of the earliest obtainable world maps not based upon Ptolemy, and one of the earliest maps representing North and South America.
The binding can be assigned to a Lyonese workshop known conventionally as the “Medallions of Henri II Binder.” The covers of the Apianus feature the central blind arms of the patrician Malipiero family of Venice, evidently impressed from a seal, flanked by the letters C and M. The name “Clesarus” (the gilt of the “L” carefully picked out) “Malipetrus” is lettered on the covers. The Malipiero were vested in the mercantile tradition, as owners and captains of ships trading with the Levant and between Venice, England, and Flanders. A Cesare (Cesaro) Malipiero, son of Ambrogio Malipiero, who was the Venetian vice-consul in Tripoli (ca. 1482–1487), and cousin to the prosperous brothers Pietro and Marco Malipiero, merchants in Cyprus, is recorded as a bowman on galleys sailing to the Levant in 1444–1451. Cesare entered the Great Council (1446), was appointed Segretario Voci (1453, 1471, 1484, 1492), Sopracomito (captain of a galley, 1476), and Provveditore di Veglia (1492). He died without direct heirs; the owner of this book presumably was his namesake.
Active during the late 1540s and 1550s, this atelier produced a celebrated series of nine bindings decorated by repeated impressions of a commemorative medallion of Henri II (1552). Among bindings assigned to the shop are two copies of Paolo Giovio, Histoires sur les choses faictes de son temps (Lyon: Guillaume Rouillé, 1558), both in brown calf, gold-tooled and enameled, their differing central cartouches enclosed by the tools employed here to frame a strapwork cartouche (in the Morgan Library and the Bibliothèque nationale); two copies of La Sainte Bible (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1557) and a copy of L’Histoire Ethiopique d’Heliodore (Paris: Charles L’Angelier, 1554), likewise in brown calf, with the same enameled tools, but combined with the strapwork cartouche seen on this binding (see, respectively, Amédée Boinet, “Deux reliures à la médaille d’Henri II,” in La Bibliofilía 37 (1935), pp. 89–96, and the Sotheby's London catalogue of the collection of Percy Barnevik, 7 November 2002, lot 27); a copy of Sebastian Münster’s La cosmographie universelle (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1556) and a Biblia Sacra (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1556), with the same strapwork cartouche, but apparently no other tools in common with our binding (see, respectively, A. Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders, p. 136 & Pl. 107, and Maggs Bros., Catalogue 1110, item 16). Anthony Hobson conjectured that the shop was loosely associated with the publisher and bookseller Guillaume Rouillé.
4to (223 x 153 mm). Roman & italic types, 45 lines. collation: A–I4 [K]2 (woodcut map) L–T4: 74 leaves. Folding woodcut world map, woodcut title-page vignette of a mounted globe, numerous woodcut text illustrations of which 3 have volvelles (folios 11v, 31v, 53r), 2 moveable parts intended for f. 54v are pasted to adjacent leaves, numerous historiated and floriated woodcut initials, woodcut printer's device on T4v. Ruled in red. (Worm trail at inner margins of quires M–T costing a few letters towards end, wormhole at fore-edge margin occasionally touching a letter, some light marginal dampstaining, without volvelles sometimes found on f. 8v and f. 9v, lacking also in all 3 copies in the John Carter Brown Library).
binding: Near-contemporary tan calf (229 x 158 mm), by the “Medallions of Henri II Binder” covers richly gilt on a pointillé ground, with hatched and open floral tools on tendrils, many enameled white, green and blue, surrounding a central architectonic cartouche (a plaque) which encloses a blind stamp of the Malipiero arms flanked by “C” and “M”, at head of upper cover CLESARVS (gilt of “L” picked out) and on lower MALIPETRVS, remnants of ties, flat spine, edges gilt. (Rebacked to style, some wear and repair to extremities.)
provenance: Cesarus Malipetrus (supralibros) — Laurin Guilloux Buffetaud & Dominque Courvoisier, Paris, 5 June 2002, lot 12, purchased by — unidentified owner (€15,000) — Librairie Fabrice Teissèdre, Paris (Livres et manuscrits, [n.d.], item 9. acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Fabrice Teissèdre, 2004.
references: European Americana 548/1; Hoogendoorn, pp.353-54 GemF01S; NB 2404; Van Otroy 37; Palau 13808; Peeters-Fontainas 61; Shirley 82