Beschreibung:

BORDONE, Benedetto (?1445-1460 - 1539). Libro di Benedetto Bordone nel qual si ragiona de tutte l'isole del mondo . Venice: Nicolò d'Aristotile detto Zoppino, 1528. 2° (298 x 195mm). Letterpress title in red and black with ornamental woodcut border, woodcut initials, full-page diagram of a world map and windroses, 4 woodcut double-page maps of the World, Venice, the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, 4 smaller double-page maps of Sicily, Crete, Cyprus and Euboea, 103 woodcut maps and plans throughout the text, all hand-coloured. (Small repaired hole to title, short marginal tears to one double-page map, light marginal soiling, occasional spotting or stains.) Later vellum (small hole to lower cover). A hand-coloured first edition of Bordone's book on islands. Printed again in 1534 and 1547 under the title, Isolario or 'island-book', this work became a popular illustrated guide to the 'islands and peninsulas' of the western ocean, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Far East. As a cartographic form, Bordone's Isolario derives from two prototypes, Buondelmonti's Liber insularum Archipelagi of 1420 and Da Li Sonetti's Isolario of c.1485, whose maps were also drawn with 8 windrays giving the orientation. Bordone also draws on Ptolemy's Geographia and nautical charts. The work is particuarly notable for its wide scope, with the inclusion of recent discoveries in the Americas, for its well-known plan of the city of Mexico ("Temistitan") before its destruction by Cortez, and for its world map on an oval projection, cited as the first of its kind, although perhaps attributable to Francesco Rosselli Bordone, an illuminator, cartographer and wood-engraver from Padua, worked in Venice. He has been attributed as the creator of 'the first globe printed in Italy' (Almagià) from records of the now lost globe gores in 1508. Sabin 6417; Brunet I, 1112; Phillips 162; R.A.Skelton, Introduction to Libro... de Tutte L'Isole Del Mondo , Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd, 1966.