Beschreibung:

La preclara Narratione di Ferdinando Cortese della Nuoua Hispagna
Venice: Bernardino de Viano, 1524. 4to (210 x 150 mm). 72 ff. Elaborate woodcut border to title-page, numerous three- to ten-line woodcut initials, printed marginalia. Full calf, gilt title to spine, edges speckled red, in a four-fold case of green cloth over marbled boards. Condition : lacking R6 with printer’s device and folding map of Mexico, altered signature to Rii, some leaves including title-page and colophon repaired affecting some text, singular wormhole to border of title-page and to upper outer corner of a few final leaves, some soiling, marginal dampstaining; covers detached but present, spine flaking with some loss. Provenance: "Presented by James Lenox/ to the New York Historical Society. April 1853" (inscription to front free endpaper); illegible contemporary inscription to lower margin of title-page; A.P.M (stamp to title). Acquisition : sale, Sotheby’s New York, 29 January 1995, lot 38, $3,737.50 first complete edition in italian. the earliest surviving printed account of new spain by the infamous Spanish conquistador . Nicolo Liburnio's translation of Cortés’ Second and Third Letters to Charles V, based on the Latin edition published by Pietro Savorgnano the same year and derived from the Carta de relación printed at Seville in 1522. In the Second Letter, Cortés recalls a fracas with rival Spaniard Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, and describes the people and places he encountered and conquered en route to Tenochtitlán, seat of the Aztec empire. The Third Letter describes the siege of the city and the fall of that empire. European Americana 524/6; Church 55; Palau 63191; JCB (3)I:91; Medina, Biblioteca hispano-americana , 86n; Leclerc 399: Medina, Ensayo Bio-bibliográfico sobre Hermán Cortés , 6; Harrisse, BAV, 129; Sabin 16951.