Beschreibung:

PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius (ca. 100-ca. 170). Geographiae... Libri VIII, partim a Bilibaldo Pirckheymero translati ac commentario illustrati .- Sebastian MNSTER. Appendix geographica . Indices by Conradus Lycosthenes (Konrad Wolffhart). Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1552. 2 o (309 x 209 mm). Roman and italic type, double column, printed shoulder notes in the Appendix , woodcut initials, printer's woodcut device on colophon page, 54 numbered double-page woodcut maps (divided equally between the ancient and modern world), letterpress descriptions printed on rectos of the maps within pictorial, architectural or ornamental woodcut borders, some printed from multiple blocks, the maps on guards. Blank leaves a4, p4 and CC6 removed. (Title-leaf stained, soiled and repaired, light dampstaining to upper portions of text and maps affecting gutters of a few maps, a few corners ink-stained, a few short marginal tears occasionally catching captions or borders of maps, map 35 with 2-inch tear into image, map 42 with degree borders shaved, small stain to maps 51 and 52.) 17th-century sheep panelled in gilt, red morocco lettering-piece on spine (rubbed and stained, loss to leather at corners and extremities of spine). Provenance : Abbey of Saint-Maurice (18th-century inscription on title, "Ex libris Abbatiae S.M. Agauni 1770" and inkstamps on CC1r); Petrus Valentinus (18th-century inscription on front flyleaf, effaced); Johann Joseph Schmidhalter ([?]19th-century inscription on front pastedown). Fourth and last Mnster edition, containing an additional treatise and expanded indices by Konrad Wolffhart. 48 of the maps were first used in Mnster's first 1540 edition, six were added for the third edition of 1545, and one, the map of Pomerania (no. 42), appears here for the first time, replacing a map of the Lake of Constance. Many of the maps were used for the numerous editions of Mnster's Cosmographia (1544 and later). Mnster's celebrated map of the New World (map 54) appears here in its 6th state, with latitude and longitude bars added in the margins (Burden 12). This is the last edition of Ptolemy to contain woodcut maps. The place names in Mnster's maps are thought to have been printed from stereotype slugs glued onto the woodblocks (cf. David Woodward, "Some evidence for the use of stereotyping on Peter Apian's world map of 1530", Imago Mundi 24, pp. 43-48). Adams P-2230; Alden & Landis 552/40; Burmeister 169; Phillips Atlases 370; Sabin 66488.