Beschreibung:

PTOLEMAEUS, CLAUDIUS (ca. 100-ca. 170). La Geografia... Con alcuni comenti & aggiunti fattevi di Sebastiano Munstero... Con le tavole... di Messer Iacopo Gastaldo . Translated from Greek by Pietro Andrea Mattioli. Venice: Niccolò Bascarini for Giovanni Battista Pederzano, 1548. 8° (166 x 106 mm). Collation: + 8 A-Z AA-DD 8 1-60 2 a-h 8 . 408 leaves (each map counted as 2 leaves), DD8 blank. Roman and italic types. Title within woodcut half-border strips, woodcut of Ptolemy observing the heavens on fol. 2r, woodcut text diagrams, 8- and 5-line woodcut initials, Pederzano's large woodcut device on colophon leaf DD7r and verso of final leaf, 60 double-page engraved maps by Giacomo Gastaldi, including 2 world maps (Shirley 87 and 88), embellished with sea-monsters, ships, etc., descriptive letterpress text and map numbers on rectos and versos of maps. Maps 36-40 apparently from an early state, without letterpress text on rectos, and with less cross-hatching of the embellishments than is found in other copies (see in particular maps 39-40). The signatures to all but map 1 deliberately rubbed or washed out by an early owner. (Title frayed around edges and laid down on heavy paper, many of the maps poorly inked, old dampstains and small rubbed patches to map 1, repaired tear to map 44 (Asia VI), repaired marginal tear to map 16 (Marches), scattered minor marginal tears or repairs, staining to map 50 ("Calecut", i.e., Indian sub-peninsula), light dampstaining at end.) Modern vellum(?) over pasteboards, early ms. title lettering to lower edge; folding cloth case. FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN, THE FIRST SMALL FORMAT ATLAS EVER PRINTED. This important edition, the first to address the needs of travellers, contains the first full series of Ptolemaic maps to appear since the incunable editions of Bologna, Rome and Florence (Berlinghieri). The maps of the present edition were engraved by the prolific Giacomo Gastaldi, cosmographer to the Republic of Venice. While Gastaldi based his engravings of the 26 Ptolemaic maps on Münster's woodcut renderings, the 34 modern maps, which are interspersed with the ancient maps rather than grouped at the end, were of his own design, and contain significant innovations. Five maps are devoted exclusively to the Americas, which also appear, linked by a land extension to Asia, in the modern World map and in the Carta marina universale (the first sea chart of the modern world). These five maps are the earliest printed regional maps of America; they include the first separate map of the South American Continent ( Tierra nova , map 54), the earliest separate map of the Gulf Coast, Mexico, and the present Southwestern United States ( Nueva Hispania , map 55), and the earliest individual map of the East coast of North America ( Tierra nueva [del Bacalaos], map 56), showing the discoveries of Verrazzano and Cartier. The translation by the botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli appears in this edition only; it was superseded by Girolamo Ruscelli's translation, first printed in 1561 and frequently reprinted. The only earlier Italian version was Berlinghieri's verse paraphrase (Florence, ca. 1482). Adams P-2234; Alden 548/31; Burden 16 and 17; Burmeister 170; Harvard/Mortimer Italian 404; Phillips 369; Sabin 66502; Streeter sale I: 17; The World Encompassed 122.