1541 Ptolemy Geographicae Second Edition

PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius (100-170 AD). Geographicae enarrationis libri octo. Vienna and Lyons: Gaspar Trechsel for Hugues de La Porte, 1541. Guidance: Christie's, 2010 - $38,297. Provenace: From the Burndy Library, Christies' 2006.
2o (15 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches). 47 (of 49) double-page maps and one single-page map, text with 4 large woodcut diagrams and 2 full-page woodcuts of a diagram and armillary sphere showing the projection of the winds by Albrecht Durer (l4 verso), woodcut initials. (Lacks title and maps 35 and 36 [Italy], leaves in first gathering with marginal repairs affecting some letters). Modern quarter polished calf.
The second edition of Ptolemy edited by Servetus. The maps are printed from unaltered blocks used in Lorenz Fries's edition printed by Gruninger in 1522 (the final map is captioned with this date and Fries's initials), in Gruninger's Strasbourg edition of 1525 and in the first Trechsel edition printed at Lyons in 1535
The second edition of Ptolemy edited by Michael Villanovanus, better known as Servetus (1511-1553), born at Villanueva, in Aragon, Spain. While working as an editor for the publisher Trechsel he wrote the preface and many of the modern descriptions on the verso of the celebrated maps, for the edition of 1535. He also edited this second edition printed at Vienne in the Dauphine‚, in 1541. For his writings against the Holy Trinity and infant baptism Servetus was burnt at the stake in 1553. However there were forty counts of heresy against him, including the offence of having asserted, in the text accompanying map 41 (The Holy Land in the 1535 edition), that Palestine was not as fertile as it was generally believed. Many copies of the book were burned with him on the orders of John Calvin, although the offending passage was not actually written by Servetus, and had appeared previously in the 1522 and 1525 editions, and was pointedly omitted from this second edition of 1541. Of the fifty magnificent maps four relate in some way to America: the "Tabula Terre Nova", number 28, with an account of the voyages and discoveries of Columbus on the verso; "Norbegia et Gottia", number 34, showing Greenland as a peninsula of Europe; "Tabula Nova Orbis", number 49, attributed by some to Columbus and known as the "Admiral's Map", and by others to Vespuccius; and "Tabula Totius Orbis", number 50, the celebrated new map of the world by Lorenz Fries, first used in the Gruninger edition of 1522, and the first map in an edition of Ptolemy with the name 'America', which appears on a portion of the South American Continent. The work is essentially in three parts: the text, comprising the Latin translation by the humanist Wilibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), edited by Servetus; the maps, 27 depicting the ancient world and 22 of the modern world, with one map of Lotharingia; and the index. Brunet IV, 955; cf. Mortimer, Harvard French, 450; Phillips Atlases 366; Sabin 66485.