Ptolemy's Geografia cioe descrittione universale della

PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius (after 83 - ca 168 AD).
Geografia cioe descrittione universale della terra.
Venice: Giovanni Battista and Giorgio Galignani Fratelli, 1598-[1597]. First Italian edition.

Comparables: Stockholms Auktionsverk, 2017 - SEK 39,200; Bloomsbury Book Auctions, 2006 - EURO 10,710.

2 parts in one volume. Quarto in 6s (12" x 8"). Two vignette title-pages. One full-page engraved double-hemisphere map of the world "Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio" by Girolamo Porro after Rumold Mercator to D1v, and 63 fine engraved half-page vignette maps, numerous woodcut diagrams and vignettes in text including two of the armillary sphere and woodcut initials. Contemporary vellum over paste-board, lettered in gilt on the spine.

Provenance: with the 19th-century engraved armorial bookplate of the Bushnell family on the front paste-down.

First edition in Italian, edited and corrected by Giovanni Antonio Magini and translated from his Latin edition of 1596, also printed in Venice, into Italian by Leonardo Cernoti. All the maps, 27 of the ancient world, and 36 of the modern world were first published in Magini's earlier Latin edition, except for Girolamo Porro's four small format world maps based on Valgrisi's 1561 edition. The double-hemisphere world map "Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio" is a reduction of Rumold Mercator's world map, and is described by Shirley as 'an exceptionally fine engraving in its own right'. The other three are after Mercator and Ortelius, each and the map of America in chapter XXXIIII (18 pges), show Chile with a distinctive bulge.

Ptolemy's Geography, arguably the most influential cartographic account of the ancient world, was the point of reference for all Renaissance mapmakers. His compilation of what was known about the world's geography in the Roman Empire during his time (ca. 90-168). He relied on the work of others, in particular an early geographer, Marinos of Tyre, and on gazetteers of the Roman and ancient Persian Empire. He was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet (surviving in a single epigram in the Greek Anthology). The earliest known manuscripts of Ptolemy's "Geographia" date to about 1300. The first printed version was published in 1477, then 1488, and in Ulm in 1482. The present edition, published at the end of the 16th century, reflects the most important discoveries of that era.