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PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius (ca 100 - ca 170). La geografia. With the commentary and additions of Sebastian Münster (1489-1552). Translated from Greek into Italian by Pietro Andrea Mattiolo (1501-77). Edited by Jacopo Gastaldi (ca 1500 - ca 1565). Venice: Nicolo Bascarini for Giovanbattista Pedrezano, October 1547-1548.
Median 8o (173 x 105 mm). Collation: +8 (preliminaries including title, woodcut of Ptolemy as astronomer, editor's dedication to Leone Strozzi, contents table); A-Z8 (bks 1-6, including 4 woodcut diagrams); AA-DD8 (bks 7-8, including 3 diagrams, DD7r register, colophon and publisher's woodcut device, DD7r-8 blank); 60 NUMBERED DOUBLE-PAGE ENGRAVED MAPS BY GASTALDI, including his own 34 non-Ptolemaean MODERN MAPS OF THE WORLD, THE AMERICAS and other areas, letterpress text on the backs; a-h8 (index, h8v same device). 408 leaves. Roman and italic types. Woodcut border-pieces on title, woodcut historiated initials. (Slight worming at beginning and end, affecting a few letters, repair to lower blank margin of title and to final leaf.)
VENETIAN BINDING: strictly contemporary gold-tooled olive goatskin, over pastboard, BY THE VENETIAN APPLE BINDER, who worked for Johann Jakob Fugger, Cardinal de Granvelle and other foreign and Italian patrons. Covers decorated with fillets, gouges, stars, arabesque corner tools, the characteristic apple and other small tools; title lettered within central double circle on front cover, empty shield on back cover; alternating double and single raised bands on spine, the compartments tooled in blind, blue-and-white headbands, gilt edges, traces of four pairs of ties, (head and foot of spine and extreme corners restored slightly). I. Schunke called this Venetian atelier the Fugger Master (rebaptized Apple Binder by M.M. Foot), after one of his most important patrons. Another Venetian binder to work for Fugger and Granvelle, Antoine Louis of Flanders, was documented by T. Gottlieb in 1910. There may be a connection between the two binders as several of their tools appear identical, judging from the plates in De Marinis. Quarter-morocco box. Provenance: 17th-century ownership inscription on title deleted -- purchased from John F. Fleming, New York, 4 February 1987.
FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN, THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE MAPS DESIGNED BY GASTALDI, and the first published small-format atlas. Twenty-six of the maps are Ptolemy's, 34 are new and mostly based on Münster's woodcuts of 1540. "A whole series of plates of the New World is here met with, for the first time, and some of them are of no slight interest to the history of geography" (Nordenskiöld). VERY FINE COPY. Phillips I, 125; Sabin 66502; Mortimer Italian 404. For the binding, see M.M. Foot, The Henry Davis Gift. A Collection of Bookbindings I, ch. 24; T. de Marinis, La Legatura Artistica in Italia II, pp. 62-65, plts C51, 350, 389, 406.
Median 8o (173 x 105 mm). Collation: +8 (preliminaries including title, woodcut of Ptolemy as astronomer, editor's dedication to Leone Strozzi, contents table); A-Z8 (bks 1-6, including 4 woodcut diagrams); AA-DD8 (bks 7-8, including 3 diagrams, DD7r register, colophon and publisher's woodcut device, DD7r-8 blank); 60 NUMBERED DOUBLE-PAGE ENGRAVED MAPS BY GASTALDI, including his own 34 non-Ptolemaean MODERN MAPS OF THE WORLD, THE AMERICAS and other areas, letterpress text on the backs; a-h8 (index, h8v same device). 408 leaves. Roman and italic types. Woodcut border-pieces on title, woodcut historiated initials. (Slight worming at beginning and end, affecting a few letters, repair to lower blank margin of title and to final leaf.)
VENETIAN BINDING: strictly contemporary gold-tooled olive goatskin, over pastboard, BY THE VENETIAN APPLE BINDER, who worked for Johann Jakob Fugger, Cardinal de Granvelle and other foreign and Italian patrons. Covers decorated with fillets, gouges, stars, arabesque corner tools, the characteristic apple and other small tools; title lettered within central double circle on front cover, empty shield on back cover; alternating double and single raised bands on spine, the compartments tooled in blind, blue-and-white headbands, gilt edges, traces of four pairs of ties, (head and foot of spine and extreme corners restored slightly). I. Schunke called this Venetian atelier the Fugger Master (rebaptized Apple Binder by M.M. Foot), after one of his most important patrons. Another Venetian binder to work for Fugger and Granvelle, Antoine Louis of Flanders, was documented by T. Gottlieb in 1910. There may be a connection between the two binders as several of their tools appear identical, judging from the plates in De Marinis. Quarter-morocco box. Provenance: 17th-century ownership inscription on title deleted -- purchased from John F. Fleming, New York, 4 February 1987.
FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN, THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE MAPS DESIGNED BY GASTALDI, and the first published small-format atlas. Twenty-six of the maps are Ptolemy's, 34 are new and mostly based on Münster's woodcuts of 1540. "A whole series of plates of the New World is here met with, for the first time, and some of them are of no slight interest to the history of geography" (Nordenskiöld). VERY FINE COPY. Phillips I, 125; Sabin 66502; Mortimer Italian 404. For the binding, see M.M. Foot, The Henry Davis Gift. A Collection of Bookbindings I, ch. 24; T. de Marinis, La Legatura Artistica in Italia II, pp. 62-65, plts C51, 350, 389, 406.