Details
PTOLEMAEUS, CLAUDIUS. Geographie opus nouissima traductione e Grecorum archetypis castigatissime pressum. Strassburg: Johann Schott 1513.
Folio, contemporary calf over wooden boards, the covers with two alternating blind rolls of a stag and hunter and a thistle and bird, remains of original metal clasps, metal cornerpieces, original vellum page-markers, fore-edge lettered in Greek "Ptolemaio", skilfully rebacked in period style, endpapers renewed, covers and spine rubbed, covers a bit wormed, mostly marginal worming to first few leaves, small worm track through quires F-H affecting up to 3 letters, worm track to gutter just touching a woodcut on K1v, one or two minor wormholes through the maps, a few more wormholes to the last 7 or 8 maps, repaired tears to the edges of maps 22, part 1 and 17, part 2, slightly entering the images, the world map of part 2 with tear to fore-margin slightly affecting the border and a small internal tear, small repaired tear to map 17 with loss to 4 letters of a place name, map 18 of part 2 creased and with two large repaired tears, a few fold breaks, scattered marginal repairs and other paper defects, lacking final blank, some marginal soiling or pale dampstaining, a few small stains, a few maps and leaves browned, conjugate leaves G3.4 and G2.5 misbound in inverted order (G2 missigned "Giii"), map 18 bound in upside down.
45 woodcut mapsheets and two single-page maps, the final map of Lorraine printed in three colors, the second map with typeset marginal captions, the rest with woodcut captions, this copy with the variant map of Switzerland, captioned "Tabula nova Heremi Helvetiorum," woodcut diagrams in the text, of which one full-page.
THE FIRST "MODERN" EDITION OF PTOLEMY, first edition of all the maps and woodcuts, which were cut in 1507-8 at the Gymnasium Vosagense in Saint-Dié under the direction of Martin Waldseemüller and his associate Mathias Ringmann, partly at the expense of Duke René of Lorraine. While the 27 trapezoidal maps of the first part constitute the traditional Ptolemaic corpus, having been copied from the 1482 Ulm edition (or possibly from the manuscript atlas of Nicolaus Germanus that served as source for the latter), the 20 maps of the Supplement represent the first series of "modern" maps: "unlike many of the alleged 'new' maps produced by earlier editors, [they] contained a great deal of new information, and in nearly every case they were decided improvements over anything that had been previously offered..." (The World Encompassed, 56). The world map of this new series and the following map of the New World - the first map to be devoted exclusively to that continent (the "Terra Incognita") - are described in the preface to the reader as being based on information supplied by "The Admiral," identified as Columbus on the second map.
The variant map of Switzerland (the first published map of that country) differs greatly in style and lettering from the Waldseemüller series, and was probably copied from a manuscript map drawn by Konrad Türst, ca. 1495-97. The final map of Lorraine (the first map of that Duchy), printed in black, red and olive, is one of the two earliest specimens of a color-printed map (the other example, Etzlaub's road map of the Holy Roman Empire, is of uncertain date, but probably precedes this one). Harrisse 74; Fairfax Murray German 348 and 348A; Phillips 359; Sabin 66478; Shirley 34.
Provenance: Copious contemporary marginalia in two different hands.
Folio, contemporary calf over wooden boards, the covers with two alternating blind rolls of a stag and hunter and a thistle and bird, remains of original metal clasps, metal cornerpieces, original vellum page-markers, fore-edge lettered in Greek "Ptolemaio", skilfully rebacked in period style, endpapers renewed, covers and spine rubbed, covers a bit wormed, mostly marginal worming to first few leaves, small worm track through quires F-H affecting up to 3 letters, worm track to gutter just touching a woodcut on K1v, one or two minor wormholes through the maps, a few more wormholes to the last 7 or 8 maps, repaired tears to the edges of maps 22, part 1 and 17, part 2, slightly entering the images, the world map of part 2 with tear to fore-margin slightly affecting the border and a small internal tear, small repaired tear to map 17 with loss to 4 letters of a place name, map 18 of part 2 creased and with two large repaired tears, a few fold breaks, scattered marginal repairs and other paper defects, lacking final blank, some marginal soiling or pale dampstaining, a few small stains, a few maps and leaves browned, conjugate leaves G3.4 and G2.5 misbound in inverted order (G2 missigned "Giii"), map 18 bound in upside down.
45 woodcut mapsheets and two single-page maps, the final map of Lorraine printed in three colors, the second map with typeset marginal captions, the rest with woodcut captions, this copy with the variant map of Switzerland, captioned "Tabula nova Heremi Helvetiorum," woodcut diagrams in the text, of which one full-page.
THE FIRST "MODERN" EDITION OF PTOLEMY, first edition of all the maps and woodcuts, which were cut in 1507-8 at the Gymnasium Vosagense in Saint-Dié under the direction of Martin Waldseemüller and his associate Mathias Ringmann, partly at the expense of Duke René of Lorraine. While the 27 trapezoidal maps of the first part constitute the traditional Ptolemaic corpus, having been copied from the 1482 Ulm edition (or possibly from the manuscript atlas of Nicolaus Germanus that served as source for the latter), the 20 maps of the Supplement represent the first series of "modern" maps: "unlike many of the alleged 'new' maps produced by earlier editors, [they] contained a great deal of new information, and in nearly every case they were decided improvements over anything that had been previously offered..." (The World Encompassed, 56). The world map of this new series and the following map of the New World - the first map to be devoted exclusively to that continent (the "Terra Incognita") - are described in the preface to the reader as being based on information supplied by "The Admiral," identified as Columbus on the second map.
The variant map of Switzerland (the first published map of that country) differs greatly in style and lettering from the Waldseemüller series, and was probably copied from a manuscript map drawn by Konrad Türst, ca. 1495-97. The final map of Lorraine (the first map of that Duchy), printed in black, red and olive, is one of the two earliest specimens of a color-printed map (the other example, Etzlaub's road map of the Holy Roman Empire, is of uncertain date, but probably precedes this one). Harrisse 74; Fairfax Murray German 348 and 348A; Phillips 359; Sabin 66478; Shirley 34.
Provenance: Copious contemporary marginalia in two different hands.