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First Venetian edition. Venice: Iacobus Pentius de Leucho, 20 March 1511 (colophon). Folio in 6s (16 5/16" x 11", 414mm x 281mm). [Full collation available.] With 28 woodcut double-page maps printed in red and black (all recto-verso with the exception of the final world map, which is the inner forme of its own leaf). Bound in (perhaps later?) vellum over boards (the boards recovered in later vellum). On the spine, author and title (PTHOLEM/ TABULÆ/ GEOGRA) gilt to sheep. All edges of the text-block red. Boards recovered in later vellum, coming up at the corners and along the lower edge of the back board. Damp-stain to the lower gutter and to the upper edge, mostly mild but moderate in places. Some shaving to the maps: at the fore-edge of the first world map, the "quinta Europae tabula" and the "tertia Africae;" the lower scale of "prima Europae" and "sexta Europae;" to the upper figural surrounds of "secunda Africae," "prima Asiae," secunda Asiae," "nona Asiae" and "decima Asiae;" and to the upper, lower and fore-edges of the final world map. A little worming to the gutter of the world map, with some splits along the upper fold. Ink marginalia to B1r-B2r, B8v, C3v, C4r, I1r, I8v (a circular diagram without marking to a blank page) and to the maps of France ("tertia Europae tabula") and Italy ("sexta Europae tabula;" pasted correction slips swapping "Obononia" (Bologna) and "mutina" (Modena)). Bookseller's ticket of "Librairie Fl. Tulkens Bruxelles" to the front paste-down. Claudius Ptolemaeus (usually anglicized to Ptolemy) was a second-century philosopher living in Roman Alexandria in Egypt. In the Greek tradition (Ptolemy wrote in Greek, which was the administrative language of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean), philosophy -- the love of wisdom -- bridged what we now divide into the humanities and the sciences; he was a mathematician, natural scientist and geographer-astronomer. No manuscripts of the Geographical Guidance survive from before the XIIIc, but some XIIIc examples survive with maps that bear some relation to those Ptolemy himself drew. Thus, with the exception of some excavated carved maps, Ptolemy is the source for ancient cartography as well as its culmination. In the XVc, the Geographia was the core of ancient knowledge of the world, extending from the Canary Islands in the West to China in the East (though not quite to the Pacific), Scandinavia in the North and beyond the Horn of Africa to the South. It was crucial to explorers; Columbus expected to find the East Indies because of Ptolemy's calculations and assertions about longitude. As the world expanded beyond its ancient bounds, discoveries were integrated into the Ptolemaic maps, distinct with their trapezoidal frames. The work is anomalous in a city that was otherwise the cradle of Renaissance printing; Shirley calls it an "isolated example of Venetian cartographic enterprise" (sub 31). That said, La Serenissima has left her mark on the volume; it is the first atlas to print maps in red-and-black, the first to contain a cordiform projection and the first to depict Japan. It is the second edition of Ptolemy to contain a cartographic depiction of the New World. An early reader(s?) has left marks of reading through the volume. There are many glosses of ancient place names, especially of the British Isles, France and Italy. There is a long marginalium at the foot of C4r correcting the placement of various Celtic tribes (and reflected in the corresponding maps of France and Italy) by cross-reference with the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae of Robert Estienne first published 1531. The hand is perhaps XVIIc, judging by the letter-forms; it is perhaps reductive to suggest he lived in Southeast France or Northwest Italy, but there is nothing to supersede that suggestion. Adams P 2218; Alden-Landis 511/8; Nordenskiöld 2.204; Phillips, Atlases 358; Shirley 31 & 32, Stevens, Ptolemy 43. Seller Inventory # JLR0528
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