Ptolemy's 1548 Geografia, the world's first pocket atlas

Ptolemy's 1548 Geografia, the world's first pocket atlas Ptolemy, Sebastian Münster (comm.), Giacopo Gastaldi (cartog.) and Pietro Andrea Mattioli (trans.) Ptolemeo La Geografia di Claudio Ptolemeo Alessandrino, Con alcuni comenti & aggiunte fattevi da Sebastiano munstero Alamann, Con le tavole non solamente antiche & moderna solite di stãparsí, ma altre nuove aggiuntevi di Messer Iacopo Gastaldo Piamõtese cosmographo, ridotta in volgare Italiano da M. Pietro Andrea Mattiolo Senese medico Eccelêtißimo con l'aggiunta d'infiniti nomi moderni, di Città, Provincie, Castella, et altri luoghi, fatta cõ grandissima diligenza da esso Meser Iacopo Gastaldo, il che in nissun altro Ptolemeo si ritrova. Opera veramente non meno utile che necessaria. Venice: Giovanbattista Pedrezano (for Nicolo Bascarini), 1548. First complete edition in Italian, first octavo edition. Here is what AI says it’s worth: $53,020. Cost: Sale of Francis Anthony Benevento II at Sotheby’s London, 6 May 2010, lot 1 - 27,500 GBP. Small octavo (6 ½” x 4 3/8”, 165mm x 110mm): †8 A-DD8 (DD8 blank), 1-602, a-h8 [$4 signed; g4 mis-signed “G iiij”]. 408 leaves, pp. [16] (title, blank, Ptolemy portrait, 2pp. dedication to Leone Strozzi, defense of Ptolemy, 2pp. to the reader, 7pp. introduction of Münster, table of contents of the first book), foll. 1-214, pp. [4] (register, 3 blanks), [240] (60 double-page engraved maps with text to the recto of the first leaf and sometimes to the verso of the second), [128] (127pp. index of places, printer’s device). [≈xvi, 432, 240, cxxviii] With 60 double-page engraved maps integral with the text. Bound in contemporary stabbed vellum. On the spine, author and title (“PTOLOMEO/GEOGRA–/FIA.”) gilt to morocco, a paper label with date in ink manuscript and a partially-obliterated paper label (inventory number?) below. All edges of the text-block mottled red. Chips to the title-label and loss to the paper label on the spine. Fore-corners bumped. An unusually clean, square and large-margined copy. Losses to the lower fore-corners of R2 and V1 (neither affecting the text. Worming to the paste-downs and at the gutter of †1-4, not affecting the text. Worming to the stubs of maps 29-32, not affecting the mapsheets. Marginal dashes (in a mixture of graphite, sanguine and ink) to foll. 106–119. Excised and filled book-label (?) to the front paste-down. Marginalium (XVIIc?) to the front paste-down: “Munstero Sebastiano/ 1. Class. Ind. Trid.” as well as a couple of shelf-marks, and the remains of a red wax seal. 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 Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις (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 1548 (colophon dated October 1547) edition of Ptolemy stands apart from earlier issues in various ways. It is the first “pocket” issue of the work, making it at least plausible for it to accompany an explorer. The commentary of Sebastian Münster — a truly pan-European humanist effort — and the text of Ptolemy were both translated by Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Matthioli), better known as the botanist and translator of Dioscorides. Gastaldi’s 60 maps — he was also responsible for updating and adding modern place names, a massive task reflected in the 127-page index — are unusually decorative as well as up-to-date, especially given their diminutive size. There is a robust group non-European maps, with particular focus on the Silk Road and India (maps 46-53) and 5 maps of the Americas (54-48) — including the first regional maps of North America. (Indeed, Nordenskiöld dubs this “the very first atlas of the new world.”) The two world maps (one a sea chart) show the turning-point in the understanding of the world. Both continue to conceptualize America as connected to Asia, though the world map proper is beginning to conceive of a break between northwestern America and northeastern Asia. The marks of ownership suggest the volume went through several collections, but all are either obliterated or so generic as to defy assessments of ownership. Purchased at the sale of Francis Anthony Benevento II at Sotheby’s London (6 May 2010, lot 1). Frank Benevento (1947–2023) was a lawyer and later an investment banker with Lehman Brothers who began his collection of great maps and atlases here at Arader Galleries. Our purchasing dominated his sale. Adams P 2234; Alden & Landis 548/31; Burden, North America 16 & 17; Edit16 CNCE 47524; Harrisse, BAV 285; JCB(3) I:153; Mortimer, Italian 404; Nordenskiöld 2:214; Phillips, Atlases 369; Sabin 66502; Shirley, Mapping of the World 87 & 88; Streeter sale 1.

Estimate:$50,000

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