Sylvanus, Bernardus

Claudii Ptholemaei Alexandrini Liber Geographiae Cum Tabulis Et Universali Figura…

      Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, 1511. THE FIRST CORDIFORM MAP AND ONLY THE SECOND WORLD MAP TO DEPICT AMERICA Folio, first Venetian edition, translated by Jacobus Angelus, edited by Bernardus Sylvanus of Eboli, title printed in red text (in double column) and 28 full-sheet woodcut maps printed in red and black, all but the last printed on both recto and verso, the last being the world map by Sylvanus, woodcut diagrams in the text, spaces for initials with guide letters. Nineteenth-century limp vellum, in modern cloth chemese and morocco-backed slipcase Provenance: Tross; Samuel Latham Mitchell Barlow, bookplate; long autograph inscription by Henry Harrisse (who acted as Barlow's bibliographical advisor) References: Lloyd Arnold Brown, The World Encompassed, exh. cat. (Baltimore, 1952), n. 55; Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World (London, 1983), n. 32. The celebrated 1511 edition of Ptolemy's Geography represents a major stride in the intertwined histories of cartography and of printing technology. Bernardus Sylvanus was one of the first to produce a version of the Geography that sought to bring Ptolemy up to date rather than simply to reconstruct the ancient scholars maps. His Venice edition of Ptolemy was, therefore, the first to sound a rallying cry that would ultimately inspire later mapmakers to bring the science of cartography into the modern era. Sylvanus's version consists of twenty-eight maps as opposed to the canonical twenty-seven described by Ptolemy, the additional item being his "modern" representation of the world. The maps are among the earliest known examples of two-color printing in cartography, with the major place names in red, lesser ones in black. The large cordiform (or heart-shaped) map of the world is the earliest of its kind, and it was only the second map included in an edition of Ptolemy to show America, after Ruysch (see above, n. 3). Sylvanus, however, was less thorough in his nomenclature than his predecessor, identifying, for example, only three names on...