Ptolemy, Claudius (2nd-Century Ad), (Translated Into Latin By Jacobus Angelus, Cartography By Nicolaus Germanus

Cosmographia

      Lienhart Holl, 1482. THE FIRST ATLAS PRINTED IN GERMANY, THE FIRST ATLAS MADE FROM WOODCUT BLOCKS, THE FIRST TO CONTAIN HAND-COLORED MAPS AND THE FIRST MAPPING OF THE WORLD BY A NAMED CARTOGRAPHER Super-Royal folio, with woodcut historiated and Maiblumen initials, ornamental woodcut borderpieces, woodcut diagrams in text. 32 full-sheet woodcut maps, 133 leaves. Rubricated and hand-colored throughout (the initials carefully colored in orange and green pigments and several color washes; rubricated with capital strokes and paragraph marks, and several missing initials supplied; yellow washes on text headings; the maps carefully colored in indigo, carmine, and green pigments, with additional color washes). A few early annotations. Seventeenth-century Italian gold-toothed vellum, with small tooled insignia of Cardinal Altieri, the future Pope Clement X Provenance: Pietro dal Verme (17th-century inscription)-Pope Clement X (Emilio Lorenzo Card. Altieri, died 1676); Prof. Victor Goldschmidt of Heidelberg (stamp); Robert L.B. Tobin References: Lloyd Arnold Brown, The World Encompassed, exh. cat. (Baltimore, 1952), n. 37; Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World (London, 1983), n. 10; R. V. Tooley, Maps and Map-makers (New York, reprint 1990), 24. The text of Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia was translated into Latin from the original Greek by Jacobus Angelus and was first published, in Renaissance times, at Vicenza (1475), Bologna (1477) and Rome (1478). The sumptuous edition published at Ulm in 1482, however, far surpassed all earlier efforts and remains one of the most important publications in the history of cartography. This is the first redaction of the Geography to be printed outside of Italy, the earliest atlas printed in Germany, the first to depart from the classical prototype to reflect post-antique discoveries, the first to be illustrated with woodcuts rather than engravings, and the first to contain hand-colored maps, the design and execution of which were ascribed to a named cart