Ptolemaeus, Claudius (After 83-Ca 168 Ad).

Geographie Opus Nouissima Traductione E Grecorum Archetypis Castigatissime Pressum

      Johann Schott, 1513. Folio (18 4/8 x 12 4/8 inches). 47 woodcut maps by Martin Waldseemüller (all but 2 double-page), including "Tabula terre nove" THE FIRST MAP IN AN ATLAS ENTIRELY DEVOTED TO AMERICA, the last map ("Lotharingia") printed in colors, 4 woodcut diagrams in text, one large woodcut of an armillary sphere on K1 (without the final blank leaf, some browning and staining, a few leaves skillfully repaired). Contemporary blind-stamped paneled calf over wooden boards, each cover decorated with alternating fillets of a stag and hunter, and a thistle and bird roll tool, fore-edges lettered in Greek: "Ptolemaio", original vellum page-markers (brass catches and clasps and corner pieces renewed to style, recently and expertly conserved by James and Stuart Brockman Ltd, full report available on request). Provenance: Copious contemporary marginal scholarly annotations in Greek and Latin; Pierre S. du Pont III (1911-1988), Collection of Navigation. 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. The first modern atlas, and one of the most important editions of Ptolemy, containing many new regional maps: twenty new maps based on contemporary knowledge "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), were included in addition to the traditional body of twenty-seven Ptolemaic maps derived from the 1482 Ulm edition (or possibly from the manuscript atlas of Nicolaus Germanus that served as source for the latter). Schott's edition while initiated by the most famous of all early sixteenth-century cosmographers, Martin Waldseemuller and his associate Mathias Ringmann,