PTOLEMAEUS, Claudius, & Martin Waldseemüller.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Geographie opus novissima traductione e Greco cum archetypis castigatissime pressum. First edition thus, a fine copy in a contemporary pigskin binding of "the most important of all the Ptolemy editions; its supplement of 'new' maps marked the beginning of modern map-making. The new maps, based on contemporary observations, were published alongside the long-authoritative Ptolemaic models" (Streeter 1.6). It also includes the first printed map of Arabia with modern detail.The atlas comprises 27 Ptolemaic maps after the 1482 Ulm Ptolemy, supplemented by 20 modern maps based on recent discoveries labelled either "Nova" or "Moderna et Nova". For comprehensiveness and the geographical accuracy of its contents, especially for the dissemination of the most recent and epochal transatlantic discoveries, this was the most important atlas of the 16th century until the publication of Ortelius (1570).The atlas is a major Americanum as it contains the first appearance of the map of the world known as "the Admiral's map", from a cartographic source variously believed to be Columbus or, rather less probably, Vespucci. This the first map of America to appear in an atlas, preceded in print only by the map that should accompany the 1511 Peter Martyr, of which Burden could only locate ten copies worldwide. Two other maps are also of American interest: "Tabula Terre Nova", one of the earliest printed maps devoted entirely to the New World; and "Tabula Moderna Norbegie et Gottie", which shows "Engr

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