FRACANZANO DA MONTALBODDO.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Itinerarium Portugallensium e Lusitania in Indiam et in de in occidentem et demum ad aquilonem. First Latin edition of the first printed collection of voyages, a seminal work in the literature of travel, including the first printed map to show Mecca and the first printed map to show the entire outline of Africa.Fracanzio da Montalboddo (fl. 1507-1522) was an Italian humanist and university professor. He here collects the reports of the voyages of Columbus, Vespucci, Cabral, Cadamosto, Vasco da Gama (India), and others. The Latin translation was made by the Milanese monk Arcangelo Madrignani. The woodcut map appears for the first time in this Latin edition, which followed the Italian of 1507 (an edition now unobtainably rare). It is the first large map of Africa, and the first in which the continent is depicted as surrounded by the ocean. India is represented in the upper right corner, beyond Arabia, with Calicut, Vasco da Gama's landing place, prominently lettered. This is the first state, misnaming the Red Sea as "Sinus Persicus".Montalboddo's collected voyages is called by Henry Harrisse "the most important collection of voyages", and asserted by Boies Penrose that "for news value as regards both the Orient and America, no other book printed in the sixteenth century could hold a candle to it". The work was the forerunner of the later compilations of Grynaeus and Huttich, Ramusio, Eden, Hakluyt, the De Brys, and Hulsius, "an auspicious beginning to the fascinating literature

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