Dudley, Robert:

$15,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

CARTA SECONDA GENERALE DEL' AMERICA. First state of Robert Dudley's Carta Seconda Generale Del' America, "the first printed sea chart of the east coast of North America by an Englishman, and the first to record soundings" (Burden). It is the second of two general charts relating to North America to appear in Book 2 of Dudley's monumental work, Dell' Arcano del Mare. Published between 1646 and 1648, and in a second edition in 1661, the Arcano was the first sea atlas of the world and the first to use Mercator's new projection, as corrected by Edward Wright. In his 2003 article on Dudley's Arcano for The Book Collector, Lord Wardington describes it as "one of the greatest atlases of the world and one of the most complex ever produced." Wardington continues, noting that the Arcano was "a monumental and totally original task, the charts, representations of instruments and diagrams all engraved on huge quantities of copper over many years with an exactitude incorporating the minutest detail and printed on the best possible paper. The whole surpassed anything published before and not equalled in quality until fifty years later in France when under Louis XIV everything had to be of the best. The concept, the mathematical expertise, the genius and the navigational skills were those of Sir Robert Dudley," while the "engraving and production were due to Antonio Francesco Lucini." As Burden notes, the "map covers the majority of the east coast of North America," extending from Cape Canav

• Printing: first

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