Claudius Ptolemy/Girolamo Ruscelli, La Geografia. Nuovamente tradotta di Greco in Italiano da Girolamo Ruscelli, con espositioni del medesimo…, 1561

First Edition of Ptolemy’s Geography – Ptolemy Ruscelli Atlas

An excellent example of Ruscelli’s Ptolemy, the most important Italian Ptolemy published in the second half of the 16th century.

This is the first edition of six Ruscelli translation editions. Most of the maps in the atlas are based on Gastaldi’s work of 1548. Ruscelli enlarged Gastaldi’s maps, which allowed for a significantly neater and more attractive style. He expanded the atlas, adding four new maps, and a number of updated maps

Among the “modern” maps in this edition is the world in twin hemispheres, the earliest of its kind to appear in an atlas [Shirley, Mapping of the World 110]. Other maps departing from Gastaldi are: Scandinavia (after Jacob Ziegler, 1532); Brasil (after Ramusio); the Arctic regions (after the infamous “Zeno” map, first published in woodcut in 1558); South Africa; a navigational chart of the world [Shirley 111].

Updated maps include the map of New Spain (Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova) which corrects the shape the Yucatan assumed in the Gastaldi edition. Also, one of the three world maps in the atlas, Orbis descriptio, is drawn on a different projection than previously. The map of Great Britain is likewise updated.

Maps of particular interest include Septentrionalium Partium Nova Tabula, the first reduction of the unobtainable 1558 Zeno map, which charted a 1380 Venetian voyage to the north Atlantic. Tierra Nueva is the second printed map to focus on the eastern coastline of North America, stretching from Florida to Labrador. The map of the Southwest, Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova, includes a look at rivers in this region and the Seven Cities of Gold. Finally, the “mariner’s map,” Carta Marina Nuova Tavola, is an easily recognizable projection with strange features including a land bridge between North America and Asia.

Girolamo Ruscelli (ca. 1500-1566) was one of the great humanists of 16th century Italy, publishing a number of works on a variety of topics including Italian poetry, history, militaria, and, of course, his influential edition of Ptolemy’s Geografia, expanded with modern maps. Ruscelli also founded what was supposedly the first-ever scientific society, the Accademia Segreta, in Naples, which existed between 1542 and 1547. Following this, he moved to Venice where he proofread for Valgrisi, with whom he would publish the Geografia.

Claudius Ptolemy (fl. AD 127-145) was an ancient geographer, astronomer, and mathematician. He is known today through translations and transcriptions of his work, but little is known about his life besides his residence in Alexandria.

His cartographic system and geographic scholarship formed the foundation for map production in the fifteenth century. Perhaps his best-known work is his Geographia, in eight books. However, Ptolemy’s ideas had been absent from western European intellectual history for roughly a thousand years, although Arab scholars interacted with his ideas from the ninth century onward.

When Ptolemy’s work was re-introduced to Western scholarship, it proved radically influential for the understanding and appearance of maps. Ptolemy makes use of the concept of a graticule or grid, uses latitude and longitude, and orients his maps to the north—concepts we take for granted today. The Geographia’s text is concerned with three main issues with regard to geography: the size and shape of the earth; map projection, i.e. how to represent the world’s curve proportionally on a plane surface; and the corruption of spatial data as it transfers from source to source. The text also contains instructions as to how to map the world on a globe or a plane surface, complete with the only set of geographic coordinates (8000 toponyms, 6400 with coordinates) to survive from the classical world.

Ref: Phillips, Atlases 371; Sabin 66503; Stevens, H. Ptolemy’s Geography, p.50; cf. Burden 29. 30 & 31.