L'isole piu famose del Mondo.
Small folio (28.75 x 19 cm). [12] ff. including engraved title, 201, [1] pp., 1 integral blank, including 47 copper plate engraved maps in text. Original endpapers, somewhat frayed and spotted; occasional scattered and very light spotting here and there, small wormhole on upper engraved title outside of platemark. Early manuscript annotations, especially to the Corfu map and at the end of the chapter on Jamaica. Bound in contemporary limp vellum, ink titling on spine, remains of old printed library label on upper spine; front cover slightly cock, and light spotting and wear, especially along spine. Genuine and fresh, generally excellent. Excellent enlarged (third) edition of one of the most beautifully engraved Italian Isolarios of the sixteenth century. L'isole piu famose was the first with maps engraved on copper; and with the Gastaldi edition of Ptolemy’s Geografia, 1548, it was among the few geographical works of any kind illustrated with engravings. This edition of Porcacchi contains much more than the first. According to Phillips Atlases it contains 17 maps not in the edition of 1572, including two relating to America: Jamaica and Puerto Rico, here called “Isola di S. Giovanni” for San Juan. Altogether, pages 154 to 184 relate to America. The volume closes with ‘Descrizione del Mappamondo’ and ‘Discorso intorno alla carta da navigare,’ pages 193 to 201, illustrated with two splendid Lafrerian-style maps of the world engraved by the Paduan Girolamo Porro. Porro, well-known as a book illustrator, later engraved maps for the first small-format Mercator atlas and for a Ptolemy (both appearing in 1596). According to Shirley, the oval-shaped world map “is a finely-executed reduction of Camocio’s large world map of 1567, one of the last in the long line of derivatives from Gastaldi's prototype of 1546.
* Adams P-1906; Sabin 64105; Shirley 127-28; see The World Encompassed 86.
Price: $9,500.00