Cosmographia [with:] De situ orbis

Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 1482. Two volumes in one. 4to. (7 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches). Sixth edition. A-F8. 48 ff. 96 pp. 30 lines per page. Cosmographia: 1-29 ff. De situ orbis: 30-48 ff. Full-page woodcut map of the world on a Ptolemaic cone-shaped projection with architectural border and letterpress text. Woodcut and floriated initials. Rubricated throughout. Gothic letter Latin text. Border of the woodcut map insignificantly shaved. Finely bound in green full morocco by Zaehnsdorf London with binder's ticket, gilt paneled, five raised bands forming six gilt-paneled compartments, gilt-lettered titles in second and third compartments with date in sixth, marbled endpapers, all edges sprinkled red

Rare 1482 Ratdolt edition of Mela's incunable "Cosmographia," the first edition of the first Latin work dedicated to geography to include a map of the world. It is only the second woodcut world map printed in Italy. "Mela's concept of the world as published here, ten years before the discovery of the New World, was the most widely accepted cosmography in Europe." [Streeter]

The present title is so foundational to our understanding of the modern world that two of the most important book collectors, E. D. Church and Thomas W. Streeter, both listed it first in their collection catalogs. For the map in this edition of Cosmographia by Mela, the earliest known Roman geographer, was the first map to incorporate knowledge from the Portuguese explorations of the West Coast of Africa. This map modified the Ptolemaic rendering of Western Africa, revealing a true Western Africa based on reports of Portugal's success further south, making it current with then-known geographical knowledge. No earlier printed map recognized this important step toward the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, achieved by Bartolomeu Dias just six years post publication. Campbell suggests that the edition's printer, Ratdolt, may have been the mapmaker, since this and the T-O map from his 1480 edition of Rolewinck are the two earliest woodcut maps printed in Italy. The title of the map "Novellae etati ad geographie vmiculatos calles huma no viro necessarios flores aspirati votu bnmereti ponit" translates as: "If, in a new lease of life, a man seeks to attain the wormlike paths of geography, he is bound to find the flowers that belong there, for he deserves them." The map is rarely present, as Nordenskiöld relates: "The map is generally wanting, but that it really belongs to the work is shown by the watermark corresponding to the watermarks of the text." Published in the same year as Lienhart Holl's Cosmographia, Mela's world map includes additions to the Ptolemaic model. One of the more obvious changes is the addition of Scandinavia, and for the first time, the Orkney Islands off the Northeast coast of Scotland. Mela's map was cited with other early texts, including those by Macrobius, Ptolemy, Pliny, and Aristotle, as part of the reading background of Christopher Columbus, who would sail to the New World just a decade later: "In its consideration of the oceans, this work would not have been particularly useful to Columbus, but in his view of the earth, Mela raised the probablity that the Southern Hemisphere was inhabited, a novel idea for Christian believers in the biblical version of the Creation." [James Ford Bell Library] Mela, born in Spain, lived during the reign of Emperor Claudius around 40 AD. His Cosmographia was circulated in manuscript, and from the present edition, with a map. It was first printed in 1471, and it, as well as the four subsequent editions, were all without maps. Mela's was the "only formal geographical treatise in Classical Latin." [Campbell] The Cosmographia expressed concepts that were similar to those of the leading Greek geographers, yet the map which accompanies this 1482 edition exhibits the then-current school of thought, rather than Mela's own. According to Wilson, the Mela map was the model for Schedel's world map in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) and a Salamanca edition (1498). Within its novel architectural framework, the map is drawn on a conical projection, a modification of the Ptolemaic type. The text, a motto, the legends, and the Latin names of the winds represented by "wind heads" which surround the map are provided in letterpress. The map shows Europe, Asia (including Sri Lanka, which is drawn with a bay shaped like a keyhole), and a large part of Africa. Notable is the depiction of the Nile, with its sources in the so-called "Mountains of the Moon," by Lakes Albert and Victoria Nyanza.

BMC V 286. Bod-inc M-179. BSB-Ink P-687. Brown 41. Campbell, p.119. Church 1. Essling 274. Goff M-452. GW M34876. Hain 11019. HC 11019*. ISTC im00452000. James Ford Bell Library, "The Manifest." Klebs 675.6. Nordenskiöld, p.36. Oates 1751. Polain 2661. Proctor 4385. Rhodes (Oxford Colleges) 1191. Shirley 8. Stillwell 389. Streeter Sale 1. Suarez, Shedding the Veil 7. Walsh 1809. Wilson 115.