Lot 2040
  • 2040

CORNELIUS WYTFLIET. DESCRIPTIONIS PTOLEMAICAE AUGMENTUM. LOUVAIN: 1597

Estimate
35,000 - 50,000 USD
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Description

  • DESCRIPTIONIS PTOLEMAICAE AUGMENTUM, SIVE OCCIDENTALIS NOTITIA BREVI COMMENTARIO ILLUSTRATA. LEUVEN: JOHANNES BOGAERTS 1597
Small folio (300 x 192 mm).  Misnumbered as issued, but complete including final blank with 19 double page copper-engraved maps interleaved in text during binding, (with the world map unnumbered).  Brown morocco binding by Alix.

Literature

Skelton, R. A. Introduction to TOT Facsimile edition; this edition not in Sabin, Phillips; Alden 597/70; Koeman Wyt 1 A (copying Skelton collation); The World Encompassed, 204; Gallup, D. “The First Separately Published Atlas…” in PBSA Vol. 76, no. 1; (Maps:) Burden 100-107.

Catalogue Note

First edition, first issue. rare. A fine copy of the first atlas specifically devoted to the Americas "As the first general geography of America, the text of Wytfliet's work may, at least in some degree, have contributed to dispel many of the errors regarding the New World . . .  In the history of early cartography, the maps in Wytfliet's Augmentum play the same part for the New World as Ptolemy's do for the old hemisphere, and they give us . . . a valuable summary of the early cartography of America" - Nordenskiold, Facsimile Atlas.

Among the earliest regional maps of North America.  The map of California is the earliest separately printed map of that area; "Anian Regnum" of the northwest coast and Alaska is  Wytfliet's "Norumbega" is "the most accurate antecedent to Joannes de Laet's 1630 "Nova Anglia, Novvum Belgium et Virginia" -Schwartz, The Mapping of America, p. 83.

Only seven complete copies the first edition, first issue have been located: Alden cites two (NYPL and Huntington); three additional institutional copies are noted on OCLC* (U. of Minn., Lehigh, U. of Chicago); and Gallup cites two in private collections.  One of these latter is the copy reproduced in the TOT facsimile atlas; this same copy is also described by Koeman. Two incomplete copies have come to the market over the last decade.

The present conforms to the  A edition described by Skelton, including in the numerous errors in page numeration recorded by Skelton and Gallup.