Pigafetta, Filippo (1553-1603).

Estimate

1,000 - 1,500 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Relatione del reame di Congo. Rome: Bartolomeo Grassi, [1591]

4to (226 x 156mm.), [8], 82, [2]pp., illustration: engraved title-page, folding map of Africa, woodcut initials, binding: seventeenth-century calf, gilt stamped coat of arms, spine gilt, lacking one map and all plates (although no evident sign of loss), tears with slight marginal loss to some leaves, heavy spotting, binding rubbed and chipped

Provenance

inscription on title-page, apparently "de la bibliotheque de M. le Chevalier ?Duguier/Seguier 1686"; arms on the binding, probably those of the Mignoneau family, the spine has the entwined initials SVM; Nicolas Joseph Foucault, bookplate on pastedown

Literature

Censimento 16 CNCE 34509; Mendelssohn (1979) III, 163

Catalogue Note

first edition. Written by the papal chaplain Pigafetta from the verbal account of Duarte Lopez, a settler in the Congo, who had been sent to Rome on a mission, the Relatione del reame di Congo is a highly detailed account of the equatorial regions. Pigafetta was the first to challenge the Ptolemaic conception of the source of the Nile as two large lakes side by side. He places them one beneath the other.