Ramusio, Giovanni Battista

Delle navigationi et viaggi ... & con molti & vaghi discorsi, da lui in molti luoghi dichiarato & illustrato. Venice: [heirs of Lucantonio] Giunti, 1563; 1559; 1606



3 volumes, folio (11 7/8 x 8 ½ in.; 303 x 210 mm). Woodcut printer's device on titles repeated on last pages, 3 (vol. 1) plus 7 (vol. 3) double-page woodcut maps and views, 2 full-page and 48 smaller woodcut text illustrations; in vol. 1 top-edge shaved touching a few headlines, occasional marginal spotting, in vol. 2 dampstain in lower outer corner affecting a few lines of text, 2 holes in fore-margin of title, 2 leaves of preliminaries browned, occasional marginal spotting, in vol. 3 light browning and a few dampstains in first few quires, some marginal spotting heavier in a few quires, worm track in upper margin of quires Xx-Yy touching woodcut frame of maps, last page laid down on free endpaper, small oval purple stamp of a French library obscured on all three titles. Antique vellum made from medieval liturgical leaves and sprinkled with ink (apparently intentionally), red edges; extremities rubbed, joints cracking.

Doctor Ferdinand Alena de Castro (seventeenth century manuscript exlibris on each title)

Borba de Moraes, pp. 171-173; Hill (2004) 248-249; Sabin 67732, 67736, 67742

A full set of the major sixteenth-century collection of European voyages, from Marco Polo on, incorporating the Decades of Peter Martyr and adding many further accounts, in all some 95 distinct narratives. This set includes the first edition of the second volume, and the third edition of volumes 1 and 3.

"This may be said to have opened a new era in the literary history of voyages and navigation. This work served as a model to Hakluyt and was the first great systematic collection that had so far appeared" (Hill). The first volume is mostly devoted to Africa and Asia, the second contain the voyage of Marco Polo and other travellers in Asia and Russia, while the third is exclusively devoted to voyages in America.