Ptolemaeus, Claudius (ca. 100-168) - Moleto, Giuseppe (1531-1588). Geographia Cl. Ptolemaei Alexandrini ... Venice, Valgrisi Vincenzo, 1562.
Ptolemaeus, Claudius (ca. 100-168) - Moleto, Giuseppe (1531-1588). Geographia Cl. Ptolemaei Alexandrini ... Venice, Valgrisi Vincenzo, 1562.
Ptolemaeus, Claudius (ca. 100-168) - Moleto, Giuseppe (1531-1588).
Geographia Cl. Ptolemaei Alexandrini Olim a Bilibaldo Pirckheimherio traslata, at nunc multis codicibus graecis collata, pluribusque in locis ad pristinam ueritatem redacta a Iosepho Moletio mathematico.
Venice, Valgrisi Vincenzo, 1562.
First Moleto edition
Ptolemaeus, Claudius (ca. 100-168) - Moleto, Giuseppe (1531-1588).
Geographia Cl. Ptolemaei Alexandrini Olim a Bilibaldo Pirckheimherio traslata, at nunc multis codicibus graecis collata, pluribusque in locis ad pristinam ueritatem redacta a Iosepho Moletio mathematico. Venice, Valgrisi Vincenzo, 1562.
Two parts in one volume, 4° (227x155 mm). Collation: *⁴, A-O⁴, A-S⁸, A-H⁴ (1H mislabeled 'I', 1S unmarked). [8], 112, 286, [64] pages. Woodcut printer’s device on the title-page. Sixty-four double-page maps bearing descriptive text on the verso: twenty-seven Ptolemaic maps (including one world map) and thirty-seven ‘modern’ maps (including two world maps). Several woodcut diagrams and illustrations in text. Woodcut decorated initials. Early seventeenth-century blind-tooled calf with two leather clasps, red edges (later endpapers). Some foxing and waterstaining, but overall a very good, fresh copy.
Provenance: contemporary ownership inscription ‘Ex libris D. Jo: Batt.a a Fran.co. Siculi Randaciensis’ (referring to the city of Randazzo in Sicily) on the title-page. Another entry partially erased.
First edition edited by Giuseppe Moleto of Ptolemy’s Geography, dedicated to Cardinal Luigi Corner.
Moleto based the text of this edition on the 1525 translation by Wilibald Pirckheimer collated with several Greek manuscripts, adding his own commentary. As for the illustrations, Moleto drew upon the maps of Girolamo Ruscelli’s 1561 edition, which were in turn based on those executed by Giacomo Gastaldi for the Geografia in Italian vernacular that appeared, likewise in Venice, in 1548. The edition also includes the double hemisphere world map and the sea chart of the world which is an enlarged version of Gastaldi’s Carta Marina, including the network of rhumb lines. Also from Ruscelli comes the revised version of Zen’s map of the Arctic, from the Carta da navegar included in the Dello scoprimento dell’isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engroveland, Estotilanda, et Icaria, first published by Niccolò Zen in 1558 and narrating how his fourteenth-century ancestors Niccolò and Antonio would have discovered the Americas before Columbus. Moleto accepted Ruscelli’s innovation by separating Greenland from Norway, the two having previously been connected as a single landmass.
The other New World maps include Central and South America, Brazil, the Baja Peninsula, the eastern coast of North America, Cuba, and Hispaniola. Moleto juxtaposes the Ptolemaic maps with contemporary iterations, offering an easy comparison between old and new and showing the advancements in modern geography.
Giuseppe Moleto (or Moleti), born in Messina, Sicily, was a highly esteemed mathematician, professor of mathematics at the University of Padua before Galileo, and author of a treatise on mechanics, which was left unfinished at his death in 1588. Conversely, his Discorso universale nel qual son raccolti e dichiarati tutti i termini e tutte le regole appartenenti alla Geografia (Discourse on the Terms and Rules of Geography) came to light in 1561, as an appendix to Ruscelli’s edition of Ptolemy. The Discorso was dedicated to his pupil Federico Morando and was reprinted separately in 1573.
Adams, P-2231; Philips Atlases, 372; Sabin, 66489; A. Carugo, “Giuseppe Moleti: Mathematics and the Aristotelian Theory of Science at Padua in the second half of the 16th-century Italy”, L. Olivieri (ed.), Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna. Atti del 25° anno accademico del Centro per la storia della tradizione aristotelica nel Veneto, Padova 1983, i, pp. 509-517; G. Moleto, The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti: an Edition and English Translation of his Dialogue on Mechanics, 1576, ed. by W.R. Laird, Toronto 2000, esp. pp. 3-22.