Beschreibung:

MAUROLICO, Francesco (1494-1575). Cosmographia … in tres dialogos distincta . Venice: [heirs of Lucantonio Giunta], [January] 1543.
MAUROLICO, Francesco (1494-1575). Cosmographia … in tres dialogos distincta . Venice: [heirs of Lucantonio Giunta], [January] 1543. 4° (215 x 157mm). Giunta device on title and larger device on A3v. Blank A4 followed by quire ?4 at end. (Title lightly soiled and with internal tears where stamp removed.) Modern mottled wrappers, uncut. ‘A VERY RARE VOLUME’ (Sabin). FIRST of five editions listed by Houzeau and Lancaster. Maurolico, a Greek, spent most of his life in Sicily, having fled there to escape the Turks. While he edited many ancient Greek texts, the Cosmographia was among the most important of his own books. According to the colophon he completed it on Thursday 21 October 1535, the day that the Emperor Charles V came to Messina on return from his expedition to Africa. Although dismissive of Copernican ideas, it describes a methodology for measuring the earth, employed by Jean Picard in 1670 to measure the length of a meridian arc. It is also an important Americanum with passages relating to America, Columbus and Vespucci on leaves 18v, 34v and 63v. In this copy the penultimate quire A is of 4 leaves as called for by SBN. Adams M-917 (variant issue? calling for 2 leaves in quire A); BL/STC Italian Books p.428; DSB IX, p.191; Honeyman 2181; Houzeau and Lancaster 2412: ‘rare’; John Carter Brown Library I, p.53; Sabin 46957; Riccardi I(ii) 140: ‘raro’.