Beschreibung:

MEDINA, PEDRO DE. L'Arte del Navegar, in laqual si contengo le regole, dechiarationi, secreti, & avisi, alla bona navegation necessarii. Venice: (Aurelio Pincio for) Giovanni Battista Pederzano 1555. 4to, 212 x 155 mm. (8 3/8 x 6/1/8 in.), contemporary limp vellum, manuscript title lettering on spine and lower edges, lacking ties, later morocco lettering-piece, rebacked in modern vellum, defective backstrip preserved, new endpapers, minor soiling to title, occasional marginal soiling elsewhere, insignificant marginal tears to fols. a2-3, ink doodling on D8v slightly offset onto map, fols. I8v, O4r, and R4v slightly stained, small dampstain to upper fore-corners from quire K to the end . FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN, second issue, 8 parts in one, translation by Vincenzo Palentino, title woodcut of ships at sea, repeated on C1r, small woodcut world map on D2r, repeated on Q7r, full-page woodcut map of Europe, Africa and the New World (E1r), 80 other woodcut text illustrations (mostly astronomical diagrams), letterpress tables and calendars, both blank leaves present. A few early annotations in ink; illegible signature on verso of final blank. Adams M-1025; Borba de Moraes II:549-50; cf. Burden 14; Church 98; Harvard/Mortimer Italian 300; Palau 159679; Sabin 47346. First published in Valladolid in 1545, Medina's Arte del navegar was the first practical treatise on navigation, and the first to provide reliable instruction on the navigation of American waters. Medina (1493-1576), a cleric and cosmographer, had traveled with Cortes and was royal examiner of the Spanish pilots and sailing-masters for the West Indies; his information in the Arte del navegar was based on the first-hand accounts of pilots using the Indies trade route and was thus the most up-to-date and accurate obtainable. The text remained the standard navigation guide for this route well into the seventeenth-century, as witnessed by its many editions. The first translation into French in 1553 was followed shortly by the present Italian translation (commissioned by the publisher Giovanni Battista Pederzano), and later translations into Dutch and English. The woodcuts in this edition are reduced copies of the cuts of the first edition (the very small world map at the head of books 3 and 8 differs however from the original cut, which shows the New World as an island: here only the easternmost coastlines are visible). The full-page map shows the Spanish trade routes and includes Florida, the mouth of the Mississippi and the area around the gulf of St. Lawrence. "The river Saguenay [in Québec] is here indicated, a remarkable feature in so early a map" (Church).