?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 25,000
PTOLEMAEUS, CLAUDIUS. Geographicae Enarrationis Libri Octo. Woodcut title-page device, 50 woodcut maps (all but one double-page). Folio, 15x11 inches, 20th-century vellum with gilt morocco spine labels; first map with early ink annotations, scattered staining, a few closed tears, final two index leaves defective and repaired. Bookplate of early 20th-century American radio pioneer Melville Eastham, Cambridge, Mass. Lyons: Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel, 1535
Ptolemaic geography supplemented with 16th-century geographical knowledge translated into Latin by Wilibald Pirckheimer and edited by Michael Villanovanus (Servetus). The ornamental borders surrounding descriptive text on the verso of each map are attributed to Hans Holbein and Urs Graf.
In 1553, along with copies of this book, Servetus was burned at the stake under charges of heresy for printing a passage (ultimately not written by him) relating to the fertility of the soil in Palestine on the verso of the 41st map. The map of the Atlantic is a reduced and embellished version of Waldseemuller's "Admiral's Map" of 1513, showing the Caribbean Islands and southeast North America.
