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BORDONE, Benedetto di. ISOLARIO di Benedetto Bordone Nel qual si ragiona di tutte l'Isole del mondo, con li lor nomi antichi & moderni, historie, favole, & modi del loro vivere... Venice Niccolo Zoppino 1528

(10) pp., 73 ff., including title printed in red and black, with 2 full-page and 3 double-page maps and many maps in the text. Bound in 19th-century quarter vellum and marbled paper over boards. Edges of title restored, gutter of initial and final leaves reinforced, single wormtrack through first 9 leaves, occasionally touching printed surface; light handsoiling throughout, but maps in strong impressions, overall good.

Rare first edition. The isolario, or ‘book of islands,’ was a cartographic form introduced and developed in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries. Like the portolano, or pilot-book, to which it was related, it had its origin in the Mediterranean, as an illustrated guide for travelers in the Aegean Archipelago and the Levant. Bordone’s Isolario was the second isolario to be printed and the first to give prominence to the transatlantic discoveries. Skelton quotes Almagia as saying that it is, in fact, “the earliest complete work of its kind to have been produced by the printing-press in Italy or anywhere else.”The Isolario is divided into three books, devoted respectively to the ‘islands and peninsulas’ of the western ocean, to the Mediterranean, and to islands of the Indian Ocean and the Far East. While this order corresponds very roughly to that of Ptolemy, it gives conspicuous priority to the discoveries across the Atlantic. Besides a page of diagrams illustrating the construction of a circular world map and windroses of ‘ancient’ and ‘modern type,’ there are three general maps: Europe, the Aegean, and an oval world map. Scattered through the text, in the appropriate places, are 107 small maps, plans or views including a nearly three-quarter page plan of Mexico City before the conquest of Cortez—which qualifies because it is an island.According to Cortazzi, in his Isles of Gold Antique Maps of Japan: “In 1528 the Italian cartographer Benedetto Bordone (1460-1531) produced an atlas of islands printed in Italy by Nicolo d’Aristotle. In it he included a small map of an island which he called ‘Ciampagu,’ presumably another version of Cipangu. This would seem to be the earliest European printed individual map of Japan” (p. 15).Bordone was a Paduan illuminator and wood-engraver who was apparently established at Venice by 1494.

* Theatrum Orbis Terrarum facsimile edition edited by R.A. Skelton; see Harrisse, Bibliotheca americana vetustissima, no. 187; Sabin 6417; for the 1547 edition, see Mortimer, Italian, 82.

$US35000

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