A Desirable Example of the Extremely Rare First Edition of the Fries Ptolemy.
"The map of the world is noteworthy as being the first in any edition of Ptolemy's Geography to bear the name America." - Stevens
An extremely handsome example of the atlas that dominated European cartography in the first half of the 16th century.
The atlas is significant as Americana because of the foreword by Thomas Aucuparius, which contains extensive praise of Vespucci, and because this is the first time in an atlas that the name "America," introduced into cartography by Waldseemüller in 1507, appears on a world map. But it is perhaps the text on the back of the map of the New World that has the richest content; it
The Fries Ptolemy continued Martin Waldseemüller's groundbreaking fusion of Ptolemaic and modern mapping with closely derived maps and the text by Jacopo Angelo. It is, therefore, sometimes called the third edition of the Strasbourg Ptolemy (after those of 1513 and 1520). While bearing a direct lineage from Waldseemuller's work, it is a new book, with new woodcuts and new text. It dominated the European market for atlases from the 1520s through the 1540s before giving way to Sebastian Munster's Geographia and Cosmographia and eventually Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in the 1570s.
The 1522 edition of Ptolemy's Geography was produced by printer Johann Grüninger (1482-1531). He became a citizen of Strasbourg in 1482, after working in Basel, and specialized in illustrated books. Grüninger printed numerous geographical works, probably including the 1507 Waldseemüller wall map. He owned a substantial collection of woodcuts from his workshop and renowned artists, using them in his publications regardless of their relevance to the text.
In 1518, following Waldseemüller's death, Grüninger collaborated with Laurent Fries (Phrisius) to publish the 1522 Ptolemy. Fries, a "medicus et mathematicus," had studied at universities in Vienna, Padua, and Montpellier, and later settled in Strasbourg. He adapted the text from Jacopo d'Angelo's version and adjusted the maps from the 1520 Waldseemüller. Fries had previously worked on cartography, notably signing the 1520 world map in Solinus' Polyhistor with his initials.
This edition includes 50 maps; 49 are double-page and one, Lorraine (map 35), is single-page. It introduces three new plates, probably based on Behaim's globe, including a Waldseemüller-inspired world map titled erroneously Tabula Granlandie Russie (map 49). Waldseemüller's influence is noted by Fries, who credits him in the reader's notice and initials in the New World map (map 28).
The 1522 edition has the most elaborate decorative borders, which differed in the following editions of 1525, 1535, and 1541. Notably, Fries drew features such as the great Saphat Lake in Africa, based on Fra Mauro, and incorporated legends from Waldseemüller's 1516 Carta Marina. The maps' illustrations vary from serious to abundant and naïve, reflecting Grüninger's preference for aesthetic over content. He utilized unused vignettes from Waldseemüller’s unfinished Chronica Mundi for the maps' design, enhancing them with luxurious frames and initials.
This edition has numerous typographical errors in titles, such as one of the world map's Tabula Gran. (for Gron[landie]) and unexplained abbreviations such as T. Pre.
Rarity
Not seen at auction since Reiss in 2009 (€75,400).
Signatures: A-B6, CD6, EF4, G-R6. [50 woodcut maps], [S8]; [R4] misbound before R2. (Complete.)
Lorenz (Laurent) Fries (ca. 1485-1532) was born in Mulhouse, Alsace. He studied medicine, apparently spending time at the universities of Pavia, Piacenza, Montpellier and Vienna. After completing his education, Fries worked as a physician in several places before settling in Strasbourg in about 1519. While in Strasbourg, Fries met the Strasbourg printer and publisher Johann Grüninger, an associate of the St. Dié group of scholars formed by, among others, Walter Lud, Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller.
From 1520 to 1525, Fries worked with Grüninger as a cartographic editor, exploiting the corpus of material that Waldseemüller had created. Fries' first venture into mapmaking was in 1520, when he executed a reduction of Martin Waldseemüller's wall map of the world, first published in 1507. While it would appear that Fries was the editor of the map, credit is actually given in the title to Peter Apian. The map, Tipus Orbis Universalis Iuxta Ptolomei Cosmographi Traditionem Et Americ Vespucii Aliorque Lustrationes A Petro Apiano Leysnico Elucubrat. An.o Dni MDXX, was issued in Caius Julius Solinus' Enarrationes, edited by Camers, and published in Vienna in 1520.
Fries’ next project was a new edition of the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy, which was published by Johann Grüninger in 1522. Fries evidently edited the maps, in most cases simply producing a reduction of the equivalent map from Waldseemüller's 1513 edition of the Geographie Opus Novissima, printed by Johann Schott. Fries also prepared three new maps for the Geographia, of Southeast Asia and the East Indies, China, and the world, but the geography of these derives from Waldseemüller's world map of 1507.
The 1522 edition of Fries' work is very rare, suggesting that the work was not commercially successful. In 1525, an improved edition was issued, with a re-edit of the text by Willibald Pirkheimer, from the notes of Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller von Königsberg).
After Grüninger's death in ca. 1531, the business was continued by his son Christoph, who seems to have sold the materials for the Ptolemy to two Lyon publishers, the brothers Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel, who published a joint edition in 1535, before Gaspar Trechsel published an edition in his own right in 1541.
Claudius Ptolemy (fl. AD 127-145) was an ancient geographer, astronomer, and mathematician. He is known today through translations and transcriptions of his work, but little is known about his life besides his residence in Alexandria.
Several of his works are still known today, although they have passed through several alterations and languages over the centuries. The Almagest, in thirteen books, discusses astronomy. It is in the Almagest that Ptolemy postulates his geocentric universe. His geometric ideas are contained in the Analemma, and his optical ideas were presented in five books known as the Optica.
His geographic and cartographic work was immensely influential. In the Planisphaerium, Ptolemy discusses the stereographic projection. Perhaps his best-known work is his Geographia, in eight books. However, Ptolemy’s ideas had been absent from western European intellectual history for roughly a thousand years, although Arab scholars interacted with his ideas from the ninth century onward.
In 1295, a Greek monk found a copy of Geographia in Constantinople; the emperor ordered a copy made and the Greek text began to circulate in eastern Europe. In 1393, a Byzantine diplomat brought a copy of the Geographia to Italy, where it was translated into Latin in 1406 and called the Cosmographia. The manuscript maps were first recorded in 1415. These manuscripts, of which there are over eighty extant today, are the descendants of Ptolemy’s work and a now-lost atlas consisting of a world map and 26 regional maps.
When Ptolemy’s work was re-introduced to Western scholarship, it proved radically influential for the understanding and appearance of maps. Ptolemy employs the concept of a graticule, uses latitude and longitude, and orients his maps to the north—concepts we take for granted today. The Geographia’s text is concerned with three main issues with regard to geography: the size and shape of the earth; map projection, i.e. how to represent the world’s curve proportionally on a plane surface; and the corruption of spatial data as it transfers from source to source. The text also contains instructions as to how to map the world on a globe or a plane surface, complete with the only set of geographic coordinates (8000 toponyms, 6400 with coordinates) to survive from the classical world.