Fourth Edition of Ruscelli's Revised and Expanded Ptolemy, Edited by G. Rosaccio. In an Attractive Contemporary Vellum Binding.
Quarto (9.5 x 6.75 inches). Contemporary limp vellum, with early ink lettering on spine: "Geografia: Ptolomeo". 69 double-page engraved maps, including the additional maps of Africa, America (Burden 86), Asia, Europe, and Hungary. Parts 1 and 2 erratically bound. [36], 42, 186, 144, [22] leaves.
"In this Italian-text edition of 1598 figures of monsters, fish, trees and some new place names have been added to Valgrisi's earlier maps, and there are some additional maps by Giuseppe Rosaccio" (Shirley)
Girolamo Ruscelli (1500-1566) was a cartographer, humanist, and scholar from Tuscany. Ruscelli was a prominent writer and editor in his time, writing about a wide variety of topics including the works of Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch, Italian language, Italian poetry, medicine, alchemy, and militia. One of his most notable works was a translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia which was published posthumously.
There is limited information available about Ruscelli’s life. He was born in the Tuscan city of Viterbo to a family of modest means. He was educated at the University of Padua and moved between Rome and Naples until 1548, when he moved to Naples to work in a publishing house as a writer and proofreader. He remained in the city until his death in 1566.