Sign In

- Or use -
Forgot Password Create Account
This item has been sold, but you can enter your email address to be notified if another example becomes available.
Description

One of the earliest obtainable modern maps of Persia, which first appeared in the 1561 edition of Ruscelli's edition of Ptolemy's Geografia.

Finely engraved map, centered on the Persian empire and the region around the Caspian Sea and extending to the Persian Gulf. Locates the Arabian Desert, Moxia, Persian, the Camania Desert, Tay, Tezichia, Cola, Mengrelia, Gazaria and Tartaria.

Ruscelli's 1561 Geographia is an enlarged version of Gastaldi's miniature atlas of 1548, with additions. Gastaldi includes a number of modern maps which are among the earliest obtainable modern maps of these regions and the only reasonably obtainable maps by Gastaldi of most of the regions covered.

The present example is from the 1598 edition of the atlas.

Girolamo Ruscelli Biography

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.