![[ New England / Northeast / Canada ] Tierra Nueva By Girolamo Ruscelli](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/86737.jpg)
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Nice example of the scarce second state of Ruscelli's map of the East Coast of North America, extending from Labrador to Florida.
Ruscelli's map is based upon a 1548 map of the same title published in Giacomo Gastaldi's La Geografia and was one of the two earliest regional maps of America (along with Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova). Ruscelli's map is the 2nd earliest map to focus on the East Coast of North America. It shows the discoveries of Cartier and Verrazzano. The reference to Larcadia in the map is from Verrazzano and has been determined to be Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by Morison. Angoulesme (New York Harbor), Flora (Long Island) and P Refuge (Narrangansett Bay), are also from Verrazzano's explorations.
Verrazano originally landed on the Coast near Cape Fear, headed south briefly, before turning northward and sailing as far as the Coast of Maine, then back to France. Tierra De Nurumberg is an early reference to New England. Following Gastaldi's work, Ruscelli's map is largely unchanged, except for the extension of the rivers and the depiction of the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers as joining each other, which is based upon Ramusio.
The second state of the map (1574 and after) can be distinguished from the first by the plate mark running across the top of the printed image, above the words Tierra Nueva. In the first state, Tierra Nueva and Nueva Hispania Tabula Nova were printed from a single plate. The third state of the map (1598 and after) adds a sea monster and ship, with new place names, including Virginia and Nova Francia.
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.
