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Rare third edition of one of the earliest separately published maps of Cuba (and Jamaica), which first appeared in the 1561 edition of Ruscelli's edition of Ptolemy's Geografia.
Ruscelli's atlas is essentially and enlarged edition of the very rare Gastaldi edition of 1548. The atlas was first published in 161, with revised editions in the 1574 and again in 1598. It was in this final edition, Ruscelli added additional modern maps and reworked most of the plates, adding ships and sea monsters to many of the maps.
While the earlier editions appear on the market with some regularity, the 1598 edition is quite scarce.
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.
![Carte Reduite des Isles Antilles Dressee au Depost des Cartes et Plans de la Marine… [Large Inset of Virgin Islands]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/68206.jpg)
![Map of Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies [Insets of Bermuda, Cuba, Jamaica and Panama Railroad]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/70686.jpg)
