Isola Cuba Nova

Key Properties

Edition: Girolamo Ruscelli, La Geografia di Claudio Tolomeo Alessandrino, Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi 1561 (reissued 1562 and 1564) or Giordano Ziletti 1574; this sheet with the text and page number XXXIII on the verso, signature Kk

Plate: Tavola Nuova XXXIII (Trentesimaterza Tavola Nuova), an enlarged copy of Gastaldi's Isola Cuba Nova of 1548

Language: Italian

Format: Copperplate engraving on laid paper, the sheet with the customary central fold

Map: approximately 18 x 25 cm

Colouring: Uncoloured, as issued

Collation & Technical Description

A single sheet, the map engraved within a graduated border with the plate number G at the corners, the title ISOLA CUBA NOVA lettered along the upper margin. The island of Cuba fills the sheet, with its rivers, mountains and the early Spanish settlements (Havana, Santiago, Baracoa, Trinidad and others), the Tropic of Cancer (Tropico de Cancro) across the north, the Isla de Pinos and the Jardines de la Reina, the western tip of Hispaniola at the lower right, part of Jamaica at the lower left and a stippled sea lettered MAR OCEANO. On the verso the Italian text of the Trentesimaterza Tavola Nuova, with a woodcut initial, page number XXXIII and signature Kk.

Condition

Very good condition. A strong, clear impression on a full sheet with wide margins; the central fold as issued, light even toning and a little faint offsetting from the text on the verso; a small collector's annotation in pencil in the lower margin. Detailed condition report available on request.

References & Bibliography

Burden, The Mapping of North America, entries for Ruscelli's Isola Cuba Nova and Isola Spagnola Nova (Venice 1561, with the later states and editions) and for Gastaldi's prototypes of 1548. Shirley, Maps in the Atlases of the British Library, T.PTOL-6 (Ruscelli's Ptolemy, Venice 1561 to 1599). Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century, on Gastaldi and Ruscelli. Phillips, A List of Geographical Atlases, on the Valgrisi and Ziletti editions.

Description

The map of Cuba from Girolamo Ruscelli's Italian edition of Ptolemy, first published at Venice by Vincenzo Valgrisi in 1561 and reissued, from the same plates, in 1562, 1564 and (by Giordano Ziletti) 1574 and 1598 to 1599. Ruscelli's atlas contained, besides the 27 Ptolemaic maps, a series of 'tavole nuove' or modern maps, most of them copied and enlarged from the small maps that Giacomo Gastaldi had engraved for the Venice Ptolemy of 1548. Among these were the first regional maps of the New World ever published in an atlas, including separate maps of Cuba and of Hispaniola.

The present map is the Cuba, Tavola Nuova XXXIII. It follows Gastaldi's map of 1548, the first printed map devoted to the island, but on a considerably larger scale, so that the many place-names of the Spanish colony are easier to read: Havana on the north coast, Santiago, Baracoa and Trinidad, the Isla de Pinos and the reefs of the Jardines de la Reina. The outline of the island, with its exaggerated western tip and broad central mass, derives ultimately from the Spanish charts of the 1520s and remained the standard picture of Cuba in printed maps until the end of the century. The engraving, with its stippled sea and pictorial mountains, is characteristic of the fine Venetian copperplate work of the 1560s.

The verso carries the Italian text of the 'thirty-third new map', with a woodcut initial and the page number XXXIII, as in the Valgrisi and Ziletti editions. Ruscelli's atlas was the first in which the maps were printed from copperplates on pages with letterpress text on the verso, a technique that Ortelius would adopt for the Theatrum a decade later.

Historical Significance

Gastaldi's map of 1548 and Ruscelli's enlargement of it are the two earliest printed maps of Cuba, and the Ruscelli plate remained in use for four decades. As the first atlas maps of the individual islands of the Caribbean, they mark the moment when the New World began to be mapped region by region rather than as a single continent.

Provenance

Available on request.