Tabula Europae II

Key Properties

Region: Iberian peninsula (Hispania, Lusitania, Baetica, Balearic Islands)

Technique: Copper engraving

Size: 262 x 200 mm plus margins

From: Ptolemy, Geografia, ed. Girolamo Ruscelli, Venice, Ziletti, 1564

Condition

Very good copy (according to the seller). The plate mark shows on three sides only, as these maps were engraved two to a plate and then cut.

References & Bibliography

Woodward, D. (ed.), The History of Cartography, vol. 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance (on the Ruscelli edition of Ptolemy, Venice 1561 and later issues).

Description

Girolamo Ruscelli's Italian edition of Ptolemy's Geography, first published in Venice in 1561 and reissued by Giordano Ziletti in 1564, was illustrated with a new set of copperplate maps, among the finest of the Venetian school. This is the Ptolemaic map of the Iberian peninsula, the second of the ten maps of Europe, with Hispania, Lusitania and Baetica, the Balearic Islands and the coast of Mauritania. A single column marks the Pillars of Hercules, the present Strait of Gibraltar.

The maps of this edition were engraved two to a plate and then cut apart, which explains why the plate mark appears on only three sides.

Historical Significance

A map from one of the most important sixteenth-century Italian editions of Ptolemy, showing the Iberian peninsula as the ancient world knew it.