Voyages & Discovery
La historia del Mondo Nuovo
Benzoni, Girolamo · Venice · Rampazetto · 1565
First edition of the earliest account of the Americas by a non-Spaniard; 17 woodcuts of the New World and the author's portrait, the source of De Bry's famous images.
FM-0080
Price on request
Key Properties
Author: Girolamo Benzoni
Title: La historia del Mondo Nuovo
Imprint: Venice, Rampazetto, 1565
Edition: First edition
Format: Small octavo (14 x 9 cm)
Binding: Nineteenth-century Italian stiff vellum, title in gold on the spine; red morocco slipcase
Collation: *4 A-Y8 (final blank Y8 not present); [4], 175 leaves
Illustration: Woodcut portrait of the author on the title page; 17 woodcuts of the Americas in the text
Collation & Technical Description
Small octavo (14 x 9 cm). *4 A-Y8, the final blank Y8 not present: [4] unnumbered leaves, 175 numbered leaves. The printed register on f. 175 reads 'Tutti sono Quaderni, eccetto * ch'è Duerno'. Title page with a woodcut portrait of the author; dedication to Pope Pius IV; 17 woodcuts of the Americas in the text; imprint 'In Venetia, appresso Francesco Rampazetto, MDLXV' on the verso of f. 175. Bound in nineteenth-century Italian stiff vellum, the title in gold embossed into the vellum on the spine; in a red morocco slipcase.
Condition
Small marginal repairs, among them the upper margin of S3; the last leaf (f. 175, with the register and imprint) repaired at the head with the loss of a few letters; without the final blank leaf. Otherwise in good condition.
References & Bibliography
Sabin 4790; European Americana 565/2; Medina, Biblioteca Hispano-Americana, I:418.
Description
First edition. Benzoni spent fourteen years in Latin America between 1541 and 1555. He lived in the Antilles and in Guatemala, and knew the west coast of South America well. He documents the arrival of Columbus up to the conquest of Peru and describes the regions in which he lived. Benzoni is the first non-Spaniard to describe Latin America; his book was critical of Spain and was forbidden in that country. De Bry used his text extensively in the Grands Voyages (parts IV, V and VI), and with his anti-Spanish attitude Benzoni fed the so-called Black Legend, the legend of the cruelties inflicted by the Spaniards in Latin America.
Historical Significance
The book belongs, with the Columbus letters and the Vespucci and Cortes letters, to the earliest authentic sources for the history of the Americas. Its woodcuts are among the very first images of the Americas to be distributed in Europe, and they became famous after their further development by Theodor de Bry. The earliest printed images of the Americas would seem to appear in Peter Martyr's and Ramusio's Sumario de la general historia de l'Indie Occidentali of 1534 and in Oviedo's chronicle La historia general de las Indias of a year later; Benzoni's cuts follow directly in that first generation. The book is extremely rare in its first edition.
Provenance
Salvatore Bertolotto; Martayan Lan, New York (1998); Parsons (sale, Sotheby's, 11 December 2007); Bruce McKinney, with his sale bookplate 'Liceat decernere foro', dated 3 December 2009 (his sale, Bloomsbury, New York).