Cosmographia
Claudius Ptolemy (100-c.170)
Category
Books
Date
1482
Materials
Place of origin
Ulm
Collection
Blickling Hall, Norfolk
NT 3130689
Summary
Bibliographic description
[69] leaves, [32] double leaves : ill., maps (woodcuts) ; fol. Running number: 4630. World map is hand-coloured in blue, brown, green, red and yellow, the sea areas in ochre; maps of Germany ("Quarta Europe" in text on recto of first leaf), Scandinavia (no text on recto) and Dalmatia ("Quinta Europe" in text on recto of first leaf) are hand-coloured in blue, brown, pink, red and yellow, the sea areas in blue; all other maps uncoloured. Some maps (Spain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Dalmatia, Italy, Sardinia and Sicily, Greece, and North Africa) with contemporary late fifteenth-century or sixteenth-century manuscript additions (place names and notes) in black and red ink. Does not contain Koberger's "Registrum. De locis ac mirabilibus mundi". Provenance: sixteenth-century ink-stamp at foot of leaf a1 recto: 'Collegio Societatis Jesu Constantiensi gratificandi cupidissimus cum sui per obsequiosa reco[m]mendatione, reuerentiaq[ue] condigna offerebat Joannes Leonardus Goetzius Constantiensis, &c. xx. Augusti, Anno a Virginis partu 1594' (in black ink, the words 'Jesu' and 'Joannes Leonardus Goetzius' in red ink) [i.e. library stamp of the Jesuit house in Konstanz, the gift of one Joannes Leonardus Goetzius in 1594]; the ink-stamp is on either side of a (possibly unrelated) printed or stamped woodcut device featuring a central shield containing a griffin, surrounded by four semi-circular spheres containing the date 1509 (at top) and the letters D[?] or a reversed G (at left), H (at bottom) and I (at right). Library of Sir Richard Ellys (1682-1742) of Nocton, Lincolnshire. Binding: eighteenth-century full plain calf; sewn on six supports; double gilt fillet border; gilt roll pattern on board edges; gold-tooled spine with brown leather title label in gilt 'PTOLOMAEI COSMOGRAPHIA; red painted and burnished bookblock edges; comb and swirl pattern marbled endpapers.
Makers and roles
Claudius Ptolemy (100-c.170), author Jacopo D'Angelo, translator Nicolaus Germanus (15th century), editor Johann Schnitzer (fl. 1482), map engraver Lienhart Hol (fl. 1482-1484), printer