Arte del navigare dell’eccel. Dottor Pietro da Medina. Nella quale copiosamente si tratta tutto quello, che appartiene alla Nauigatione, e fua cognitione. In oltre le regole, dichiarationi, noui secreti, & auisi necessarii al nauigare. Opera vtile, non solo à Nauiganti, ma ancora à tutti quelli, che si dilettano di quest’Arte. Di nouo ampliata, & correta. Al Molto Illustre Sign. Antonio Santini Dedicata. Con privilegio.
Venice: Tomaso Baglioni, 1609. Second edition in Italian.
Octavo (7 7/8” x 5 13/16”, 221mm x 148mm): A4 b4 (b4 blank) 2A–R8 +χ1 [$half signed; –A1; C2 signed “S2”]. 145 leaves, pp. [16] (title, blank, 2pp. dedication, 4pp. preface, 6pp. table of contents, 2pp. blank), foll. 1–137 [=pp. 273] [1] (blank). With many woodcut illustrations integral to the text, including a full-page map (fol. 33r) and inhabited initials.
Bound in stabbed limp vellum. On the spine, paper label with a manuscript initial R to the heel of the backstrip.
Boards lightly soiled. Splitting to the front pastedown, tanning and foxing to the flyleaf and preliminary pages. Ownership inscription of Cavaliere Paolo Gino Galletti dated 1791 to the title-page.
Pedro de Medina (1493–1567) was a Spanish cartographer in the period of Spain’s growing naval dominance. His Arte de navegar (titled in Venetian rather than Italian, which would be L’arte di navigare) was the first handbook purely on the subject of navigation. Medina traveled with Hernán Cortés, gaining first-hand experience of the navigating in the waters of America particularly. Although the text is fundamentally a compilation of others’ writings, the importance of the book comes from its illustrations. Woodcuts show, for example, the proper use of an astrolabe and a cross-staff. Numerous charts and diagrams of winds and distances, computations and references — alongside the small format — make the work of real practical value.
The full-page map (33r) extends further north, west and south than does the map of Media’s first edition, published in Valladolid in 1545, and it is remarkable for its accuracy of Central America in particular, with the Yucatan shown correctly as a peninsula. It features prominently the Tordesillas demarcation line — the result of a Papal negotiation between Spain and Portugal — which divided the New World between those two countries along a meridian variously calculated between 42°.30′W and 49°.45′W.
Alden/Landis 609/77; Church 98; Sabin 47346 (not this edition)
Cataloged by G.R. Murdock
Item #GRM0083
Price: $9,000







