Geografia di M. Livio Sanuto distinta in XII libri. Ne quali, oltra l'esplicatione di molti luoghi di Tolomeo, e della Bussola, e dell' Apuglia, si dichiarano le Provincie, Popoli, Regni, Città; Porti, Monti, Fiumi, Laghi, e Costume dell'Africa. Con XII tavole di essa Africa in dissegno di rame. Aggiuntivi de piu tre Indici da M. Giovan Carlo Saraceni
AN UNTRIMMED EXAMPLE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ATLAS OF AFRICA
THE ESMOND BRADLEY MARTIN COPY
Venice: Damiano Zenaro, (26 April) 1588. First edition.
Folio in 4s (17 3/8” x 11 5/16”, 447mm x 228mm): a-f4, A-MM4 NN6 [$2 signed; –a1; +NN3; MM2 mis-signed “LL 2”]. 170 leaves, pp. [48] (engraved title, blank, 3pp. dedication, to the reader, 14pp. table of locations, 26pp. table of notable things, 2pp. table of foreign terms), foll. 1 2-146. [≈xlviii, 252] With an engraved title-page (integral with the text) and 12 engraved double-page maps.
Bound in modern half calf over marbled boards. On the spine, 5 raised bands. Author and title gilt to the second panel. All edges of the text-block untrimmed. Presented in a cloth clam-shell box.
Some scuffing to the extremities. Internally quite fresh, though with some leaves mildly but evenly tanned. Damp-stain to the upper margins of H2-K3, L4-N2, T1-U1, X1-AA1 and GG1-II4 (including map 11); not affecting the text or the images. Worming to the gutter of a1-4 and to the fore-edges of a1-4, CC2-II4 and maps 9-11;[1] not affecting the text or the images. Several repaired small tears to the maps, and a 1 ½” tear to the upper edge of the front flap of the final map (the whole of Africa).
Livio Sanuto (ca. 1520–1576) is generally considered a member of the “Lafreri school” of Italian map-making. Broadly, it refers to maps sold by the dealer Antonio Lafreri (born Antoine Lafrère); they often contain small-scale pattern elements (e.g., the stippling of the water), but otherwise are disparate in style. They are, essentially the map-production of Italy in the Mannerist period — the last flowering of the cartographic Renaissance. Lafreri-school map-makers nearly always chose particular regions rather than mapping the whole world, such that they did not compete with one another. Sanuto with his brother Giulio sought to produce the first comprehensive atlas, but were hindered by Livio’s death in 1576, by which point he had made only the 12 maps in the present volume. Giulio shepherded the volume through the press of Damian Zenaro (Gennaro in Italian) in 1588, becoming the first printed atlas of Africa.
Sanuto cites Ptolemy (Tolomeo) among other sources for the work, and indeed the projection is somewhere between Ptolemaic (with the world conceived as two (blunted) cones stacked face-to-face at the Equator) and Mercator. Ptolemy lived in Alexandria, and so his sources for (north) African geography were very good for the ad IIc. The Portuguese were the major coastal explorers of Africa; in 1498 the Portuguese confirmed the sea route to India from Europe. Through the XVIc, Africa was largely the province of Portuguese and Spanish explorers, though Francis Drake reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1581. The Sanuto atlas, then, acted as a blueprint of sorts for advancing European interests on the Continent, though as the maps — eleven regional, one overall — show, knowledge of the African interior south of the Sahara was still some three centuries away.
The atlas is quite rare on the market, having come to auction three times (including this copy) this century and otherwise a dozen times since 1884. Only 20 examples in institutional collections are recorded on OCLC. R.A. Skelton in his bibliographical note to the 1965 facsimile of the work calls it “a methodical and precisely documented description of the geography of Africa.”
From the collection of Esmond Bradley Martin (1941–2018; his sale, Doyle 7 November 2023, lot 198). Martin was one of the great conservationists, focusing specifically on the elephant and rhinoceros. Born to a patrician family in New York, he settled in Nairobi and became the leading activist in the fight against poaching and the trade in ivory and rhinoceros horn. Like his brother Henry Bradley Martin, Esmond was a major book-collector, albeit with a focus on Africa.
Adams S-378; Alden-Landis 588/71; Sabin 76897.
[1] The pattern of worming indicates that it occurred before the flaps of the maps were folded.
Item #JLR0549
Price: $78,000