L'arte del navegar, in laqual si contengono le regole, dechiarationi, secreti, & auisi, alla bona nauegation necessarij. Composta per l’Eccel. Dottor M. Pietro da Medina, & tradotta de lingua Spagnola in volgar Italiano, à beneficio, & utilità de ciascadun Nauigante
Venice: Aurelio Pincio for Gioanbattista Pedrezano, 1554. First Italian edition, first issue.
Octavo (8 3/16” x 5 7/8”, 208mm x 150mm): a8 b4 (b4 blank) A-Q8 R10(–R10 blank) [$4 signed; –a1]. 149 leaves, foll. [12] (title, blank, 4pp. dedication to King Philip of Spain, 4pp. dedication to Stephano Thiepo, 5pp. proem, blank, 6pp. contents, 2pp. blank), I II-CXXXVII. [=pp. xxiv, 274] With many woodcut illustrations integral to the text, including a full-page map (fol. XXXIIIr) and inhabited initials.
Bound in XIX black straight-grained morocco by Stern & Dess (signed at the lower rear turn-in) with a triple gilt fillet border and corner rosettes gilt. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to the second panel, author gilt to third, date to tail. Nautical ornaments (compass rose, sailing ship, ship’s wheel, anchor) gilt to the panels. Double gilt fillets to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelle. All edges of the text-block gilt.
Boards a little bowed, with very faint rubbing to the extremities. Washed (likely in the XIXc) but still nicely toned. Occasional mild tanning and soiling. Ink marginalia (“all’ herbe/ ai fiori/ ai Relici…”) in an old Italian hand to the title-page, with some loss at the fore-edge. Wormtrack at the lower margin of quire H, not affecting the text. Well-margined, with several preserved deckles. Bookplate of Ted Benttinen laid in at the front paste-down. Presented in a black clam-shell box.
Pedro de Medina (1493–1567) was a Spanish cartographer in the period of Spain’s growing naval dominance. His Arte de navegar (Valladolid 1545; this first Italian edition is titled in Venetian rather than Italian, which would be L’arte di navigare; this distinction is preserved in the manuscript titles, which on the upper edge is Venetian, on the lower Italian) 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 (XXXIIIr) extends further north, west and south than does the map of 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.
From the collection of Theodore “Ted” Benttinen (1948-2023), an MIT-educated oceanographer and explorer who went to both poles on research missions. Benttinen amassed a formidable collection of books of exploration, particularly strong in Pacific voyages as well as in polar accounts. The present volume was lot 189 in the Sotheby's New York 9 December 2024 sale of his library.
Burden 21; Harvard Italian 300; Sabin 47346.
Item #JLR0708
Price: $15,000