Geographia
THE CAPILUPI COPY
Rome: Petrus de Turre, 4 November 1490. Second Rome edition.
Folio in 8s (16 ½” x 11 1/8”, 420mm x 284mm): a10 (a1 blank) b-g8 h4 (h4 blank) A8 (A1 blank) B-C8 D-E6 (E6 blank) 2a-b8 c6 (c6 blank) [$half signed; –a1, A1, 2a1; D2 signed as “D3”]. 120 leaves (plus 54 leaves of maps printed on one side). With 27 engraved maps each over two pages (but not double-page; bound as χ-6χ8 7χ6)[1].
Bound in modern stabbed vellum with yapp edges and ties. On the spine, five raised bands. Author in ink manuscript to the second panel, title ink manuscript to the third, imprint ink manuscript to the fifth. Author and title in ink manuscript to the lower edge of the text block between fleurons (“Geographia. Ptolomei.”).
Some of the ties and stab-cords worn or snapped. Splits along the yapp edges, with some splaying from the (low) humidity. Conserved in June 2025 (full report available). Doubtless washed, but nicely repatinated. Fraying to the edges of quire a. Some grey staining to the mapsheets, and the odd spot of soiling or foxing. Collated complete with all five possible blanks. A partially-erased ink ownership signature to the title-page (i.e., a2r): “Capiluporu(m) et amicor(um) liber”. Ink marginalia (plus some side-lining and marking passim) to e6r (“Hodie Arcani(?); Volg: ossaro”), the tenth map of Europe (“Tenavo”?) and A2r (“Britannia vocabatur etiá vide Plin: lib 4 cap. 16.”).
Claudius Ptolemaeus (usually anglicized to Ptolemy) was a second-century philosopher living in Roman Alexandria in Egypt. In the Greek tradition (Ptolemy wrote in Greek, which was the administrative language of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean), philosophy — the love of wisdom — bridged what we now divide into the humanities and the sciences; he was a mathematician, natural scientist and geographer-astronomer. No manuscripts of the Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις (Geographical Guidance) survive from before the XIIIc, but some XIIIc examples survive with maps that bear some relation to those Ptolemy himself drew. Thus, with the exception of some excavated carved maps, Ptolemy is the source for ancient cartography as well as its culmination.
The editio princeps of the Geographia was published in 1475 without maps; the text of the work, lists of coordinates connected with explanations of the various regions, could be used to construct maps, doubtless overlaid with the data of explorations. The 1477 Bologna edition was the first to include printed maps, though their quality was poor. The 1478 Rome edition was the first to incorporate fine maps on the Ptolemaic model, engraved by Konrad Sweynheym (d. 1477), who began working with no less than Gutenberg in the 1460’s. Sweynheym’s maps, reprinted here, are easily the greatest achievement of cartographic engraving until Mercator’s 1578 edition of Ptolemy.
The translation into Latin — far more widely read than Greek — was carried out by Jacobus Angelus (Jacopo d’Angelo, d. 1411), a pioneer of the study of Ancient Greek in the early Renaissance, in 1406. Nicolaus Germanus (also Donnus Nicolaus, d. ca. 1490) was born in Germany (whence his name) and by the 1460’s was in Florence and then in Rome; he was employed in the 1470’s in the manufacture of a world map and a pair of globes for the Holy See. Nicolaus contributed the first appendix to the Geographia (quires A-E): the “registrum alphabeticum” (an alphabetical index of places with coordinates for locating them on the maps). What follows (quires 2a-c) is the “Tractatum de tribus orbis partibus. Ac variis naturis nominum: portentorum Transformatorum. Nec non de diversis fluminibus aquarum. Insularum & montium,” also called “de locis ac mirabilibus mundi,” which adds some narrative to the essentially expository Geographia — highlighting certain places and wonders of the world. Long attributed to Nicolaus, it is perhaps the work of Johann Reger (b. 1454).
Thus the Geographia, supplanting Solinus and Mela’s Roman treatises that were preserved through the Middle Ages, was the best available account of the world, extending from the Canary Islands in the West to China in the East (though not quite to the Pacific), Scandinavia in the North and beyond the Horn of Africa to the South. It was crucial to explorers; Columbus thought he had found the East Indies because of Ptolemy’s calculations and assertions about longitude. Long after the Ptolemaic skeleton began to strain under the flesh of discovery, it persisted as the basis for the understanding of the physical disposition of the world.
It is therefore unsurprising that the present volume should have been in the hands of the Capilupi family of Mantua, closely allied with the more famous house of Gonzaga. Their humanistic aspirations are clear from the ownership inscription, which can be rendered “a book of the Capilupi and of their friends.” The “et amicorum” (and of his (or their) friends) designation, made famous by Jean Grolier — was used by humanists to indicate the circulation of text within their circles, or even communal reading. Palazzo Capilupi in Rome bears above its entryway the legend “CAPILVPORVM DOMVS AMICORVM HOSPITIVM,” suggesting that the humanist spirit was particularly strong in the family. Several members are candidates for the acquisition of the volume, though the absence of a Christian name again points to the sharing of knowledge. To wit: Benedetto Capilupi (1461–1518) was secretary to Isabella d’Este; Lelio Capilupi (1497–1560) was a Vergilian poet; Camillo II Capilupi (1531–1603) was the chamberlain to three popes. The hand points to the latter half of the XVIc.
BSB-Ink P-861; GW M36372; ISTC ip01086000; Nordenskiöld 7; Sabin 66474; Shirley 4.
[1] BSB-Ink characterizes these as [i–o8 p6], but as a terminal sequence should be designated as above.
Item #JLR0835
Price: $290,000