Cosmographia

Petri Apiani, per Gemmam Frisium apud Lovanienses Medicum & Mathematicu[m] insignem, … … Antwerp: Aegidius Coppenius Diesthensis for Gregorius Bontius, 1545. Small quarto (230 x 160 mm), contemporary limp vellum envelope binding with (possibly later) calf ties; front and rear endpapers with extensive relevant early notes in Dutch on the astrolabe and calculations of the sun’s path and dimensions; [2], 66, [1] leaves; text in Latin; woodcut globe on title-page (same as the 1529 edition, re-dated 1545), printer’s device to verso of final leaf; folding world map Charta Cosmographica signed ‘K’ and with text in Latin and Dutch (thus from a later edition and the second impression of the woodblock – see Shirley 96), 50 in-text woodcut illustrations (including two further terrestrial globes, a ‘quadratum nauticum Gemmae Frisii’, ‘de circulis sphaerae’, ‘Tabula arithmeticalis Climatum’; ‘Figurae Eclipticae’, geometrical figures, lunar eclipses), 5 printed tables, 4 woodcuts with volvelles; the ‘Manubrium’ moveable for the woodcut ‘instrumentum siderale’ (verso folio 50) is present (it is lacking in most copies); one of the moveables with a later (?) lead plumb line; last few leaves with some pale water-staining; exposed at the rear is a strip of binder’s waste in the form of a medieval ms. on vellum (from the Book of Isaiah); a very good example, housed in a clamshell box of gilt-lettered brown cloth.

Rare early edition, complete with all moveables and with extensive early marginalia, of one of the most important and best known Renaissance works on cosmography. 

Apianus, also known as Peter Bienewitz (1495-1522), was a pioneer in astronomical and geographical instrumentation. He studied mathematics and astronomy at Leipzig and Vienna. Cosmographia (1524), his first major work, is a treatise that covers – among numerous other subjects – triangulation, climate zones, latitude and longitude, the principles of surveying, and the geography of the continents. Many of its ideas are based on those of Ptolemy. The world map is one of the earliest maps to indicate America by that name, and there is also a section devoted to the physical geography of America.

This edition was corrected and augmented by the Dutch geographer, cartographer and mathematician Gemma Frisius (1508-1555). It contains his important work ‘Libellus de locorum …’ (folios 51-57), which was the first to propose and illustrate the use of triangulation to achieve accuracy in mapping. (It originally appeared in the 1533 edition of Apianus).

Sabin 1748; Church 84; Alden, European Americana 545/3; Adams A 1279; Van Ortroy (Apianus) 36; Van Ortroy (Gemma Frisius) 15; cf. Shirley 82 & 96.

We can only locate a single example of this edition recorded in Australian libraries (University of Melbourne, acquired from us in 2018).