Relatione del Novo Scoprimento del Gran Cataio, overo Regno di Tibet. Fattodal P. Antonio di Andrade Portoghese della Compagnia di Gesù l’anno 1624

Rome : F. Corbelletti, 1627. Duodecimo, early vellum, lettered in manuscript on spine, ex libris label of H. P. Kraus to from pastedown, pp. 40, a fine copy.

Antonio de Andrade, Portuguese member of the Society of Jesus, was dispatched to India in 1600 where he would spend over twenty years in sevice, including as head of the Jesuit Mission in Agra. In 1624, along with brother Manuel Marques, he disguised himself as a Hindu and joined a group of pilgrims to travel to Srinigar and cross the Mana Pass into Tibet. Andrade and Marques were the first Europeans to set foot in the Himalayan kingdom. Andrade returned to Tibet in 1625 to establish a Jesuit mission at Tsaparang in the kingdom of Guge. He succeeded in building a church but the mission was short-lived: a Ladakhi invasion toppled the Jesuit-friendly king and by 1640 the mission was abandoned.

The first edition of Nvevo descvbrimiento was published in Portuguese in Lisbon in 1626; later the same year an edition in Spanish also appeared in Lisbon. The edition we offer here is the first Italian edition of Andrade’s relation of his first journey into Tibet. Andrade’s letter would go on to be translated into many European languages and become a lasting and influential work in the field of Tibetan studies.

Provenance : H.P. Kraus, New York, acquired circa 1980s.

The last copy recorded at auction was Sotheby’s 1992 (GBP 2,000).