Estate / Collection: The Esmond Bradley Martin Collection

[AFRICA]

SANUTO, LIVIO. Geografia di M. Livio Sanvto distinta in XII libri. Ne' quali, oltra l'esplicatione di molti luoghi di Tolomeo e della Bussola, e dell' Aguglia; si dichiarano le Provincie, Popoli, Regni, Città; Porti, Monti, Fiumi, Laghi, e Costumi dell' Africa. Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1588. First edition of the first printed atlas of Africa. Modern three-quarters morocco, marbled sides, an uncut copy housed in a clamshell case. 17 1/2 x 11 inches (45 x 28 cm); [24] [f.1 recto the engraved title by Giacomo Franco], 146 ff.; twelve double-page engraved folding maps, all mounted on guards. Some worming noted to the gutter margin intermittently throughout (and occasionally to the fore-margin), just touching the text here and there, a few maps very slightly impacted by this, and several of those discreetly restored, also with some mostly marginal restorations of tears here and there), some (generally minor) staining to the upper margin of a couple of signatures, a slight tear to one fold of the final map, but a huge, uncut and apparently unpressed copy.

Sanuto's posthumously published atlas is the first part of a projected series intended to describe the whole world, but was in the event was the only portion published. It was completed between 1561 and 1571, and the note to the reader states that the maps were drawn by Sanuto himself and were engraved by his brother Giulio, a prominent mapmaker who also worked on the 1561 quarto edition of Ptolemy. Of the twelve parts of the text, books III-XII describe the regions of Africa (the first two parts are general treatises on geography). Skelton notes that the work is an admirable summary of sixteenth-century knowledge of the continent. Stevens, Bibliotheca Geographica & Historica, 2461 has an exhaustive, informative and at times eulogic note on this work, which is now quite rare in commerce:

"As it is impossible for the thorough student of mediæval geography to budge an inch without having read the works of Marino Sanuto, so no thorough student of historical geography, especially African and American of the last half of the sixteenth century, can touch bottom in his subject till he has digested this work of Livio Sanuto. To him more perhaps than to any one writer we owe the clearing up of the subject, and the brushing away the rubbish and blunders of the inland German and French geographers of the previous half century, such as Schoner, Apianus, Muenster, Finé and others. Livio was the son of the Senator Francesco Sanuto, of Venice. In youth he visited Germany to study Mathematics. Being of a practical turn, he made many mathematical instruments, according to the precepts of Ptolemy and others, which were preserved in his family. He next applied himself to Cosmography, and collected out of the best authorities materials for a Terrestrial Globe, in which he was assisted by his brother Giulio, who engraved all the plates with his own hand. Observing that Africa was imperfectly described, he set to work and compiled this Book with its 12 large maps drawn by himself and engraved by his brother. He intended to publish descriptions of the other parts of the World, but died about 1585 [i.e., 1576], at the age of fifty-six. The present work is therefore posthumous and was edited by Damiano Zenaro, who dedicated it to Benedetto Zorzi, son of the Signor Aluise. The three excellent Tables of Contents were made by Giovan Carlo Saraceni. The beautiful engraved title page is by Giacomo Franco."

"Books I & II treat of Cosmography in general, especially of Latitudes and Longitudes, and how to determine them. He speaks frequently of the Pilato maggiore Sebastian Cabot, and says that having learned from Oviedo and others that he had explained to Henry VII the variation of the needle, Sanuto became intensely anxious to know Cabot's point of no variation... At folio 16, he cites Barros, and says it is evident from what he states that Asia cannot be joined to the New World. He goes on to quote Zeno, who makes Engronelandia bounded by the Ocean. He then blames Oronce Finé...and Vopellio for joining Mexico and Cathay, and marvels how they could make such a blunder when Cortes, Gomara, and others had stated that the Mexicans fled at the sight of a horse, an animal which abounds in Asia. In a similar way, in many instances, he sets matters right. The rest of the volume is a kind of Gazetteer of Africa, arranged in departments."

"In Book III he begins his geographical description of Africa, by giving first its boundaries and divisions, and then commencing with the Islands on the North-West, he describes the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, &c. Book IV commences with Fez; V with Telensin; VI with Numidia; VII with Gialofo (between the Rivers Canaga and Gambia); VIII contains an account of all the Rivers of Africa (he makes the Nile to rise from two great Lakes in the Kingdom of Prester John), and he then gives the names of all the peoples in Western Africa; IX Abyssinia and Egypt; X Ethiopia; XI Bugia, Barnagaes and Prester John, and XII Lower Ethiopia."

Adams S378. Mendelssohn (1957) II, page 269. Murphy 2212. Sabin 76897. Stevens, Bibliotheca Geographica & Historica, 2461. See also R. A. Skelton's Bibliographical Note to the 1965 facsimile edition of Livio Sanuto's Geograpfia dell' Africa.