Home / Browse / Military & Naval / L'Arte del navegar, in laqual si contengonolere gole, dechiarationi, secreti, & avisi,
MEDINA, Pedro de.
L'Arte del navegar, in laqual si contengonolere gole, dechiarationi, secreti, & avisi,
alla bona navegation necessarii … tradotta de lingua Spagnola in volgar Italiano, à beneficio, & utilità de ciascadun Navigante.
Publisher: Aurelio Pincio for Giovanni Battista Padrezano, 1554
Stock code: 52023
Price: £15,000 Currency Conversion
First edition in Italian, first issue with title dated 1554. First published in Valladolid in 1545, Medina's Arte del navegar was the first practical treatise on navigation and the first to provide reliable instruction on the navigation of American waters. The information in the Arte del navegar was based on the first-hand accounts of pilots using the Indies trade route and was thus the most up-to-date and accurate obtainable. The text remained the standard navigation guide for this route well into the seventeenth century, as witnessed by its many editions. The woodcuts in this edition are reduced copies of the cuts of the first edition (the very small world map at the head of books 3 and 8 differs however from the original cut, which shows the New World as an island: here only the easternmost coastlines are visible). The full-page map shows the Spanish trade routes and includes Florida, the mouth of the Mississippi and the area around the gulf of St. Lawrence.
Small quarto (215 x 149 mm). Contemporary limp vellum, manuscript title on spine, lacking ties, remnants of paper label at bottom of spine. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box. Large woodcut on title, repeated on C1r, full-page woodcut map of Europe, Africa and the New World on E1r, numerous woodcut illustrations, including a large woodcut at the beginning of each of the 8 books, historiated initials, with the blanks b4 and R10. Vellum soiled and rubbed, with chip at lower outer corner of front cover, sliver of paper cut away at head of title to excise an inscription not affecting text, some mainly marginal soiling, a few leaves with mainly marginal light waterstaining, stronger on I7v and I8r; notwithstanding these generally minor flaws, an excellent copy.
