THE CULMINATION OF THE "BOOK OF ISLANDS"

PORCACCHI DA CASTIGLIONE, THOMASO.

L'isole piu famose del Mondo. Arettino e intagliate da Girolamo Porro Padovano. Con l'aggiunta di molte isole all' ill.re s. conte Georgio Trivltio.

Venetia [Venice], apresso gli heredi di S. Gagliani, 1590. [Colophon: In Vintia, appresso Giorgio Angelieri, a instantia de gli heredi di Simon Gagliani de Karera, 1590].

Small folio. 18th century (ab. 1780-90) half vellum with gilt leather title label to spine. Corners a bit bumped and title label a bit worn, otherwise nice and tight. A very nice copy, on thick, crisp paper. A few quires browned and brownspotted, and some occasional lighter browning. Four leaves with a marginal worm-tract, far from affecting text. Beautiful engraved title-page, consisting of a wide architectural border illustrated with large figures, putti, globes, and various symbols. Beautiful large woodcut initials and head- and tail-pieces. 47 half-page engraved maps in the text (by Porro, of islands and continents), excellent, crisp impressions. Large woodcut device to colophon. (12) ff., 201, (1) pp.

Third, much enlarged edition (with 47 maps as opposed to the mere 30 of the first edition) of Porcacchi's great book of islands, arguably the most famous of all "isolario"s, with the 47 finely engraved maps by the famous map-maker Girolamo Porro, which also include maps of non-insular places, e.g North America and Mexico City, the famous city plan of Venice and that of Constantinople.

Porcachhi's great "isolario" represents the culmination of the "book of islands"-genre, both in regards to artistic quality and the information provided. It furthermore constitutes a main work in the history of the published knowledge of farther parts of the world and an important link in the development from what we call the "book of islands" to the modern atlas. As such it is of great value in several respects, both historically, culturally, and cartographically.

"The "book of islands," or isolario, a novel form of cartographic book combining maps and narrative-historical chorography, was invented and initially developed in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. According to R.A. Skelton, "like the portolano, or pilot-book, to which it was related, it had its origins in the Mediterranean, as an illustrated guide for travelers in the Aegean Archipelago and the Levant.". The first "book of islands" was authored by a Florentine ecclesiastic [around 1420] named Cristoforo Buondelmonti [...].

The "book of islands" was eventually superseded as a cartographic genre, as was the "Geographia" of Ptolemy, by the modern atlas; it persists even after Abraham Ortelius's 1570 "Theatrum orbis terrarium", but at the margins rather than at the center of the history of cartography. While the "isolario", Ptolemy's "Geographia", and the "modern" atlas coexist for some time, the gradual eclipse of the "book of islands" at one level reflected a progressive decentering of the Mediterranean that occurred within the broader context of early modern history, following the Atlantic discoveries. But well before that happened, in conjunction with the culminating moment of the discoveries and exploration period and at the height of the high Renaissance, the second printed "book of islands" appeared in 1528 in Venice published by Zoppino: the "Libro di Benedetto Bordone nel qual si ragiona de tutte l'isole del mondo" [Book of Benedetto Bordone in which are discussed all the islands of the world]. As the title suggests, this "isolario" provided even broader coverage than the Martellus recensions of Buondelmonti and gave special prominence to the islands of the New World [...].

Da li Sonetti's translation of Buondelmonti's "book of islands" into a cycle of sonnets in Venice represented in its way an expression of the same desire to reconcile contemporary geographical knowledge to Italian vernacular traditions of geographical poetry that Berlinghieri's poetic Ptolemy expressed. But while the tradition of Tuscan geographical poetry would not survive the Quattrocento, the prose book of islands did, thanks especially to the Venetian print culture that was responsible for da li Sonetti and that produced Bordone's High Renaissance print "isolario". As mentioned, the print genre "book of islands" would endure in fact, albeit at the margins of modern cartography and literature, in multiple editions of Bordone, which were followed by the no less successful Tommaso Porcacchi's "L'isole più famose del mondo" (1572; with copper-plate engravings), a line that continued through the seventeenth century [...] But just as with other major literary fields of endeavor including the political (Machiavelli), the pastoral (Sannazzaro), the courtly-bureaucratic (Castiglione), and the epic-novellistic (Ariosto), the "isolario" produced its masterpieces in the discoveries and travel writing field
(alongside Columbus, Vespucci, and Verrazzano) during the High Renaissance." (Cachey, "From the Mediterranean to the World: A Note on the Italian "Book of Islands" ("isolario")", pp. 1-10).

Shirley T.POR-1d; Phillips: 50.

Order-nr.: 47728