BRASIL NUOVA TABULA
£350
Rare & Naive Map of Brazil..First edition plate.
This is one of the earliest obtainable maps of Brazil. The map is oriented to the west and notes some coastal place names, a few scattered rivers, mountains, forests, and a large erupting volcano. While very little interior detail is given, the phrase Gli indi natij di questi paesi mangiano carne humana is engraved in the center of the map. This phrase translates to 'The Indians native to these countries eat human meat.' Later editions of this map replace this phrase with a cannibalistic scene.
Uncoloured as issued.
Very good condition
code : M4009
Cartographer : RUSCELLI Girolamo
Date : 1561 Venice
Size : 19*26. cms
availability : Available
Price : £350
Girolamo Ruscelli (1500s-1566) was an Italian polymath, humanist, editor, and cartographer active in Venice during the early 16th century. Ruscelli is best known for his important revision of Ptolemy's Geographia, which was published post humously in 1574. It is generally assumed that Alexius Pedemontanus was a pseudonym of Girolamo Ruscelli. In a later work, Ruscelli reported that the Secreti contained the experimental results of an ‘Academy of Secrets’ that he and a group of humanists and noblemen founded in Naples in the 1540s. Ruscelli’s academy is the first recorded example of an experimental scientific society. The academy was later imitated by Giambattista Della Porta, who founded an ‘Accademia dei Secreti’ in Naples in the 1560s.
