Lot 108: ITALY - GASTALDI, GIACOMO (c.1500-1566).

Il Disegno Della Geografia Moderna De Tutta La Provincia De La Italia. Venice:Giacomo Gastaldi, 1561, Engraved map of Italy by Fabio Licinio, 541 x 770m, on two joined sheets (Minor discolouration to lower left of map).

A HIGHLY IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL MAP, the apex of the great cartographer's vision of Italy, and certainly one of his great masterpieces. The peninsula is shown with great detail and accuracy, a broad panopticon sweeping diagonally across the map from the alpine lakes in the north to the Strait of Messina in the south, with seas adorned with elegantly engraved ships. It is based on Gastaldi's earlier Italian regional maps supplemented with the best contemporary sources. While it bears a resemblance to the southwestern plate of his monumental four sheet map of southeastern Europe, the image had been revised and enlarged. Although Gastaldi, originally of Piedmont, had been working as a cartographer in Venice since 1539, this is his first large-scale map of Italy. One of the most influential maps of the sixteenth-century, Roberto Almagià referred to it as "truly one of the milestones in the evolution of the cartography of Italy" (see Karrow, p.236). It immediately established itself as the source map of the region until the publication of Giovanni Antonio Magini's Nova descrittione d'Italia in 1620. Some of the most famous derivatives included those by Paolo Forlani, Ortelius and Gerard De Jode. Karrow no, Tooley:1939 no.328, Woodward:1996 watermark 239

No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium.