Books

With 2 richly figured woodcut title borders by Hans Franck, and many woodcut figured initials. 20 unn. leaves, 220 pp., 44 unn. leaves. Folio. 18th-century calf with richly gilt spine, gilt armorial supralibros of Karl Theodor von der Pfalz on both covers (signed B.P. in lowest compartment). Basel, (Andreas Cratander), 1522. Pomponius Mela's famous Latin "Geography" of the earliest surviving Latin work on geography, present here in the epochal edition by the great Swiss humanist Joachim von Watt or Vadianus (1484-1551), first published in a textually shorter edition in Vienna, 1518: 23, 132 ff., see VD 16 M 2310). The present second edition is revised and augmented, and is the first to contain the "Loca aliquot" in which Vadianus once more confirmed his modern scientific point of view by criticizing the obsolete one of Johannes Camertus. Furthermore, this second edition contains the famous letters by Vadian to Rudolph Agricola with the suggestion, first made by Martin Waldseemüller, to name the Mundus Novus after Amerigo Vespucci "America" (Ff5 recto). There are probably very few copies known of this present edition which contain the adaptation of the 1507 Waldseemüller world map modeled in 1520 by Petrus Apian, and printed by him in Vienna for the Solinus edition c. 1520 under the title "Tipus Orbis Universalis" (c. 410 x 290 mm). "Some bibliographers have claimed that it belongs to the book. This, however is a matter of doubt. The text contains no allusion to such a map, and it is probable that the book was issued without it" (Sabin after Harisse). As was the trait at this time as well as being sold separately: There is, however some doubt as to whether the Apianus map, published in Vienna for the Solinus in 1520, was originally issued with this Basel 1522 edition of Mela. The copies of this present book edition from 1522 in Basel and Munich do not have the Apian map bound in. Anyhow, copies of this Apian map in the collections of the University Library Basel and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich are cataloged separately. The current sales value of this map today probably is USD 130,000. This present edition is also interesting for the history of Alpine exploration, containing Vadianus' description of the first ascent of mount Pilatus near Lucerne, accomplished by him in the summer 1518 accompanied by his humanist friends Johannes Xylotectus, Oswaldus Myconius, and Conrad Grebelius (p. 34). The importance of Mela's work, which Petrarca and Boccaccio held in high esteem, which Cabal -the discoverer of Brazil- worked through meticulously, and which has been used as a schoolbook for centuries since early modern times, is also evident to today's readers: Not only Trier, the Taunus mountains, parts of Lake Constance, Scandinavia, etc. are mentioned here for the first time. The architectural title border, signed and dated "1519 HF", is attributed to Hans Furtenbach, a contemporary of Urs Graf with whom he shares stylistic characteristics. It shows the figure of "Hercules Gallicus" beneath the title, the figures of Lucretia on the left and Judith on the right, both standing above Andreas Cratander's Occasio-device. The head of the frame shows, from left to right, the young Occasio again, an old woman as Penitence, and a rich man. The frame of the title to part II shows putti playing and sea monsters, in the two vertical columns of grotesques Cratander's Occasio. This border in the style of Hans Holbein style is most probably by Hans Franck. Both borders were first used by Cratander for his edition of Gellius' "Noctes Atticae" in 1519. Charles Philipp Theodore von der Pfalz (1724-1799), since 1777 Elector of the Palatinate branch of the House of Wittelsbach was a patron of the arts, and the promoter of the first German National Theatre at Mannheim, under the direction of Dalberg and Iffland, and founder of the Mannheim Academy of Sciences in 1763. He was a beautifier of the new capital Mannheim and builder of the Castle of.

De situ orbis is an early geographical work by Pomponius Mela, providing detailed descriptions of the world as known to the Romans in the 1st century AD.