Cosmographia Petri Apiani, per Gemmam Frisium … iam demum ab omnibus vindicata mendis, ac nonnullis quoque locis aucta. Additis eiusdem argumenti libellis ipsius Gemmae Frisii.
Antwerp: [colophon:] Excusum Antuerpiae opera Aegidius (Gillis) Coppens van Diest for Gregorius Bontius, 1545. An exceptional and entirely unsophisticated working copy of one of the most influential scientific books of the sixteenth century—the compact manual that taught Europe how to measure and describe the world. In its original limp-vellum binding, strengthened inside with a strip of medieval manuscript on parchment, it preserves not only the four intricate volvelle plates but also the rare separate pointer (manubrium) for the instrumentum siderale, together with an old plumb line and the stub of a thread-indicator showing genuine early use. The large heart-shaped world map, here in the Latin–Dutch “K” state used on Antwerp printings of the 1550s, unfolds clean and complete, and the book carries on its endpapers an extraordinary series of contemporary Dutch working notes explaining how to take the sun’s noon altitude with an astrolabe or quadrant and convert degrees into miles. Binding, map, and annotations all point unmistakably to active Low Countries use, making this copy a rare survival in which the Cosmographia can still be read as its author and editor intended: a tool for doing mathematics and for mapping the newly enlarged world. Provenance: In contemporary limp vellum, characteristically Netherlandish, with wide yapped fore-edges and traces of the original ties; the spine is lined internally with a long strip of medieval vellum manuscript from the Vulgate Isaiah, used by the binder as structural reinforcement. The volume shows clear evidence of sixteenth-century Low Countries ownership and use. On the rear endpaper a long Dutch manuscript note explains how to determine the sun’s meridian altitude “opten rechten middag” with an astrolabe or quadrant, how to correct for declination north or south of the equinoctial, and how to translate degrees of latitude into miles; a shorter related note appears on the front blank. Within the text the mechanical diagrams have been handled and occasionally repaired in period: at D1v a small plumb line with a lead bob remains attached to the volvelle, and at C3v the stub of a thread pointer is still visible. Most remarkably, the separate paper pointer (manubrium) for the instrumentum siderale on O4v survives intact, pasted at the margin—almost never found in other copies. The overall aspect is that of a practitioner’s working book, owned by someone familiar with the language of the workshop rather than the lecture hall—perhaps a surveyor, navigator, or instrument-maker active in the southern Netherlands around the middle of the sixteenth century. The Dutch vernacular notes on method and conversion rules bring the book vividly back to life as a tool of daily measurement, linking it directly to the technical culture that Gemma Frisius and his circle at Louvain had helped to create. Apianus first published his Cosmographicus liber in 1524, giving the lay mathematician a portable grammar of the world: how to lay out the terrestrial grid; what it means to reckon latitude and longitude; climates and winds; simple surveying; and a brief tour of the continents. In the 1530s and 1540s, Gemma Frisius—physician, instrument-maker and mathematician at Louvain—re-engineered the book. He corrected Apianus’s text, added whole chapters of his own, and overlaid the treatise with mechanised diagrams (the volvelles) and instrumental instruction (notably on the astronomical ring). In the Libellus de locorum describendorum ratione, included here after Apian’s two parts and appendix, Gemma proposes and illustrates the principle of triangulation: measure a baseline, then determine unknown distances and positions by angles—a deceptively simple procedure that became the structural method of modern topographic survey. Antwerp redactions of the 1540s—this 1545 Bonte among them—are how that method was disseminated on a continental scale: practical, affordable, and bristling with apparatus one could use at the bench or in the field. The 1545 Antwerp printing belongs to the same vigorous intellectual and commercial milieu that produced Mercator’s globes and, a generation later, Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum. Gregor Bonte’s shop “sub scuto Basiliensi” and the press of Gillis Coppens van Diest stood at the centre of that culture, linking mathematicians, engravers, instrument-makers, and booksellers. The Cosmographia was conceived for this world of artisans and navigators, and its success rested on how it translated learned geometry into a set of tangible operations. Its woodcuts show terrestrial and celestial globes, quadrants, rings, and sundials; its volvelles allow the user to calculate time, latitude, and declination; its folding map translates these exercises into a vision of the newly charted earth. What Apianus had achieved in the sumptuous Astronomicum Caesareum of 1540 as a courtly demonstration piece, he and Gemma here reduced to portable form—a quarto handbook that placed the same principles within reach of every mathematically minded craftsman or traveller. It is this practical, democratic quality that explains the book’s immense and enduring influence throughout Europe. The evolution of the Cosmographia also reminds us that decisive scientific advances often emerge through gradual refinement rather than a single moment of invention. Gemma’s chapter on triangulation had first appeared in the early 1530s, but it was through the successive Antwerp editions—culminating in Bonte’s of 1545—that his method was perfected, illustrated, and widely disseminated. The combination of Apianus’s lucid geometry, Gemma’s new surveying techniques, and the printer’s ingenious mechanical diagrams gave the work its final, authoritative form. By uniting text, instrument, and map within a single portable volume, the Antwerp Cosmographia transformed what had been a scholarly exercise into a practical discipline, and in doing so provided the foundation for the accurate mapping of Europe over the following centuries. The large folding world map inserted after folio 31 is the celebrated cordiform Charta cosmographica, cum ventorum propria natura et operatione, ringed by expressive wind-heads and populated with a world whose outlines are recognisably new. “AMERICA” stretches boldly across the southern continent; the north is a narrow land labelled “Baccalearum”, a cartographic nod to the cod-rich banks whose fisheries first pulled Europeans toward those coasts. The Latin–Dutch “K” state carried by this copy is the second impression of the woodblock and the state most widely used in Antwerp through the 1550s and early 1560s. It is also entirely at home in a Low Countries copy with Dutch working notes. Church singled out this state in describing Antwerp printings; Shirley traced its circulation across the 1553, 1561 and 1564 issues. If the 1544 introduction of the map gave Apianus’s book a global face, the 1545 Antwerp Latin consolidated that face in a way the market plainly wanted: a world picture, practical instruments on the page, and a method for drawing one’s own maps. The title-page globe—the familiar lion-mask stand—announces the cosmographer’s ambition to reconcile heaven and earth in a single, useable image. Behind the emblem, however, is a rigorously worked text architecture. Apianus’s first part sets out the elementary geography and the geometry of the sphere; the second turns to maps and measurement; an appendix digests auxiliary material. Gemma then adds his three treatises: the triangulation Libellus; the Usus annuli astronomici; and a latitude table. In practice, Antwerp readers encountered these sections as an integrated course reinforced by the figures: they learned to reckon noon altitude and zenith distance; to relate declination “from the equinoctial, north or south” to the observed altitude; to turn degrees into miles; to push a plumb-line through a slot and let gravity do its teaching. The Dutch endpaper in this copy is exactly such a reader’s digest: the same concepts, recast in vernacular for daily use. It is a perfect index of what this book did in the world. Apianus—Peter Bienewitz of Leisnig—studied at Leipzig and Vienna; his instrumentalist’s temperament is everywhere in the Cosmographia. He is among the sixteenth century’s great popularisers, happy to make a diagram work even if it means simplifying a scholastic nicety. Gemma Frisius, the Louvain physician-mathematician who taught or influenced Mercator, shared the same gift and added a craftsman’s eye. His chapter on the astronomical ring belongs to the same world as the globe shops of Antwerp and the workbenches where surveyors cut and sighted staves. In this 1545 edition their collaboration becomes portable, iterative, and commercial—a recipe for influence. Later cosmographies would be bigger, glossier, more encyclopaedic; none would better teach the essential conversion of angles into space. The book retains a striking internal consistency. The binding, the state of the map, the vernacular notes, and the preserved mechanical parts all point to the same milieu of mid-sixteenth-century practical mathematics in the Low Countries. The limp-vellum cover, with its recycled manuscript spine-lining, represents the economical yet durable bindings typical of Antwerp and Louvain workshops. The volvelle plates, still functional, show small repairs and reinforcements that correspond to genuine use rather than later restoration, while the map and text bear the light wear expected in a technical manual that was repeatedly opened and consulted. The early Dutch annotations confirm that the volume was employed precisely as Apianus and Gemma intended—as a working compendium of cosmographical procedure—and together these features allow the copy to be placed convincingly within the lived world of sixteenth-century mathematical practice. Taken as a whole, the volume provides an unusually complete and coherent witness to the working life of a sixteenth-century scientific book. In its structure, its mechanical design, and its evidence of early use, it preserves the full pedagogical programme that Apianus and Gemma conceived: a self-contained introduction to cosmography in which text, diagram, and instrument combine to express the practical mathematics of the Renaissance world. Van Ortroy, Bibliographie de Pierre Apian (no. 36) and in Van Ortroy, Reiner Gemma Frisius (no. 15), where it is identified as the printing by Aegidius Coppens van Diest for Gregor Bonte, containing Apianus’s text followed by Gemma’s Libellus de locorum describendorum ratione, Usus annuli astronomici, and Tabella latitudinis, with the Charta cosmographica inserted as a separate quire. Adams A-1279; Bibliotheca Belgica A33; Alden / Landis 545/3; Sabin 1748; Church 84 (noting the second impression of the map with “America” and “Baccalearum”); STC Dutch 1470–1600, no. 12; Houzeau & Lancaster 2392; Lalande 65; and Zinner, Astronomische Instrumente. For the map, see Shirley 96, who traces the successive “I” and “K” states of the cordiform world map, and for the general context of Apianus and Gemma’s work, DSB I, pp. 178–179 (Apianus) and V, pp. 361–364 (Gemma Frisius). 4to (230 × 160 mm). [ii], 66, [1] leaves. Collation: A–H⁴; folding cordiform world map (signed “K”) inserted between G4 and H1; K–S⁴. Title with large woodcut terrestrial globe (the 1529 block re‑dated 1545); printer’s device on S4v. About fifty woodcuts in the text (including instruments, two further terrestrial globes, the quadratum nauticum, diagrams of the celestial circles, climate table, ecliptic figures, etc.); five printed tables; four plates with volvelles (C2v, C3v, D1v, H2r), plus the separate pointer (“manubrium”) for the woodcut instrumentum siderale on O4v—present here, a feature frequently lacking. Contemporary limp vellum envelope binding with calf ties; the spine reinforced inside with a strip of medieval manuscript on vellum from Isaiah (a handsome example of Netherlandish binder’s maculatuur). Early Dutch manuscript notes on the front and (especially) rear endpapers, including a practical exposition on taking the sun’s noon altitude with astrolabe or quadrant and converting degrees to miles; at D1v the volvelle carries an old working plumb-line with a small lead bob; C3v retains the stub of the original thread-pointer. Some faint water‑staining in the last few leaves, bookblock loose in its covers; preserved in cloth box. A well‑used but unusually complete working copy of a landmark in Renaissance cosmography.
Item #6474
Price: $18,000.00
