Antique Maps Leen Helmink Antique Atlas of America by José de Acosta Click here or on the image for a high resolution photo or scan. AUTHOR José de Acosta TITLE America, oder wie mans zu Teutsch nennet, die Neuwe Welt, oder West India. PUBLISHER Cornelius Sutor PLACE ISSUED Oberursel FIRST EDITION 1605 THIS EDITION 1605 SIZE Folio (10 5/8 x 6 7/8 in.; 271 x 175 mm) AREA SHOWN Americas, Pacific TOTAL MAPS 20 TECHNIQUE Copper engravings BINDING Contemporary blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, with brassclasps TEXT German text COLOURING Uncolored CONDITION This antique atlas is in pristine condition DESCRIPTION EXCEPTIONALLY RARE AMERICANA: no copy is recorded in American Book Prices Current for nearly forty years. Perfect condition. A pristine collector's example of this important collector's item. Gothic types, title-page with woodcut printer's device, 20 fine full-sheet engraved maps (text on versos), P2v with two small marginal woodcut diagrams, decorative woodcut initials and headpieces, with blank Xxx2. Contemporary pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, covers blind-panelled with apostle portraits, 2 brass clasps catching on front cover, plain endpapers and edges. A near-flawless copy of the extremely rare first complete German edition of Acosta's classic study of the new world. First published in 1590 in Seville as Historia natural y moral de las Indias, Acosta's work has long been recognized as the first intellectually rigorous survey of America. The text covers geography, metallurgy, natural history, and the laws, customs and history of the Inca and Aztec peoples, all based on Acosta's personal observation during nearly two decades in Peru and Mexico. Acosta "provided great detail in his descriptions of sailing directions, mineral wealth, trading commodities, Indian history, etc. Consequently his work operated more strongly than any other in opening the eyes of the rest of Europe to the great wealth that Spain was drawing from America" (Thomas Streeter on the 1604 English translation; his sale 132). The Jesuit missionary's treatise also includes significant biographical details about Cortes and Pizarro. Acosta's text is here augmented by Johannes Matalius Metellus's re-engravings of the eighteen New World maps from Wytfliet's Descriptionis Ptolemaicae augmentum, including some of the most sought-after maps of North America. These were first published in Cologne in 1598 (and reprinted in 1600) in Geographische und historische Beschreibung der überauss grossen Landschafft America, an unattributed translation of Acosta's De natura Novi Orbis (Salamanca, 1588); Burden notes that "all issues [of Metellus's maps] are extremely rare." The two maps not taken from Wytfliet are the world after Lambert Andreas' and the Pacific Ocean, which is "derived from the Abraham Ortelius Maris Pacifici of 1589 and is only the second printed map devoted to the Pacific" (Burden). The Metellus-Wytfliet maps are undoubtedly an integral part of this 1605 edition. Some doubt on this point was introduced because the JCB copy lacks the maps, and Eames, when cataloguing a New York Public copy, suggested that because of their absence in the Brown copy, the maps in the NYPL copy had been supplied from the 1598 Geographische und historische Beschreibung. However the copies of the 1605 Oberursel Acosta at the Newberry Library, the University of Illinois, the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library, and the Berlin Staatsbibliothek all contain the maps. REFERENCES Baginsky, German Americana 124; European Americana 605/2; Medina, BHA 330; Meurer, Atlantes Colonienses AC02; Palau 1995n; Sabin 130; Burden, The Mapping of North America 115-122; Shirley, The Mapping of the World 190 GUARANTEE We do not sell reproductions. We guarantee that this is a genuine and original antique atlas that was published on or near the given date. A certificate of authentication is provided on request. Price € 48000 Antique Maps Leen Helmink