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Details
CORTÉS, Martin (1510-1582). Breve compendio de la sphere y de la arte de navegar – con nuevos instrumentos y reglas – exemplificado con muy subtiles demonstraciones. Seville: Anton Alvarez, 1551.
Exceedingly rare first edition of the work that revolutionised the science of navigation. It also includes early information about places discovered in America, such as Peru, Brazil, Rio de la Plata and others. The author was a Spanish cosmographer of whose life little is known, but '[h]is instructions for making charts and for plotting courses of ships on them were widely followed. Most important of all, he first understood and described the magnetic variation of the compass, suggesting that the magnetic pole and the true pole of the earth were not the same' (PMM). When it appeared in English translation in 1561, Cortés's book provided Elizabethan navigators their first key to the mastery of the sea. While the book was eventually superseded by the work of Mercator and Wright, it is significant that an entire chapter of the latter's Errors in Navigation is a translation from Cortés. Borba de Moraes I, 185-6; Burden 14 (the Medina printing of the map); JCB (3) I, 163; Palau 63378; PMM 76; Sabin 16966 ('A volume of great rarity, frequently reprinted. A map of the New World is on the recto of the sixty-seventh leaf').
Folio (265 x 188mm). Woodcut coat of arms set within architectonic title, initials, 31 text illustrations including a half-page illustration of the astronomer pointing at the heavens and a half-page coat of arms on verso of title, a full-page woodcut map of the New World and Atlantic Ocean on H3r showing the line of demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese territory agreed at the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 and ratified by Pope Julius II in 1506 (6 volvelle diagrams with moving parts in modern facsimile, numerous marginal repairs). Modern vellum. Provenance: Franceso Condeminas (cartographic bookplate) – Marvyn Carton (booklabel) – Michael Sharpe (gilt leather booklabel).
Exceedingly rare first edition of the work that revolutionised the science of navigation. It also includes early information about places discovered in America, such as Peru, Brazil, Rio de la Plata and others. The author was a Spanish cosmographer of whose life little is known, but '[h]is instructions for making charts and for plotting courses of ships on them were widely followed. Most important of all, he first understood and described the magnetic variation of the compass, suggesting that the magnetic pole and the true pole of the earth were not the same' (PMM). When it appeared in English translation in 1561, Cortés's book provided Elizabethan navigators their first key to the mastery of the sea. While the book was eventually superseded by the work of Mercator and Wright, it is significant that an entire chapter of the latter's Errors in Navigation is a translation from Cortés. Borba de Moraes I, 185-6; Burden 14 (the Medina printing of the map); JCB (3) I, 163; Palau 63378; PMM 76; Sabin 16966 ('A volume of great rarity, frequently reprinted. A map of the New World is on the recto of the sixty-seventh leaf').
Folio (265 x 188mm). Woodcut coat of arms set within architectonic title, initials, 31 text illustrations including a half-page illustration of the astronomer pointing at the heavens and a half-page coat of arms on verso of title, a full-page woodcut map of the New World and Atlantic Ocean on H3r showing the line of demarcation between Spanish and Portuguese territory agreed at the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 and ratified by Pope Julius II in 1506 (6 volvelle diagrams with moving parts in modern facsimile, numerous marginal repairs). Modern vellum. Provenance: Franceso Condeminas (cartographic bookplate) – Marvyn Carton (booklabel) – Michael Sharpe (gilt leather booklabel).
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