Price: £600.00

• Date: 1597
• Condition: AAA - light soiling
• Colour: BW
• Size (cm): 13.0 x 17.1 (excluding title)

Title: Universi Orbis Descriptio. Publication: Geographiae universae tum veteris, tum novae absolutissimum opus... Auctore eodem Io. Anto. Magino Patavino..., Cologne 1597, Petrus Keschedt.

A map of the world on an oval projection, after Ortelius, with six unnamed windheads arranged around the outside border. Text on verso. Shirley writes that the engraver reduced Ortelius' much larger map to octavo page size with very little loss in legibility. The landmass above N. America was initially labeled as Terra Icognita, but the engraver must have noticed his mistake shortly afterward since the letter 'n' was subsequently added. South America has an unusual bulge on its west coast. Speculative north-west and north-east passages have been incorporated. Numerous mythical islands have been inserted.

The map comes from a scarce pirate edition published by Petrus Keschedt in Cologne one year after the publication of Magini's original work. Ortelius informed Magini in November 1597 about this and the publication was stopped till 1608 when a new edition was issued by Keschedt. Although the map is based on Magini's 1596 Geographiae it is in fact a new plate. The Magini's 1596 edition of Geographiae was the first reduced size version of Mercator's atlas. This is the second.

Ref: Shirley 203