A 16th century Venetian edition of Ptolemy

The first Latin edition of the 'Geographia' to use the maps engraved for Girolamo Ruscelli by Giulio and Livio Sanuto and first published with an Italian text edited by Ruscelli in 1561. Instead of Ruscelli's text, this edition uses a Latin translation by Willibladi Pirckheimer (1470-1530), revised and corrected by the mathematician Giuseppe Moleti, a professor at the University of Padua. Ths Sanuto brothers engraved 27 Ptolemaic and 37 modern maps, most enlarged versions of the Gastaldi maps of 1548, but with new maps including a double-hemisphere world, the 'Carta Marina Nouva Tavola' (a sea chart of the world with land bridges joining America to both Europe and Asia) and a map of the North Atlantic illustrating the Zeno fiction. Unusually, the Ptolemaic and contemporary maps are placed next to each other for easy comparison. The maps, still usually ascribed to Ruscelli, are in their first state, printed two to a plate and separated, so the platemark extends off the top of the sheet.