The Copy of Ptolemy's Geography (Rome, 1478) owned by the Vespuccis
González Germain, Gerard (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciències de l'Antiguitat i de l'Edat Mitjana)

Publicación:	Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2018
Resumen:	The BNCF copy of the Roman Ptolemy of 1478 was purchased by and illuminated for Guidantonio Vespucci, presumably in the early 1480s, at the beginning of his diplomatic career, and after a two- year stay in France as the Florentine ambassador- with Amerigo Vespucci by his side. A fully- trained humanist as Guidantonio would have quickly realized the importance of this edition, which for the first time offered a high- quality printed version of all 27 Ptolemaic maps. More limited may have been his son Giovanni's interest in Ptolemy, since he gave it to his former preceptor shortly after his father's death. Agostino was the only one of the three Vespuccis to annotate the volume. His marginalia were probably carried out during several decades, but they mostly reflect his interest in the geography of Iberia, a direct consequence of his writing De situ totius Hispaniae. To establish the precise relationship between this treatise and Ptolemy's marginalia, we would need to know the dating of the latter. It is conceivable that they were written during the preparation of the literary work (i. e. 1518-1520), but Vespucci's continued consultation of Ptolemy until at least 1529 cannot preclude a later dating of the annotations, during the 1520s. The few emendations found among his annotations to Ptolemy may provide some evidence for this matter. In these occasions, the treatise always agrees with the corrected version,38 a fact that suggests that the marginalia antedate the final version of the De situ totius Hispaniae. If this was indeed the case, Vespucci's notes would directly attest his close study of Ptolemy's Geography- and the use of its maps as cartographic aid- for the actual preparation and composition of his own geographical description of Spain.
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Capítol de llibre ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicado en:	Shores of Vespucci. A historical research of Amerigo Vespucci's life and contexts, p. 87-99, ISBN 9783631702536

DOI: 10.3726/978-3-653-04827-8

13 p, 276.6 KB

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