Ptolemy’s 'Geographia': Rare Book of the Week
The spine and binding of the Geographia before conservation treatment
This week's we're focusing on Michigan State University's special collections librarians who have restored a 1535 edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia, a rare 16thcentury cartography text which contains one of the earliest instances of the term 'America' in print.
Geographia was donated to MSU Libraries in 1951 by the E.K. Warren Foundation and was previously collected in 1928 by Fred P. Warren of Three Oaks, Michigan. An inscription in the MSU Libraries copy denotes that the volume was once owned and housed by an order of priests known as the Somaschi Fathers at their home church of San Bartolomeo in Somasca, Italy. Due to Benito Mussolini’s declaration that no historical documents could leave the country, Warren enlisted the help of a friendly taxi driver who attached the volume to the undercarriage of his cab, where it eluded the sight of border officials.
This second edition of the eponymous Geographia was translated by German Renaissance lawyer, author and humorist Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), with illustrations by Spanish theologian Michael Villanovanus (1511?-1553), better known as Servetus. It contains 228 pages and 49 maps with woodcut borders that some scholars have attributed to Renaissance artists Hans Holbein the Younger and Urs Graf.
Originally written in the second century A.D., this geographical treatise was considered a standard reference until the 16th century and retained influence well into the 18th century, with various scholars and editors offering corrections to inaccuracies in the original.
The volume was used on the first day it became available after restoration for a topics of art history course.
