Hand-coloured copper engraving, 190x263 mm, taken from the Venetian edition of Ptolemy's ‘Geographia’ edited by Ruscelli. On the reverse side there is an interesting and curious descriptive text in Italian. The map is based on Gastaldi's 1548 map published in his edition of ‘Geografia’ a few years earlier. Ptolemy, the greatest cartographer of antiquity, published La Geografia in 150 AD; it survived into the Middle Ages thanks to Arab mediation, handwritten in Greek and then translated into Latin by Jacopo D'Angelo; From the beginning of the 15th century, it became increasingly well known and in 1477 the first illustrated printed edition was published in Bologna, comprising only maps of the ancient world, immediately followed by other editions in 1478, 1480 and 1482, which already included some maps of the modern world. With each successive edition, the number of modern maps increased, reflecting the fact that the world was very different from that of Ptolemy, culminating in the famous 1513 edition by Waldseemueller, the first modern atlas, consisting of 20 new maps in addition to the ancient ones. Numerous editions were then published during the 16th century and beyond. Girolamo Ruscelli (1500-1566) was born in Viterbo and was an important writer and publisher who, after studying in Padua, spent his career between Rome and Naples, where he died. Good copy, with two small marginal holes. Irregular margins.