Pedro De Medina, New World Navigator

Dividing the New World | Pedro de Medina's Arte de navegar the first handbook purely on the subject of navigation. DE MEDINA, Pedro (1493–1567). "Nuevo mundo" from Arte de navegar. Valladolid: Francisco Fernández de Córdoba, 1545. First edition, first state. Here is what AI says it’s worth: $16,080. Cost: Skinner, 2019 - $6,150. Pot folium (13 3/16” x 9 1/8”, 335mm x 231mm): [d6] (recto: woodcut map, verso: text (chapter 7 of book 3) in two ruled columns with an initial and a woodcut diagram). Peripheral chips and losses, as well as some residue verso from earlier mounts. Peripheral foxing and tanning. A long vertical crease at the gutter, not affecting the text or image. Old dealer’s price in graphite at the fore-edge recto. Pedro de Medina (1493–1567) was a Spanish cartographer in the period of Spain’s growing naval dominance. His Arte de navegar (Valladolid 1545) was the first handbook purely on the subject of navigation. Medina traveled with Hernán Cortés, gaining first-hand experience of the navigating in the waters of America particularly. Although the text is fundamentally a compilation of others’ writings, the importance of the book is in its illustrations. Woodcuts show, for example, the proper use of an astrolabe and a cross-staff. Numerous charts and diagrams of winds and distances, computations and references — alongside the small format — make the work of real practical value. The present full-page map (d6r of the overall work) is the first printed depiction of the Tordesillas demarcation line, which divided the New World between Spain and Portugal along a meridian variously calculated between 42°.30′ W and 49°.45′ W. All to the west of it was to belong to Spain, all to the east to Portugal. Arising from the bull Inter caetera issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 (following the Spanish claim of all lands west and south of the Canary Islands), the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, finally ratified by Pope Julius II in 1506, set the stage for European claims of colonial authority throughout the XVIc. It was complicated by the Protestant Reformation (attractive, at least in part, to the nations of northern Europe who were not so favored by papal policy regarding overseas territory), but goes a long way to establish the development of Iberian colonies in the New World. With the Spanish text verso and sixteen rhumb lines, the map is certainly in its first state. For its inclusion in the 1548 Libro de grandezas… de España, the block was split in two, and later eight of the rhumb lines removed. The leaf seems long dissociated from the volume, particularly considering its $35.00 price, which must date back more than a century; the complete volume has come to auction just thirteen times, selling in 2008 for $578,500 at Christie’s. Burden 14 (state 1); Shirley 84.

Estimate:£13,452.75

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