2 + 2 5 Srl (LTD)

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Original reproductions limited to 499 copies certified by Naples National Library and manufactured in Amalfi Amatruda handmade

Detailed Description Tables of this publishing project reproduce some of the 27 extraordinarily miniated maps of the Latin manuscript of Ptolemys Cosmographia, as kept in Naples Vittorio Emanuele III National Library. Ptolemys work who may be considered the last great geographer of the classical world was written in II century after Christ at the time of the Antonines and was considered throughout the classical age and over the middle ages the summa of the geographical knowledge of the ancient times. After Ptolemy the age of scientifically approached geographical researches was over. His work is therefore regarded as the climax of the Greek thought about the representation of known lands. The authoritativeness of the Ptolemaic cartography, overcome by the discoveries of great navigators, was definitely overtaken by the modern geographical approach of Abraham Ortelius in the sixteenth century. The Geographia has been handed down by medieval transcriptions. The work consists of a textual part 8 books through which the Alexandrian scholars geographical theories are set forth and a rich cartographic section - 27 maps made in some particular codes, 64 in others of extraordinary value for historical geography, as being the only specimen of the genre being made up of a grid and a map projection thus anticipating modern cartographic techniques. Rediscovered by the 2 + 2 5 Srl (LTD)stern world in the humanistic period, Ptolemys work was known by princes, bibliophiles and scholars wishing to own miniated copies of a work which appeared to be the first atlas made up of uniform tables. The elegant code exhibited in the National Gallery of Arts in Washington on the occasion of the solemn celebration of the five centuries of the discovery of the new continent and more recently at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo .