First issue of Ruscelli's "modern" copperplate map of the British Isles

Anglia et Hibernia Nova
Girolamo Ruscelli, 1561. Excellent. 7.5 x 10.5 inches. $450.

First edition of Ruscelli's elegantly engraved copper-plate map after Gastldi. Although the earliest editions of Ptolemy's Geography used copperplates to reproduce maps, the woodblock method replaced it for most of the first half of the sixteenth century. Giacomo Gastaldi reversed the trend with his atlas of 1548, and Ruscelli continued Gastaldi's influential atlas with his issue of 1561. Typical of Italian copperplates, the style is elegant and unimbellished.