Ludovico Varthema, 1511

The very rare first Latin edition
Ludovico Varthema, 1511
VARTHEMA, Ludovico (c.1470-1517). Ludovici Patritii Romani novum itinerarium Aethiopiae: Aegypti: utriusque Arabiae: Persidis: Siriae: ac Indiae: intra et extra Ganges. Translated by Archangelo Madrignano. Milan: Joannes Jacobus de Legnano et fratres, after 25 May 1511.

First Latin edition of Varthema’s wildly influential account of his undercover travel through the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia, and India, "one of the most remarkable travel books of the Renaissance" (Blackmer). This translation was printed in the year following the publication of the first edition in Varthema’s native Italian. It contains a prefatory epistle by the translator discussing the discovery of the Americas, which he calls the “true Antipodes.” Ludovico Varthema, as famous in his own time as Columbus, posed as a mamluk named Yunus and escorted a pilgrim caravan to Mecca and Medina—making him the first recorded Christian to visit those cities. He continued to travel for five years (variously adopting the guises of a merchant trader, a doctor, an ascetic mystic, and a master cannon founder) providing a valuable primary witness for the state of overland travel through Asia, just as the Portuguese sea route was taking supremacy. After escaping imprisonment for being a Christian spy by means of the love of a Yemeni sultana, Varthema’s adventures took him to Somalia, through Persia halfway to Samarkand, and eventually to India. After becoming homesick, he gave himself up to the Portuguese and worked as an interrogator enforcing shipping regulations, living through the siege of Cannanore before being rescued by Tristão da Cunha’s armada. The combination of salacious first-hand detail, personal charisma, and picaresque exotic travels made his book an instant sensation. Copies of any of the early editions are very rare; this is the only copy of the present edition which has appeared at auction for the last 40 years. Hakluyt Society, The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, pp. xiii-xiv; Howgego V15; See Blackmer II 338 (Milan 1523 ed.).

Folio (267 x 187mm). Woodcut device on title, woodcut initials (a few small mostly marginal neat repairs, light worming and soiling on final leaf). 19th-century vellum backed boards with morocco title piece, paper label with armorial. Provenance: Jacobus de Bannissis Dalmate (early inscription on final leaf) – sold: Sotheby’s, 6 June 2000, lot 332 – Bruce McKinney (bookplate, his sale, Bloomsbury, 3 December 2009).