Tabula Asiae X – India Intra Gangem, from Ruscelli after Ptolemy, Venice 1574

Tabula Asiae X (India Intra Gangem)
From La Geografia di Claudio Tolomeo, Tradotta di Greco in Italiano da G. Ruscelli, & hora in questa nuova editione da Gio. Malombra ricorretta

Publisher Giordano Ziletti, Venice, 1574
Engraver After Giacomo Gastaldi (c.1500–1566)
Technique Copperplate engraving on laid paper
Paper size approximately 18.5 × 24.5 cm
Condition Excellent, light toning, strong impression with visible plate mark; verso with Italian text Dell’ Asia Tavola Decima Antica

This engraved Tabula Asiae X, or Tenth Map of Asia, depicts India Intra Gangem India within the Ganges extending eastward to the Sinus Gangeticus (Bay of Bengal) and southward to the Mare Indicum (Indian Ocean). Mountains and river systems are drawn in the distinctive engraved relief style used in sixteenth-century Venetian editions of Ptolemy. The design is derived from Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia, composed in the second century AD, and engraved after Giacomo Gastaldi, one of the most significant Italian mapmakers of the Renaissance.

The verso text in Italian, headed Dell’ Asia Tavola Decima Antica, provides the accompanying notes and coordinate data, listing key cities, deserts, and mountain ranges. These annotations reflect the Venetian editors’ fascination with merging classical geography and new knowledge from Arab and Portuguese exploration.

This plate comes from the 1574 edition published by Giordano Ziletti, the third printing of Ruscelli’s Italian translation following the Valgrisi editions of 1561 and 1564. The Ziletti issue is distinguished by a revised projection and updated typographic layout, producing one of the most elegant Venetian interpretations of Ptolemy’s atlas. Later printings in 1598 and 1599 reused these same plates.

Ptolemy’s Geographia, written around 150 CE, was rediscovered in manuscript form about 1300 and first printed in Bologna in 1477. It became the foundation for all Renaissance cartography, influencing the works of Mercator, Ortelius, and Münster.

References Shirley Mapping of the World no. 133; Phillips Atlases 373
Projection Revised conical form introduced in the 1574 Ziletti edition
Verso text Italian commentary explaining the ancient geography of India and its regions
Rarity The 1574 Ziletti printing is scarcer than the 1561 Valgrisi edition and is valued for its full margins and clean impression.

Verso English Translation

India within the Ganges begins at the river Indus and extends eastward to the Gulf of the Ganges. 

In this region lie the mountains Imaus and the lesser chain called Paropanisus, the rivers Indus and Ganges, and many notable cities, among which Bactra, Palibothra, and Ozene are most renowned.
These lands are inhabited by many nations — the Gangaridae, the Prasii, the Pandionae, and other peoples beyond the Ganges.
To the south it is bounded by the Indian Ocean, to the north by the Emodian and Imaus mountains, to the east by the Gulf of the Ganges, and to the west by the river Indus.
This country abounds in spices, gems, and elephants.

Scholarly Note

The Italian text on the verso of your copy is not a direct translation of the ancient Latin but rather a 16th-century explanatory table that lists Ptolemy’s coordinates (Città, Deserti, Monti) and includes numerical annotations for the longitude and latitude of principal cities such as Ozene, Palibothra, and Bactra. The Latin passage above is the corresponding original geographical description from Ptolemaei Geographiae Libri Octo, which the Venetian editors paraphrased.