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Epistola de insulis nuper inventis

Lot 308
19.10.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
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$ 3 922 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 1032966
Lot 308 | Epistola de insulis nuper inventis
Estimate value
$ 1 000 000 – 1 500 000
The First Americanum

The letter of Christopher Columbus, to whom our age owes a great debt, on the recent discovery of the islands of India beyond the Ganges, to look for which he had been sent eight months before under the auspices and at the expense of the most invincible Ferdinand and Isabella, sovereigns of the Spains; sent to the eminent lord Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of the said most serene sovereigns; which the noble and learned gentleman, Leander di Cosco, translated from Spanish into Latin the third day before the Kalends of May, 1493, in the first year of the pontificate of Alexander VI.

COLUMBUS, Christopher (1451-1506). Epistola Christofori Colom: cui etas nostra multu[m] debet: de Insulis Indie supra Gangem nuper inve[n]tis. Translated by Leandro di Cosco. [Rome: Stephan Plannck, after 29 April 1493.]

The earliest obtainable edition of Christopher Columbus’s letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella describing the first visit to the Americas by a modern European. This example previously in a private Swiss library for nearly a century.

· The Columbus Letter and the events it relays irrevocably altered the course of world history—marking the opening of sustained communication across the Atlantic and the beginning of the brutal but epochal transfer of people, cultures, wealth, plants, animals, and diseases known as the Columbian Exchange.

· Produced in the first half-century of the printing press, and translated into Latin for widespread consumption, this document set off one of the first ever media frenzies, spreading rapidly throughout Europe and forever changing peoples’ perception of the size, shape, and possibilities of their world.

· The Columbus Letter is a slim, ephemeral document which was printed to convey the news of the moment; extremely few copies survive outside of institutional libraries. Not since 1966, in the Thomas W. Streeter sale has a copy been offered at auction which has provenance dating back over 50 years.

· The collecting field of printed Americana begins with this document.

Goff C-758; HC 5489*; Klebs 284.2; IGI 3060; BMC IV 97; GW 7177; ISTC ic00758000; Church 5; Harrisse 4; Sabin 14630; Streeter sale 2; PMM 35.

Quarto (201 x 140mm). 4 leaves, with watermark of a balance within a circle on inner bifolium (a few scattered wax spots). Late 18th- or early 19th-century Northern European paste paper over boards. Provenance: pencil notations on front pastedown – from a private Swiss collection, in which it has been for nearly a century.
Place of origin:Italy
Auction house category:Antiquarian books
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
20 Rockefeller Plaza
10020 New York
USA
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