This map appeared for the first time in the second edition of Volume I of Ramusio's Delle Navigationi et Viaggi in 1554.  This map is only found in this second edition.  A fire in the Thomaso Giunti print shop in November 1557 likely destroyed the woodblocks that produced this map along with the other blocks of Volume I, shortly after the death of Ramusio earlier in 1557.  As a result, few examples were printed before the destruction of the woodblocks.

Though by tradition, this map is usually referred to as the Ramusio map of Africa since it appears in Ramusio's book of travels, it rightly should be referred to as the Ramusio - Gastaldi map of Africa.  Giacomo Gastaldi (c.1500-1566) actually designed and possibly cut the block that produced this map (Karrow 1993: 227). Gastaldi, from Villafranca in Piedmont, was active in Venice by 1539, initially involved with mapping the waterways around Venice. He prepared the maps, including 34 modern maps, for an important, reduced-size edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, published by Pietro Mattiolo in 1548. This edition contained modern maps of Northern and of Southern Africa, and considerably updated the two earlier maps of Northern and Southern Africa by Waldseemüller in 1513 and then Fries in 1522. In Venice, Gastaldi was associated with Ramusio, who, as an influential Venetian citizen, supported Gastaldi's work.

Much of the Portuguese information for this map was taken from Montalbodo's Paesi Nouamente retrouati Novo Muodo. with its descriptions of the voyages of Cadamosto, Da Sintra, Da Gama, and others. This information included: a routier of the West African coast; letters written in Lisbon on July 10 and August 28, 1499, by the Italian merchant Girolamo Sernigi to report what he had learned of the Da Gama voyage on the return of the first two of the surviving ships; and a narrative of the second Portuguese voyage to India.

Betz, Map #4.  Karrow.  Norwich, Map #6 (image is of copperplate map).

Very Fine condition.