ROSACCIO, Giuseppe. Viaggio da Venetia, a Costantinopoli : per mare, e per terra & insieme quello di Terra Santa..., Venice, Giacomo Franco, 1598.]

Giuseppe Rosaccio (1530-1620) was an Italian physician and geographer, born in Friuli, Veneto. He became known for a series of works which popularized several scientific subjects. He wrote an essay on Muslim religion and above all texts on geography, cosmography, astronomy and astrology, which became very popular and were republished several times. Among his works are “Teatro del Cielo e della Terra” (Venice, 1595), “Il Mondo e le sue parti, cioè Europa, Affrica, Asia et America” (Verona, 1596), “Il Mondo elementare e celeste” (Treviso, 1604) and “Ptolemy's Geography”, containing many indexes and written in Italian vernacular (1599). He is also the creator of a large world map (Venice, 1597), a large map of Italy (Florence, 1609) and of Tuscany (Florence, 1609).

In this edition, Rosaccio combined the tradition of printed isolaria with that of pilgrims' chronicles. The “Voyage from Venice to Constantinople” includes maps of the itinerary accompanied by short texts. Thus, although he copies maps from earlier similar isolaria (G. Camoccio, P. Bertelli), Rosaccio offers the reader an illustrated version of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou