Giacomo Gastaldi (c.1500-1566) was an Italian astronomer, cartographer and engineer from Villafranca in Piedmont. Little is known of him until he arrived in Venice and was granted a privilege by the Venetian senate in 1539 for the printing of a perpetual calendar.

Gastaldi’s position in Venice placed him at the centre of an important world-trading centre at this time. The Republic would have been host to many travellers, providing and stimulating Gastaldi with up-to-date reports of their discoveries and findings. While in Venice, Gastaldi met Giovanni Battista Ramusio who was working on his “Navigationi et Viaggi” and was also secretary to the senate, thus beginning their association. Venice was a focal point of Italian cartographic activity in this period, with Gastaldi and Ramusio placed at its epicentre.

Gastaldi’s first geographical work was a map of Germany, dated 1542, for a new edition of Ptolemy’s “Geographia”, although this work was not actually published until 1548. Gastaldi also worked on a number of maps at this time that were used as sources for other mapmakers’ work – Ortelius and De Jode’s maps of Sicily, for example, are based on Gastaldi. Other mapmakers to use his work included Camocio, Bertelli, Forlani and Luchini, amongst others – thus Gastaldi can be associated with the Lafreri school of mapmakers.

Some of Gastaldi’s most well-known and sought-after works include his world map that was first published in 1546 entitled “Nova Totius Orbis Descriptio”, the woodcut maps for the aforementioned “Navigationi et Viaggi” by Ramusio, as well as many other maps covering a variety of geographical areas.

Often encountered are Girolamo Ruscelli’s maps from his new translation of Ptolemy’s “Geographia” that was first published in 1561 – the maps contained therein are enlargements of the maps that Gastaldi had produced for his 1548 edition of the “Geographia”.


Sources:
Robert W. Karrow Jr., Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps, pp.216-249.
Sotheby’s, The Wardington Library Part One:A-K, pp.165-196.