A detailed map of Malta, complete with views of Fort St Angelo and the site of the fortified city of Valletta. The Fort St Angelo had been the seat of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta from 1530, but after it was besieged by the Turks in 1565 the Order built Valletta as a new defensive and administrative centre. The Order was sovereign of Malta from 1530 until the invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.

This map appears in ‘L’isole piu famose’ by Tommaso Porcacchi, a beautiful and important isolario first published in 1572. The isolario, or island book, was a genre developed in the Mediterranean over the sixteenth century as a unique blend of literature, geography and art. It combined up-to-date cartography with contemporary accounts of and information about the places it portrayed. Porcacchi’s work represents the culmination of a movement in the genre towards cartographical accuracy; ‘L’isole’ was aimed specifically at readers who ‘dello studio della geografia si dilettano’ (delight in geographical studies). ‘L’isole’ was the first isolario with maps engraved on copper.

This is the third edition of ‘L’isole piu famose’, enlarged from the original and, according to Phillips, containing 17 maps which do not appear in the 1572 original including two of the New World: Jamaica and Puerto Rico. The addition of the New World islands from the second edition onwards reflects contemporary interest in the geography of the Americas. The detailed, beautifully engraved island maps are set in context by the two splendid world maps in the closing sections entitled ‘Descrizione del Mappamondo’ and ‘Discorso intorno alla carta da navigate,’ pages 193 to 20.