Giacomo Gastaldi
Jacopo Gastaldi, Giacomo called (* 1500 in Villafranca Piemonte, † October 1566 in Venice) was an agent working primarily for private publishers, but also in the service of the Venetian Republic engineer and cartographer important.
1539 went Gastaldi of Piedmont to Venice, where, however, he found no job against the competitors out of the lagoon city. We moved in Magistrato before all Acque citizens of the city as Cristoforo Sabbadino. So he turned to large-scale works that were more salable on the open market books as the tickets to the Venetian territory, and the lagoon, who needed the magistrates.
From about 1544 Gastaldi cartography turned to exclusively. First, it focused as one of the first to the New World, mainly in his edition of La universal Descrittione del mondo was in the Geographia of Ptolemy significantly, which appeared in 1548, and for that he made 60 cards. Of these, 34 " tabulae novae " cards in a smaller format, whereby the Atlas for the user was handy. In addition, he switched from previously common printing with wooden printing blocks for engraving. Thus it was possible to enter significantly finer details in the card.
Gastaldi worked mainly for the publisher Nicolo Bascarini and Giambattista Pedrezano. , But also accepted commissions from the Council of Ten. For this he made fresco maps of Asia and Africa in the Doge's Palace, as well as detailed maps for Terraferma and the lagoon. For the Africa card he received on May 6, 1549 the contract for the Sala dello Scudo. The local map predecessor was destroyed in a fire in 1483. Today, the hall is also called delle Sale Binder ( Hall of the cards). He served audiences and receptions. For Gastaldi received a fee of 100 ducats, which corresponded to five times a worker in the arsenal. For addition of the Spanish countries in America, for aesthetic reasons, he reached a doubling of his fee. So he added the areas in the indie Occidentali how he translated from Spanish sources into Italian. On August 9, 1553 he was commissioned for a corresponding map of Asia.
1561 Girolamo Gastaldi involved in Ruscellis Ptolemy edition and contributed to a chart and two representations of the hemispheres at. 1561 to 1563 he worked on his Cosmographia universalis et exactissima iuxta postremam neotericorum traditionem. It shows the world in an oval projection on a surface of 90 to 182 cm. It includes at the corners of each two celestial globes and two globes.
One of his most famous cards was that of Italy from 1561.