Born in Treviso, Italy, at that time in the Republic of Venice, Ramusio was the son of Paolo Ramusio, a magistrate of the Venetian city-state. In 1505 young Giovanni took a position as secretary to Aloisio Mocenigo,[1] of the patrician Mocenigo family,[a] then serving as the Republic's ambassador to France. Ramusio would spend the rest of his career in Venetian service. He was keenly interested in geography, and his position ensured that he would receive news of all the latest discoveries from explorers around Europe as they were sent back to Venice. A learned man, fluent in several languages, he began to compile these documents and translated them into Italian, then the most widely understood of the European languages. He died in Padua.
He also published an excerpt of Tomé Pires' work on the Indies, which had come into his hands, though he did not know the name of its author.[7]
The first volume was published in 1550, quickly followed by the third volume in 1556. Publication of the second volume was delayed because the manuscript had been destroyed in a fire before being sent to the printer, and was finally published in 1559, two years after its compiler's death. Navigationi et Viaggi was translated into several languages and reprinted a number of times, indicating how popular such books were becoming on the Continent. It paved the way for a slew of other such works, including those of Richard Hakluyt.
^Testa, Simone (2015). Italian academies and their networks, 1525-1700: From local to global. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 88. ISBN9781137438423.
^Hankins, James; Kaster, Robert A.; Brown, Virginia, eds. (2011). Catalogus Translationum Et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides (in English and Latin). United Kingdom: Catholic University of America Press. pp. 80, 99.
^Goldsmid, Edmund; Renouard, Antoine-Augustin. A bibliographical sketch of the Aldine Press at Venice. Edinburgh. pp. 33, 54. Translated and abridged from Renouard's Annales de L'Imprimerie des Aldes, (1834, Paris)