.jpg?w=1)
Details
SIRTORI, Girolamo. Telescopium: sive Ars perficiendi novum illud Galilaei visorium instrumentum ad sydera in tres partes divisa. Frankfurt: Paul Jacobi for Luca Jennis, 1618.
4° (188 x 144mm). Device on title, one folding woodcut plate only (of 2), woodcut diagrams. (Scattered worming affecting plate and last two leaves, lacks the other plate.) Contemporary vellum with manuscript title on spine (head and foot of spine a little worn, corners bumped, front free endpaper detached). Provenance: presentation copy from the author to Tommaso Mingoni, physician (‘Protomedico’) of the Holy Roman Emperor [Matthias (1557-1619)] and the Elector Palatine [Friedrich V (1596-1632)] (inscription on title) – Jesuits at Vienna, 1662 (pencil inscription on slip pasted onto upper margin of title) – manuscript corrections in a 17th-century hand – Robert B. and Marian S. Honeyman (bookplate; in the Honeyman Collection, part VII, Sotheby’s London, 19 May 1981, lot 2854).
FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY of the first monograph to describe the manufacture of telescopes. Written by the Milanese scholar Girolamo Sirtori in 1612, only four years after the telescope was invented, it contained a complete set of instructions and diagrams for building a refracting telescope, and gave the first detailed account of Galileo’s telescope in the second part. Brunet and Riccardi both cite copies with notes in Galileo’s hand. RARE. VD17 gives only 5 locations. Brunet V, 403; Carli and Favaro 75; Honeyman 121; Riccardi I(ii) 461; Zinner 4681 & Instr. 536; not in Cinti or Houzeau and Lancaster.
4° (188 x 144mm). Device on title, one folding woodcut plate only (of 2), woodcut diagrams. (Scattered worming affecting plate and last two leaves, lacks the other plate.) Contemporary vellum with manuscript title on spine (head and foot of spine a little worn, corners bumped, front free endpaper detached). Provenance: presentation copy from the author to Tommaso Mingoni, physician (‘Protomedico’) of the Holy Roman Emperor [Matthias (1557-1619)] and the Elector Palatine [Friedrich V (1596-1632)] (inscription on title) – Jesuits at Vienna, 1662 (pencil inscription on slip pasted onto upper margin of title) – manuscript corrections in a 17th-century hand – Robert B. and Marian S. Honeyman (bookplate; in the Honeyman Collection, part VII, Sotheby’s London, 19 May 1981, lot 2854).
FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY of the first monograph to describe the manufacture of telescopes. Written by the Milanese scholar Girolamo Sirtori in 1612, only four years after the telescope was invented, it contained a complete set of instructions and diagrams for building a refracting telescope, and gave the first detailed account of Galileo’s telescope in the second part. Brunet and Riccardi both cite copies with notes in Galileo’s hand. RARE. VD17 gives only 5 locations. Brunet V, 403; Carli and Favaro 75; Honeyman 121; Riccardi I(ii) 461; Zinner 4681 & Instr. 536; not in Cinti or Houzeau and Lancaster.
Special notice
No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium.
Brought to you by
Robert Tyrwhitt