Lot Essay
PROVENANCE:
1. The manuscript was probably written and drawn in Padua. The author (1423-1461), a famous Austrian astronomer, friend of Regiomontanus and Cardinal Bessarion, lectured in the University of Padua and it is there that his complex diagrams were likely to be preserved for copying. Its original binding is unquestionably Paduan (no.8 in A.R.A. Hobson's list, Humanists and Bookbinders, Appendix 5 "Fortune and Cupid in Padua"). The chancery-size endpapers are of a type in use at Padua during the first half of the sixteenth century (type of Briquet 11912-4).
2. Francesco Rolandi of Turin, teacher of mathematics (1655 inscription).
3. Pietro Giuseppe Ignati Mattei Cattochi of Viù (1708-9 inscriptions).
4. Robert B. Honeyman (Sotheby's, 2 May 1979, lot 1112)
CONTENTS:
Peurbach's textbook of planetary theory was composed and revised from 1454 onwards and first published by Johannes Regiomontanus ca. 1474 (Klebs 752.1). His solid sphere representations of Ptolemaic planetary models remained canonical for the structure of the heavens until Tycho Brahe's discoveries (see. Dictionary of Scientific Biogr. XV, p.475). This handsome manuscript, while omitting the descriptive text, illustrates Peurbach's work to a far greater extent than any of the early editions.
LITERATURE:
C.U. Faye and W.H.Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the U.S. and Canada, p.21, no.15
1. The manuscript was probably written and drawn in Padua. The author (1423-1461), a famous Austrian astronomer, friend of Regiomontanus and Cardinal Bessarion, lectured in the University of Padua and it is there that his complex diagrams were likely to be preserved for copying. Its original binding is unquestionably Paduan (no.8 in A.R.A. Hobson's list, Humanists and Bookbinders, Appendix 5 "Fortune and Cupid in Padua"). The chancery-size endpapers are of a type in use at Padua during the first half of the sixteenth century (type of Briquet 11912-4).
2. Francesco Rolandi of Turin, teacher of mathematics (1655 inscription).
3. Pietro Giuseppe Ignati Mattei Cattochi of Viù (1708-9 inscriptions).
4. Robert B. Honeyman (Sotheby's, 2 May 1979, lot 1112)
CONTENTS:
Peurbach's textbook of planetary theory was composed and revised from 1454 onwards and first published by Johannes Regiomontanus ca. 1474 (Klebs 752.1). His solid sphere representations of Ptolemaic planetary models remained canonical for the structure of the heavens until Tycho Brahe's discoveries (see. Dictionary of Scientific Biogr. XV, p.475). This handsome manuscript, while omitting the descriptive text, illustrates Peurbach's work to a far greater extent than any of the early editions.
LITERATURE:
C.U. Faye and W.H.Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the U.S. and Canada, p.21, no.15