COPERNICUS, Nicolaus (1473-1543). Astronomia instaurata, Amsterdam: Wilhelm Jansson, 1617, 4° (238 x 173mm.), third edition, vignette to title, woodcut illustrations (small hole to G4 not affecting text, small part of margin to Z4 and Oo3 torn away, light dampstaining to lower margin of some leaves, occasional spotting), contemporary vellum (recased, lower front joint split), patterned edges. [Houzeau & Lancaster 2503]

Details

COPERNICUS, Nicolaus (1473-1543). Astronomia instaurata, Amsterdam: Wilhelm Jansson, 1617, 4° (238 x 173mm.), third edition, vignette to title, woodcut illustrations (small hole to G4 not affecting text, small part of margin to Z4 and Oo3 torn away, light dampstaining to lower margin of some leaves, occasional spotting), contemporary vellum (recased, lower front joint split), patterned edges. [Houzeau & Lancaster 2503]

Provenance

Two-line inscription in Latin to verso of endpaper; M. Maty, 18th-century ownership inscription on title.

Lot Essay

The important third edition of De revolutionibus, the first with a commentary by Nicholaus Müller of Groningen. The first publication in 1543 was a landmark in human thought. "It challenged the authority of antiquity and set the course for the modern world by its effective destruction of the anthropocentric view of the universe ... Copernicus, stimulated by the free entertainment of various new ideas among the ancients, determined to abandon the fixity of the earth, and all the complexities in the treatment of the motions of the celestial bodies that follow from such a conception." (PMM 70)

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