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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF VERA RUBIN
PICCOLOMINI, Alessandro (1508-1578). Della Sfera del Mondo. -- Delle Stelle fisse libro uno. Venice: Nicolo de Bascarini, 1552.
Details
PICCOLOMINI, Alessandro (1508-1578). Della Sfera del Mondo. -- Delle Stelle fisse libro uno. Venice: Nicolo de Bascarini, 1552.
4° (210 x 153 mm). Woodcut printer's device on titles, 47 full-page woodcut star maps, (misnumbered 48, skipping no. 24, as usual), woodcut illustrations in text and tables. (Some worming to inner margin at beginning and end, some light browning and staining.) Contemporary limp vellum (some staining and wear to spine). Provenance: Giuseppe Gallinari (ownership inscription dated “1800” on front pastedown); Vitali Vito-Piacentina (ownership inscription dated “1876” on front pastedown).
Third edition of Piccolomini's De la sfera del mondo, which was originally published in 1540. The first part is a traditional Ptolemaic-Aristotelian geocentric cosmography, but the appendix, entitled De le stelle fisse, contains the first star atlas to be published in the Western World. It also introduces the practice of identification of stars by letter, which would later be adopted and expanded by Bayer. Adams P-1108; see Norman 1696.
4° (210 x 153 mm). Woodcut printer's device on titles, 47 full-page woodcut star maps, (misnumbered 48, skipping no. 24, as usual), woodcut illustrations in text and tables. (Some worming to inner margin at beginning and end, some light browning and staining.) Contemporary limp vellum (some staining and wear to spine). Provenance: Giuseppe Gallinari (ownership inscription dated “1800” on front pastedown); Vitali Vito-Piacentina (ownership inscription dated “1876” on front pastedown).
Third edition of Piccolomini's De la sfera del mondo, which was originally published in 1540. The first part is a traditional Ptolemaic-Aristotelian geocentric cosmography, but the appendix, entitled De le stelle fisse, contains the first star atlas to be published in the Western World. It also introduces the practice of identification of stars by letter, which would later be adopted and expanded by Bayer. Adams P-1108; see Norman 1696.