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Details
GALLUCCI, Giovanni Paolo (1538-c.1621). Speculum Uranicum in quo vera loca … colliguntur. Venice: Damianus Zenarus, 1593.
First edition of a scientific instrument in book form, an attractive, unsophisticated copy. Named after Urania, muse of astronomy, and introduced by a magnificent allegoric engraved frontispiece rich in symbols, Gallucci’s book helps chart, with numerous volvelles, the movements of the heavenly bodies by the methods of Regiomontanus. Publishing his work soon after the papal bull of 1586 forbidding astrology, Gallucci, a mathematician who tutored the Venetian nobility and a founder of the Second Venetian Academy, asserts the importance of the rational, scientific investigation of the heavens, ushering in the Galilean era of observation-based knowledge. Houzeau and Lancaster 12742; La Lande 125; Riccardi I, 570; Weidler p. 410.
Folio (415 x 274mm). Title with engraved border by Giacomo Franco incorporating Zenarus’s dragon device, 17 large circular woodcut diagrams, 16 with attached volvelles with a total of 37 moving parts (of 39) and decorative woodcut or pen-work paper strips backing the volvelle stitching, woodcut headpieces and diagrams throughout, with the folding table 'Canon Sexagenarius' bound in at the end, and without the 4-leaf user’s manual, ‘De harum paginarum usu’ which is generally absent following the author's directions to the binder, ‘Haec pars in libro non ligetur’ (some waterstaining to the lower and upper margin, slightly heavier in the early quires, occasional staining, spotting of diagram versos resulting from the stitching of the volvelles). Contemporary limp vellum (chipped, soiled, several early calculations in ink). Provenance: contemporary ink legends on the hands of one of the volvelles – near-contemporary initials ‘A S’ in ink on the back strip of the volvelle on f. 16 – later ink annotation to f.28v - Kenney Collection (printed label; sold at Sotheby’s 1966).
First edition of a scientific instrument in book form, an attractive, unsophisticated copy. Named after Urania, muse of astronomy, and introduced by a magnificent allegoric engraved frontispiece rich in symbols, Gallucci’s book helps chart, with numerous volvelles, the movements of the heavenly bodies by the methods of Regiomontanus. Publishing his work soon after the papal bull of 1586 forbidding astrology, Gallucci, a mathematician who tutored the Venetian nobility and a founder of the Second Venetian Academy, asserts the importance of the rational, scientific investigation of the heavens, ushering in the Galilean era of observation-based knowledge. Houzeau and Lancaster 12742; La Lande 125; Riccardi I, 570; Weidler p. 410.
Folio (415 x 274mm). Title with engraved border by Giacomo Franco incorporating Zenarus’s dragon device, 17 large circular woodcut diagrams, 16 with attached volvelles with a total of 37 moving parts (of 39) and decorative woodcut or pen-work paper strips backing the volvelle stitching, woodcut headpieces and diagrams throughout, with the folding table 'Canon Sexagenarius' bound in at the end, and without the 4-leaf user’s manual, ‘De harum paginarum usu’ which is generally absent following the author's directions to the binder, ‘Haec pars in libro non ligetur’ (some waterstaining to the lower and upper margin, slightly heavier in the early quires, occasional staining, spotting of diagram versos resulting from the stitching of the volvelles). Contemporary limp vellum (chipped, soiled, several early calculations in ink). Provenance: contemporary ink legends on the hands of one of the volvelles – near-contemporary initials ‘A S’ in ink on the back strip of the volvelle on f. 16 – later ink annotation to f.28v - Kenney Collection (printed label; sold at Sotheby’s 1966).
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