Rare first edition of Vincenzo Coronelli’s extraordinary Idea dell’ Universo, an enormous 2-sheet (some 2.5 x 1.75 feet) cosmological chart which is among the most extensive and painstaking (as well as visually striking) efforts to depict a huge quantity of information about the world ever published in a single visual..... More
Extremely rare first and only edition of this separately issued engraving depicting a “Dante, ò Gran Bestia” (a tapir) captured in Brazil and kept in Madrid at the Casa de las Fieras, the zoological garden built in 1774 at the Parque del Buen Retiro by King Carlos III (1716-88). The..... More
Extremely rare first and only edition of this broadside engraving recording the historically early observations of sunspots made in 1616 by the Holstein mathematician Petrus Saxonius (1591-1625). This document is apparently the first separately printed broadside of sunspot observations and just the third ever publication of images of sunspots, following..... More
Engraving of the cacao plant from Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s Phytanthoza Iconographia, “the first botanical book to use color printed mezzotint successfully” (Hunt). Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1683-1741) was a German botanist and apothecary in Regensburg, and his monumental series represents the most innovative achievement in botanical illustration of its time. “The mezzotint process used..... More
A fine example – in sharp, radiant, original handcolor with silver and gold highlights – of the first edition of Andreas Cellarius’ (c. 1596-1665) iconic diagram of the phases of the moon, one of the most striking of all of Cellarius’ designs. The central image shows the moon in eight..... More
Rare early 19th-century French popular broadside, here in fine contemporary hand-color, depicting the legendary Juif-Errant, or ‘Wandering Jew,’ the mythical immortal man said to have been present at the Crucifixion who was cursed thereafter to walk the earth ceaselessly until the Second Coming. The broadside has at its center a...... More
![The English Pilot. [The Fourth Book.] Describing The West-India Navigation, from Hudson’s Bay...](/pictures/thumb/B5887.jpg?v=1573218743)
A spectacular copy of the final edition of the English Pilot, The Fourth Book, the first wholly English sea atlas of American waters. The work was sufficiently in demand to justify 37 legitimate editions from 1689 to 1794 and three pirated editions. All editions are rare. During the history of..... More
This rare handbook by the renowned sculptor-goldsmith-theorist Juan de Arfe y Villafañe (1535-1600) – not to be confused with the author’s similar title of 1572 – presents the most influential information on the assaying of silver, gold, gemstones and a variety of other commodities published on the Iberian peninsula during..... More
Rare first edition of this Spanish translation of the life of Queen Maria Ana of Portugal. For a period of 8 years during her husband’s illness, Maria Ana controlled one of the most powerful European empires of the 18th century, and, according to Ritter, took a special interest in missionary..... More
First edition (12mo) of Rousseau’s classic treatise on education, illustrated with 5 full-page engravings. Émile provides Rousseau’s most widely read statement on the essential goodness of human nature, tracing the natural development of a child brought up in the country in accordance with nature and free from the corrupting influence..... More
Very rare suite of 58 late 16th- and early 17th-century engraved portraits of contemporary Western European, Eastern European and Ottoman sovereigns, princes, military figures, and other (sometimes quite bizarre) personages, both male and female, produced in Rome by the publishers Giovanni Orlandi (fl. 1590s, d. 1640) and Andrea Vaccari (fl..... More
First edition – and fine copy – of Piranesi’s incomparable reconstruction Rome’s Campus Martius, a work famed for its archaeological ambition, its graphic inventiveness, and as a sourcebook for the architectural imagination which continues to influence architectural theorists and practitioners today. “An exceptional personality, Piranesi transfigured his personal failure as..... More
Set of 3 very rare 18th-century sales catalogues – unrecorded in American libraries – from the emporium of the Leipzig art dealer C. C. H. Rost (d. 1798), including his richly illustrated inventory of plaster casts made after the “best original” statues from Greco-Roman antiquity, among which are actual size..... More
[Offered with:] II. BERNOULLI, Daniel, Praeses; PREISWERK, Alexander. Q.D.B.V. Theses Tumultuariae, quas favente divino numine, ex decreto amplissimi senatus Academici, Cavante Logices et Metaphysices Cathedra ad D. XIII. Sept. MDCCLXXI. Basel, J.H. Decker, [1771]. Folio broadside printed on one side [50 x 39.5 cm] in two columns with decorative woodcut..... More
First edition of an historically important volume describing the Dendera Affair, the Egyptian archaeological expedition of 1820 led by Saulnier, an antiquarian and treasure-hunter, and J.-B. Lelorrain, the master mason he hired to remove the bas-relief zodiac from Egypt’s Temple of Dendera and smuggle it to Paris. Until it was..... More
The first attempt at a comprehensive bibliography of D’Anville’s production of maps and books. Many of the citations are annotated. D’Anville was one of the great French cartographers of the eighteenth century. He was the author of 211 maps and plans. “His maps of China, drawn at the request of..... More
Extremely rare first edition of a Baroque Italian calligraphy manual for students. The present copy contains 19 handwriting and calligraphic samples, almost all ornately embellished with figures of men, women, cherubs, birds, insects, or domestic animals, in addition to a portrait of Tensini after the title-page. Tensini’s samples, mostly passages..... More
Exceedingly rare undated edition (see below) of this report on central Luzón by Ustariz, provincial of the Dominican Order in the Philippines, focusing especially on the Paniqui Indians. A summary of the contents is included in the Blair/Robertson anthology of the most important primary documents of Philippine history: “In Paniqui..... More
Extensive sammelband of 17 early 19th-century Italian agricultural treatises relating to exotic crops, pest control, farm storage, seed scattering, etc. Cotton, peanuts, potatoes, wheat, swedes (a root vegetable popular in England), clover, apples, and other crops are discussed, as is an American decorative annual, Madia sativa, which appears to have..... More
Rare first and only edition of the antiquary Conte Paolo Vimercati-Sozzi’s (1801-83) guide (1840) for visitors to his recently opened museum in Bergamo, an intriguing instance of the Kunst- and Wunderkammer tradition of collecting persisting well into the 19th century in parallel with the rise of modern museology. Preserved in..... More
Extraordinary compendium of very rare, official letterpress documents (several of which are unrecorded and none of which is held in U.S. collections) and manuscript items collected during the 1820s and early 1830s by Giambattista Ferraris (fl. 1820’s -30’s), a prison doctor in the northern Italian town of Biella. The volume..... More
Extensively illustrated, visually appealing unpublished French navigational manuscript dating from the early 1670s, making it an important early witness to the maritime pedagogical reforms instituted by Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) during his effort to strengthen the French navy, create a favorable balance of trade for the nation, increase France’s colonial holdings..... More
Rare, separately issued plan of Quebec City, here in fine original hand color, published in London in 1759 by the prominent architect Edward Oakley (fl. 1730-66), an intriguing figure whose varied practical and theoretical roles in the London architectural world provide a glimpse into the diversity of professional building practice..... More
Very rare first and only edition (just 2 examples in U.S. libraries) of an illustrated work describing the erection in 1731 of an ephemeral triumphal arch in Livorno designed by the Florentine architect Ferdinando Ruggieri (1687-1741) at the request of the English merchant community stationed there. The monumental arch, over..... More
A very rare, true incunable edition of this medieval mappamundi from the first Lyons printing of 1491. One of the finest examples we've seen of this map in any edition. It is a direct descendant of the 1475 world map that was published in the Rudimentum Novitiorum, which Shirley describes..... More