A history of Moor Park, a Palladian house surrounded by a large park in Hertfordshire, England. The estate’s gardens were made famous in the seventeenth century by Sir William Temple, who described them in his Upon the Gardens of Epicurus, one of the key early modern texts on gardening. He..... More
Rare first edition. This booklet without words and only with illustrations resembling Paleolithic cave paintings has been called by scholars “the chef-d’oeuvre of a master” and “the testimony of his [Lebedev’s] artistic maturity” [Fomin, “Novaia estetika detskoi knigi,” p. 12]. The second edition appeared more than forty years later and was accompanied by an art historical commentary that..... More
Extremely rare survival of late Baroque Italian ecclesiastical culture: a mass for the dead bound in a striking funeral binding, with “Death Before a Tomb” on both front and back covers. While individual editions of the missal texts for 18th c. requiem masses (Missae in agenda defunctorum) are uncommon, surviving..... More
A very large-margined example of the first edition of the first printed atlas of Crete (Il Regno of Candia), for many centuries Venice’s stronghold in the eastern Mediterranean and the last significant overseas possession of its once great maritime empire. Complete with 61 engraved maps and plans of the island..... More
An attractive, contemporary hand-colored, very rare (this edition not in the Library of Congress) separately issued US Civil War map focusing on the area of Virginia and Maryland where the earliest battles were fought between the Union and Confederate armies and among the earliest broadside maps to specifically treat the..... More
An unusual, large-scale, 18th-century map providing a striking visual record of a remarkable number of important exploratory voyages of both the Pacific and the Arctic undertaken between the 16th and 18th centuries. Published at the dawn of the great age of transoceanic exploration, Sayer & Bennett’s 6-sheet Chart is an..... More
A fine, separately published, French engraving of Webber's iconic scene of the tragic death of Captain James Cook in Hawaii. The edition was dedicated to Louis-Antoine Bougainville, the French explorer and circumnavigator, who is herein identified as a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. The official account of Cook's..... More
Rare, large-format, separately issued etching on three-sheets by Giuseppe Vasi (1710-82) depicting the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome as seen from the Quattro Fontane. The work is one of four large vedute etchings – two published in 1765 and two in 1771 – incorporating the four patriarchal basilicas..... More
First and only edition – today scarce in commerce – of Cardinal Girolamo Gastaldi’s (1616-80) comprehensive treatise on Rome’s response to the plague of 1656-57. The Tractatus de avertenda et profliganda peste includes Gastaldi’s first-hand account of the epidemic, the text of some 245 edicts, notices and recommendations issued and..... More
Very rare separately issued view of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, etched by Giovanni Maggi (1566-1618) and printed in 1600 by Andrea Vaccari (d. 1627) in honor of a certain Manilio Orlandi (fl. c. 1550s-c. 1602), captain of munitions (capitano di bombardieri) at Castel Sant’Angelo. The etching is unusual among printed..... More
Rare 17th-century seerately issued engraving depicting the newly excavated and constructed Vatican grottoes beneath St. Peter’s in Rome, a print produced by Pietro Paolo Drei after designs by his father, Benedetto Drei. Both father and son served as ‘factors’ for the Reverenda Fabbrica of St. Peter’s and thus played pivotal..... More
Rare, separately issued etching depicting the architect-engineer Domenico Fontana’s (1543-1607) technical plan for the 30 April 1586 lowering of the Vatican Obelisk from its ancient placement on the south flank of Saint Peter’s, whence it soon would be moved to its current location as the centerpiece of the Piazza di..... More
Rare, separately issued etching/engraving commemorating the consecration on 26 September 1586 of the Vatican Obelisk, an event which followed shortly after the dramatic re-erection of the obelisk in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica by the architect-engineer Domenico Fontana (1543-1607) on 10 September. The ceremonial blessing of the obelisk was the..... More
Rare and attractive wall map of ancient Rome by Étienne Du Pérac (c. 1525-1604), his “original and ambitious” (Maier, p. 134) monumental etching on 8 sheets reconstructing the imperial city based on the most up-to-date archeological evidence available at the time of the print’s creation in 1574. Du Pérac’s Urbis..... More
A fresh and bright example of this rare separately issued version of Giovanni Battista Falda’s (1643-78) important 1667 two-sheet plan of Rome (called the pianta piccola), republished during the first half of the 18th century by the Amsterdam publishers Johannes Covens (1697-1774) and Cornelis Mortier (1699-1783). “Falda’s pianta piccola was..... More
Very rare first edition of this Italian-language costume book from post-Revolutionary France, published in Nice in 1796, the very year that armies under the command of Napoleon were invading Italy and while the Haitian Revolution was raging in France’s American colony of Saint-Domingue. The volume’s hand-colored etched title page and..... More
Rare 17th-century seprately issued engraving depicting the newly excavated and constructed Vatican grottoes beneath St. Peter’s in Rome, a print produced by Pietro Paolo Drei after designs by his father, Benedetto Drei. Both father and son served as ‘factors’ for the Reverenda Fabbrica of St. Peter’s and thus played pivotal..... More
Very rare first and only edition of this extraordinary 18th-century folio atlas – entirely engraved and consisting of 26 folding and 2-full-page plates – devoted to the practice of carpentry in the construction of civic, commercial, domestic and princely architecture using the latest “German, French and Italian methods” (f. 1)..... More
Very rare first edition of this early treatise on all aspects of the American dyestuff cochineal, including the most recent discoveries obtained through microscopic observation (by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and others) and illustrated with a folding engraving depicting the cochineal insects themselves and the species of cactus which they inhabit..... More
Rare first and only edition, only state, of a suite of 14 full-page, 16th-century engravings which ingeniously refigure the traditional subjects of Christ’s Passion in a manner at once timely/fashionable and archaizing/antique: The Passio verbigenae, published by Jan Sadeler I (1550-1600) after the designs of Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (c..... More
Extremely rare first and only edition of this 1749 prospectus advertising the production of 2 large globes to be constructed according to the most up-to-date mathematical, geographical and astronomical information. These terrestrial and celestial globes, each measuring 3 feet in diameter, were designed by the newly founded Societé Cosmographique (Cosmographische..... More
One of Des Barres's rarest works, much less often seen on the market than his chart of New York Harbor. A superb example of Des Barres's five profile recognition views that realistically portray what an 18th-century pilot would have seen at various points in sailing into New York Harbor..... More
A rare survival of such an ephemeral piece (unrecorded on ICCU): a large broadside issued during the nine-month occupation of Rome following the fall of the Roman Republic, and proclaiming a complete revision of the running of the city’s public market to prevent “hoarders and scalpers” from inflating food prices..... More
Rare first edition of one of the earliest works on the subject of scurvy by the well-known anatomist, undertaken to survey the incidence of the disease in the ducal territories around Wittenberg, and consequently qualifying as an example of public health medicine. According to O’Malley, its positive result was the..... More
First edition of Galileo’s most important work, the foundation of modern physics. This work was Galileo’s ‘greatest scientific achievement … Mathematicians and physicists of the later seventeenth century, Isaac Newton among them, rightly supposed that Galileo had begun a new era in the science of mechanics. It was upon his..... More