Rare first edition of the first publication on optics (perspectiva), and a crucial text that was studied by Leonardo da Vinci. Johannes de Peckham’s (England c. 1230-1292) Perspectiva communis is illustrated with 77 woodcut diagrams depicting the human eye, the nature of vision, and the eye’s role in the representation..... More
![Panorama do Para em Doze Vistas / Desenhadas Por J.L. Righini / C. Wiegandt]. Joseph Leon RIGHINI](/pictures/thumb/6019.jpg?v=1604760944)
A very rare set of early lithographs, depicting the northern Brazilian city of Belém and the region of Pará after Joseph Léon Righini (c.1820-1884). A native of Turin, Giuseppe (or Joseph) Léon Righini (c.1820-1884) came to Brazil about 1856 as a set designer for the theatrical company of businessman José..... More
Extraordinary, very rare portfolio of 58 fine, original photographs of dredges taken by the noted Dutch photographer Johannes Henk Tollens (1864-1936) during the first years of the 20th century. Apparently produced to commemorate the merger which formed the A. Bos & J. P. Heijblom dredging company of Dordrecht, Holland, the..... More
First German language edition (also the first to be translated from the original Italian of 1611) of one of the earliest printed western works solely devoted to the Philippines by the Jesuit Gregorio Lopez, active in the Philippines from his arrival in May of 1601 until his death (in Manila)..... More
Very rare, with one recorded copy (in Bordeaux), of a detailed and lively account of this French expedition against Jamaica during the Nine Years War, comprising a string of brutal attacks over the summer of 1694 led by Jean-Baptiste Du Casse. Appointed Governor of Saint-Domingue in 1691, Du Casse had..... More
First edition of one of the great intellectual debates of the 16th century, the Elder Scaliger’s wide-ranging critique of Cardano’s de Subtilitate. The work provides a capital example of the amorphous and disputatious nature of Renaissance intellectual life just before the scientific revolution would constrict knowledge to the preserve of..... More
Rare first French edition (first Latin 1618) of this pocket summary of the Lullian art for lawyers, by the Italian born Aristotelian and legal theorist Giulio Pace. Hillgarth groups Pace’s introduction with that of another jurist, Pierre Grégoire, as being exceptional among 17th century interpreters of Lull: both avoid digressions..... More
[Bound with:] AULUS GELLIUS. Noctes Atticae. (Cologne), Eucharius Cervicornus [colophon: for Gottfried Hittorp], 1526. (12) ff., 202 pp., (13) ff. Same woodcut title page as the work above. Elaborate woodcut border on p. 1 incorporates figures of Agrippina and M. Agrippa, with the printer’s device at the foot. Woodcut head-..... More
A group of five booklets, illustrated by Vladimir Lebedev (1891-1967), which were written by Samuil Marshak (1887-1964). Marshak, one of the most (if not the most) famous Soviet children’s writers, and the artist Vladimir Lebedev ran the Children’s Department of the Russian State Publishing House from its inception in 1924..... More
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
Scarce first edition of the complete suite of 8 maps illustrating Ziegler’s highly influential attempt at a scientific mapping of the Holy Land, representing the first atlas devoted to that region (Nebenzahl, p. 10). The work also contains (map 8) the first map of Scandinavia not to be entirely derived..... 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
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
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
Extremely rare first edition of the first French account of the East Indies to appear in print (cf. Lach & van Kley, III: 373), here in an impeccable copy bound in contemporary vellum. The work is that of the French adventurer François Martin de Vitré (c. 1575-c. 1631), who, upon..... More
An attractive and genuine copy of the scarce first edition of the “ most important” of Louis Hennepin’s writings (Howes), his first published work, the first book to print the name “Louisiane,” and the earliest printed account of La Salle’s 1678-9 journey to what is now Illinois. The word “Louisiane”..... More
Extremely rare early 18th-century Italian handbook offering advice to husbands, wives and their priests about how to maintain a happy marriage (or at least how to keep the peace). Il marito e la moglie is the work of the Jesuit Fulvio Fontana (1649-1723), who shaped the manual for the use..... More
Rare first illustrated edition (1603) of Cesare Ripa’s (c. 1560-c. 1622) emblem book. A landmark compendium of allegorical personifications, his Iconologia, is a summa of ancient, medieval and early modern information on such images and a sourcebook of unparalleled richness which continues to guide artists and scholars more than four..... More