Important 16th century manuscript of colonial ordinances governing the daily life of the Indian population, written in Paraguay, signed and dated 1598 by the colonial governor. Hernandarias (1561-1634). Hernandarias was the first person born in the Americas to become governor of a European colony in the New World.The manuscript is..... More
Arts & Humanities
Iconologia.
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
La Noblesse, excellence, et Antiquité de l’Asne. Traduict de l’Italien du Seigneur Attabalippa.
Extremely rare first and only French edition (first Italian: 1592) of this satirical work on the nobility of the ass by one of the major musical theorists of the early Baroque. This is the earliest extant work and by far the most successful by Banchieri (1568-1634). The work ran into..... More
Catalogus Librorum quos Jacobus Gretserus Societatis Iesu evulgavit usque ad Octobrem Anni 1610.
Very rare first edition of one of the earliest “auto-bibliographies” by a Jesuit, the highly learned controversialist Jakob Gretser, one of the most prolific of Jesuit authors. Gretser explains in the preface that he compiled this bibliography of his own works following requests for such a catalogue from people in..... More
The Noble art of Venerie or Hunting. Wherein is handled and set out the Vertues, Nature, and Properties of fifteen sundry Chaces, together with the order and manner how to Hunt and kill every one of them.
Rare 1611 (second) edition of The Noble art of Venerie or Hunting, an important and “beautifully illustrated handbook” treating all aspects of Elizabethan hunting and which “influenced a broad range of readers in early modern England” (Hamrick, 9). The work is largely a translation of Jacques de Fouilloux’s “astoundingly popular..... More
Les Adventures Amoureuse de Theagenes et Cariclee. Sommairement descrite, et representee par figures. Dedié au Roy par Pierre Vallet, son brodeur ordinaire.
Extremely rare first and only edition of the mannerist printmaker Pierre Vallet’s (c. 1575-1657) celebrated illustrated adaptation of Heliodorus of Emesa’s Greek novel Aethiopica (or Theagenes and Chariclea) (c. 250 A.D.?). The volume contains, in addition to its engraved title page, 120 exquisite narrative etchings/engravings, one for each page of..... More
A declaration of the demeanor and carriage of Sir Walter Raleigh, knight, as well his voyage, as in, and sithence his Returne; and of the true motives and inducements which occasioned His Maiestie to proceed in doing iustice upon him, as hath bene done.
Rare first edition, first issue, of the defense of James I’s execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, written by Francis Bacon and with (according to Bacon) “very material” additions by the king himself. The work describes the circumstances surrounding Raleigh’s final voyage to America in 1618 with the purpose of locating..... More
L’Art de Raymond Lullius esclaircy par Julius Pacius... divisé en iv livres. Où est enseignee une Methode qui fournit une grand Nombre de Termes universels, d’attributs, de Propositions & d’Argumens, par le moyen desquels on peut discourir sur tous sujets, amplifier un Discours, trouver des Questions, & les resoudre facilement.
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
SS. Apostolorum et Evangelistarum Icones cum suis parergis.
Very rare first edition of a set of engravings by the Antwerp printmaker Jean-Baptiste Barbé (1578-1649) after the designs of Theodoor van Loon (c.1581-1649), a Flemish painter noted as an early stylistic follower of Caravaggio (1571-1610). The work presents bust-length portraits of the Holy Family, the Four Evangelists, and the..... More
Archisesto per formar con facilità li cinque ordini d’architettura.
Rare first and only edition, first issue, of the Vicenza architect Ottavio Revesi Bruti’s (c. 1585-1648) richly illustrated folio describing his new instrument for accurately constructing scale drawings of the architectural orders without reliance on laborious calculations, a boon both for practical architects eager to avoid difficult mathematics on the..... More
Livre d'architecture contenant plusieurs portiques de diffntes inventions, sur les cinq orders de colonnes.
Rare first edition of this Mannerist suite of designs for triumphal arches and entrances, by a Florentine who had been invited to the French court by Marie de Medici, became royal engineer to Louis XIII, and built grottos and fountains on the grounds of St. Germain-en-Laye and Fontainebleau. He was..... More
Relation de l'origine et succez des Cherifs et de l'Estat des Royaumes de Maroc, Fez, et Tarudant.
Rare first French edition (original Spanish 1585) of Diego de Torres's history of north Africa, a detailed account of the on-going conflict between the Xarifes (the Saadian dynasty), the king of Fez, and the Turks, augmented with his own first-hand observations. Following the expulsion of the Moors from Europe..... More
Sigilla Comitum Flandriae et Inscriptiones Diplomatum ab iis editorum cum expositione historica.
Rare first edition Olivier de Vrée’s (1596-1652) compendium of seals of the Counts of Flanders, a volume notable both for its antiquarian rigor – the work remains a standard reference on the subject – and for its some 300 copperplate engravings meticulously cataloguing the development of seals from the establishment..... More
Il Primo Libro di Lettere corsive moderne.
First edition, and evidently the most complete copy extant, of this calligraphy manuel by a Genoese writing master. Notwithstanding its rich mercantile culture and the educational infrastructure that supported it, few such manuals were published in Genoa. Of five other copies listed by Becker, that described in Marzoli is the..... More
Le meraviglie della penna conchiudenti in diversi modi di scrivere delineati, et intagliati.
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
Manuscript Writing Book with Ornamental Borders.
Elaborate manuscript notebook by a mid-seventeenth-century priest from Milan containing his own aphorisms, observations and quotations modeled after contemporary calligraphy manuals with unusually elaborate and well-executed figurative borders drawn in his hand, and interspersed with anguished outbursts on love’s torment in a later hand. Chiassi’s drawings, modelled from Antonio Tempesta’s..... More
Giardino aritmetico.
Very rare first and only edition of a practical handbook of business mathematics by Giovanni Battista Pisani (born circa 1606), who promises on the work’s title page to help readers “solve the intricate Labyrinth of mercantile accounting.” Pisani - who has an unusual literary touch - dedicates his Giardino aritmetico..... More
Gli Artificiosi et curiosi moti spiritali.
Second edition of Aleotti's Italian translation of Hero's Pneumatics, and like the author's related title on automata, of interest for 17th-century theatrical machinery and festival productions. The mechanical wonders of the school of Alexandria gave the Renaissance Vitruvian architect engineer the sources he needed, for example, for garden automata; for..... More
Le glorie de gli Incogniti o vero gli huomini illustri dell'Accademia de' signori Incogniti di Venetia.
Rare first edition of this portrait book of members of the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti, representing a Who’s Who of the more libertine and belligerent literati of early 17th-century northern Italy: of particular interest to women’s studies and the history of music. In total 106 members are listed each with..... More
La Perspective Curieuse...Divisée en Quatre Livres Avec l’Optrique et La Catoptrique du R.P. Mersenne.
Scarce edition of this important treatise on perspective by the most scientifically rigorous of 17th-century French theorists, of particular interest for its contention that “the illustrations to earlier treatises were often defective” (Millard), thus making it the first work on the subject to treat the problem of didactic illustration in..... More
The Life of Dom John de Castro, the Fourth Vice-Roy of India ... Containing also a particular relation of the most famous siege of Dio.
First edition in English, first issue, of the most famous biography in the Portuguese language. D. João de Castro (b. 1500, Lisbon) was a sailor, soldier, scientist and cartographer. At an early age he became a brilliant humanist, studying mathematics under Pedro Núñez. After fighting at Tangiers and Tunis, he..... More
Abregé d’anatomie, accomodé aux arts de peinture et sculpture, ouvrage très utile et très necessaire à tous ceux qui font profession du Dessein….A Paris, Chez ledit Tortebat, rue Neufve-Sainte-Catherine. Avec privilège de sa Maiesté.
An attractive example of the rare first edition of one of the earliest and most influential anatomical treatises published expressly for the use of artists, with text by the famed theorist, art historian and connoisseur Roger de Piles (1635-1709) and fine, full-page plates engraved after Vesalius by François Tortebat (c..... More
Instructiones ad munera apostolica rite obeunda perutiles: missionibus Chinae, Tunchini, Cochinchinae, atq[ue] Siami accomodatae.
First edition of a rare and fundamental handbook for seventeenth-century missionaries to Indochina. The volume is a formative document by François Pallu (d. 1684) and Pierre Lambert de la Motte (d. 1679), founding members of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris and driving forces behind the establishment in 1665..... More
Logica et Ethica [title label laid to spine] / Cursus philosophiae logica [manuscript title of first section].
Unpublished 17th-century manuscript of formal student notes – likely from the University of Paris – relating to a curriculum of lectures on Logic, Ethics and Moral Philosophy. While first-hand records of university pedagogy from this period are rather rare in any form, the present manuscript is of special interest for..... More
Paradossi per pratticare la prospettiva, senza saperla, fiori, per facilitare l'intelligenza, frutti, per non operare alla cieca. Cognitioni necessarie a Pittori, Scultori, Architetti, ed a qualunque si diletta del Disegno.
First edition and much scarcer than the second edition of 1683. "Troili, a pupil of the quadratura painter Michelangelo Colonna, became scene painter for the Farnese theatre at Parma. Ferdinando Bibiena saw his work there (probably after the artist's death) and absorbed its influence. This original edition of Troili's exceptionally..... More