Rare mid-19th-century printed textile illustrating an archetypal story of the ideal French mariner, a fisherman’s son named Jacques, who left home as a boy to sail to the Antilles with the merchant marines, met with many adventures on the high seas (shipwreck, pitched battle on deck, encounters with natives), and..... More
Arts & Humanities
Corso elementare di ornamenti architettonici.
Very rare. No US copy. De luxe publication of two illustrated works, published privately by the author, 10 years apart. The 43 full page plates are engraved in different techniques; mezzotint, copper engraving, lithography and line designs all by different artists active in Lombardy at the time. The engravers who..... More
Quelques operations d'Arpentage. Souvenir de la Saint-Libanos, 1857.
French surveying manuscript with twenty delicate watercolor and wash illustrations, presenting solutions to a range of topographic problems. The detailed diagrams note the locations of the requisite graphometers and levels, and the accompanying text includes calculations and formulae. The book includes a range of practical exercises, such as measuring the..... More
Los vinos en las Esposicion de Viena.
Very rare first edition, and likely a pre-journal ‘off-print,’ of this report on the wines presented and judged at the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873, with special focus on the wines of Spain, written by the chief of the Spanish Agricultural Commission. Santos’ work begins with a description of recent..... More
Commércio e navegação da Amazônia e paízes limítrophes.
A rare curious publication on commerce on the Amazon river, between Brazil and the neighboring countries of Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela at the height of the rubber boom with a splendid colored lithographic map of the region, by the customs inspector of the Amazonas at the time, Luiz Rodolpho Cavalcanti..... More
Guide pratique pour les différents genres de dessin.
Third edition, rarely found complete with all original paper samples pasted in, of this copiously illustrated drawing manual from 19th-century Paris, first penned in 1873 on the eve of the rise of Impressionism and intended to help artists working outside of the academy to become familiar with the fundamentals of..... More
ىلودج تأيف. Prix-Courant des Rosiers Livrables en Automne.
A rare ephemeral nursery catalogue in Ottoman Turkish and French illustrated with a full page engraving depicting three different types of rose bushes. The catalog includes a list of 250 types of roses and over 80 other garden plants, including strawberry, raspberry bushes, peonies, lilacs and carnations, which were available..... More
[Painted theater or festival decoration].
Intriguing over-life-size painting of a female allegorical sculpture set in an architectural niche, a rare surviving example of a type of ephemeral decoration most closely associated with the scenography of the neoclassical theater and with the (often elaborate) temporary festival structures especially popular in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth..... More
Out of stock
De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum.
First edition of a collection of Platonic theological texts by the 4th-century BC writer Iamblichus, an instrumental figure in disseminating Neoplatonism. Due to the urging of his patron Cosimo de Medici, whose Florentine circle clamored for Hermetic texts, Marsilio Ficino translated and edited the collection. Aldus’ handsome imprint thus became..... More
Tariffa de pexi e mesure. [Qui comincia la utilissima opera chiamata taripha…].
An exceedingly rare first edition (1503) of the first printed Venetian ‘tariffa’ (Tucci, “Tariffe,” p. 92) published at the height of Venice’s hegemony as a trading power in the eastern Mediterranean and only the 2nd printed ‘tariffa’ overall (see below). The ‘tariffa’ is a comprehensive mercantile manual compiled to bring..... More
Vitruvius Iterum et Frontinus a Iocundo Revisi Repurgatique quantum ex collatione licuit.
Fine copy of the second edition of the first illustrated Vitruvius (1511), here augmented with additional material. Edited by Fra Giovanni Giocondo, this early 16th century version represents the first attempt to establish a critical text of the only surviving ancient architectural treatise in the Western canon. Appearing in 1513, this..... More
In Novum Testamentum ab eodem denuo recognitum, annotationes, ingenti nuper accessione per autorem locupletatae.
First collected edition of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s annotations to his Greek New Testament, containing manuscript marginalia derived from the polymath Sebastian Münster’s Hebrew translation of the Gospel of Matthew. The volume recalls the importance of Hebrew studies among Renaissance humanists and serves as a fascinating reminder of the double role..... More
Il primo libro d'Architettura... Il Secondo Libro.
A tall copy of the richly illustrated first edition, first issue, of the first two books of Sebastiano Serlio’s (1475-1554) famous architectural treatise. Although Serlio’s text would later appear in numerous versions, the woodcuts found here are unique to this 1545 edition from the Parisian press of Jehan Barbé, a...... More
L’Architettura di Leon Battista Alberti tradotta in lingua Fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli ... Con la aggiunta de Disegni.
Rare first illustrated edition – and fine copy – of Leon Battista Alberti’s (1404-72) L’Architettura (De re aedificatoria), the first modern architectural treatise, here in the influential translation of Cosimo Bartoli (1503-72), who was one of the most important proponents of the use of the vernacular in 16th-century technical publications..... More
Libro dell’indulgenze, gratie, e stationi che sono in Roma, concesse alla Confraternita della Immaculata Concettione, Posta nella Chiesa di San Francesco di Brescia. Per esser unita con l’Archico[n]fraternità di san Lorenzo in Damaso di Roma.
An exceedingly rare (with no copies recorded in OCLC) pocket-sized booklet, published in 1580 for the Franciscan-observant Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception of the Church of San Francesco in Brescia. It details the indulgences and privileges, granted under unification with the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception of San Lorenzo in..... More
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
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
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
L’Enrico overo Bisantio Acquistato poema heroico.
The first edition of a twenty-seven-canto epic poem on the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) and Venice's conquest of Byzantium by Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653), a prolific seventeenth-century Venetian writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. The poem has been called an "incisive pro-woman (or proto-feminist) text," marked by female characters "whose behavior..... 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
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
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
Maraviglie heroiche del sesso donnesco Memorabili nella duchessa Matilda marchesana Malaspina, contessa di Canossa…detta la Gran contessa d’Italia.
Rare first edition of this illustrated biography and genealogy of Matilda of Canossa, the medieval “sublime heroine” of papal fidelity, and one of the rare medieval women remembered for her military accomplishments. Intent on dispelling various misconceptions about her as well as honoring her kinsman Alberico Cybo Malaspina, to whom..... More
L’uomo di un Libro; ovvero Libreria intiera in un sol piccolo libro fatto apposta per le persone d’ingegno.
Rare 1718 first Italian-language edition – published in the same year as the French original – of the only book you will ever need. Penned by the cleric Noël Eudes de L’Arche, and here translated by Arione Rochi da Matalona, The One-Book Man, or An Entire Library in One Little..... More