Extremely rare first edition of this account of Athens by the Italian adventurer Cornelio Magni, one of very few accounts of that city to appear in the early modern era and one of even fewer to give accurate, up to date eyewitness illustrations of its monuments. “After the fall of..... More
Two rare suites of engravings depicting Pietro da Cortona’s celebrated frescoes in the salone of Palazzo Barberini and the Pitti Palace, then the residence of the Duke of Etro. Cortona was commissioned by Cardinal Francesco to create the artistic centerpiece of the Barberini palace, a fresco which is now recognized..... More
Rare first edition, second issue (?) of this work on planetary astronomy and selected physics problems by the great Bolognese mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri, as edited by his disciple Urbano Davisi. The work first appeared in 1682 under a slightly different title, though as the collation of the body of the..... More
Rare first German-language edition of the Jesuit Christoph Fischer’s (1611-80) comprehensive two-part guide to the management of rural agricultural estates, illustrated with 2 engraved allegorical frontispieces (the meaning of which Fischer discusses in his introduction) and 12 engravings of personifications of the months and here preserved in its fine contemporary..... More
First edition of Charles Perrault’s Cabinet des beaux arts, a fully engraved work which illustrates the decorations of the ceiling of Perrault’s study in his residence in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, Place de l’Estrapade, and not on the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs as has been suggested by some authorities. The ceiling of the..... More
First Gronovius edition, with extensive commentary and extensive illustrations; it remained the definitive edition for well over a century. This classic military history is the work of Ammianus Marcellinus (ca. 325–after 391) a retired soldier. In the surviving section of Rerum gestarum, which covers the years 353 to 378, he..... More
A very attractive large bird’s eye-view of Venice derived from Merian’s 1638 version, updated with the new addition of the Basilica della Salute, which was completed only in 1687. The view is “considered one of the most beautiful and appreciated Venetian maps” (Moretto, 114), and is set within a laurel..... More
The second posthumous edition of Tullia d’Aragona’s collection of poetry, published by Antoine Bulifon, who was “fundamentally important for the diffusion of women’s poetry” (Rabitti, p. 50). One of the most famous Italian sixteenth-century female poet-courtesans, Tullia d’Aragona (1501/1505-1556) has received considerable scholarly attention in the last decades, resulting in..... More
Rare. A resplendent map in a bright, richly colored example. One of the most elaborate works of early mapmaking, it contains 38 insets of the major ports and cities of the Mediterranean. It was the centerpiece of the monumental atlas, the Neptune François: “the most expensive sea-atlas ever published in..... More
A superb example of this striking, large-scale chart of the Chesapeake Bay, the lower waterways of Virginia, and Delaware Bay. It was one of the first charts to fully utilize the pivotal Augustine Hermann map of 1673, even using Hermann’s symbols for the plantations along the Bay and various rivers..... 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
The second edition of a very rare work on military architecture by Giusto Emilio Alberghetti (1666-1755), a member of the famous Alberghetti family, the chief suppliers of guns and cannons to the Venetian Arsenal from 1487 to 1793. The work provides a copiously illustrated survey of defensive and offensive architecture..... More
This was the best, generally available map of its day of Southeast Asia. Dashed lines show the routes of trading vessels throughout the area, including the route that passed through present day Singapore. The much contended Spice Islands are shown in good detail as is the Philippines. The northern coast..... More
An important map in a striking example that provides one of the finest specimens of Coronelli’s robust engraving style. In addition to being a state-of-the-art depiction of China, it also serves a visual compendium of the tools of a seventeenth-century surveyor and cartographer. The precisely engraved instruments decorating the map..... More
A detailed globe gore showing the coast of the Indian Ocean extending from Oman to the southern tip of the Indian Peninsula, including the coasts of modern-day Iran and Pakistan. The Maldives are shown as well. Coronelli is generally acclaimed as the finest early globe maker. Globes, however, were not..... More
First edition, first issue and a magnificent copy of this sumptuously illustrated print Bible, commonly known as Mortier's Large Bible, in which the obsessive tendency of Golden Age Dutch culture to illustrate overwhelms any Calvinist scruple over the sinfulness or inadequacy of pictures in relation to Holy Writ, and in..... More
A remarkably detailed and beautiful plan of Florence and its immediate surroundings, including Fiesole. No fewer than 228 structures are listed and keyed to the plan. In a refreshing departure from the usual subjects that ordinarily flank early maps, this work offers several scenes of cultural events, most being athletic..... More
A richly decorative map, in a superb example, of the northern Latium region of Italy, depicting the area from Rome in the south to Orvieto in the north, and delimited by the Tiber River in the east. It appears that the map was never a regular component of the Jansson..... More
A distinctively decorated map of the Holy Land in a beautiful example. The map's exclusively Old Testament imagery in the cartouche includes the figures of Moses and Solomon. Abraham is also shown in the process of sacrificing Isaac, interrupted by an angel helpfully pointing out a ram hiding behind the..... More
First edition of this handsomely illustrated perspective textbook. Traité de Perspective, the final work published during the lifetime of the controversial and prolific philosopher Bernard Lamy, is notable for its “interesting discussion of perception, etc.” – Kemp, p. 356. Lamy, whose interest in art stemmed from his work on geometry..... More
First edition of Grandi’s demonstration of Huygen’s logarithmic curve. Huygens had first enunciated theorems concerning the logarithmic or logistic curve (y = b ln(x/a) or x = aey/b) in a communication read before the Paris Academy in 1669; Grandi here demonstrates them in print for the first time. Torricelli had..... More
A large paper copy of this scarce final published work of Viviani, representing the culmination of his efforts to reconstruct a lost manuscript by Aristaeus the Elder on the exposition of curves. Nearing the end of his life, Viviani also took the opportunity of the present work’s publication to offer..... 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
First German-language edition and well-preserved copy of the Jesuit’s five-part book on the uses of “practical perspective.” First published in French in 1642 in response to Girard Desargues’ 1636 Manière universelle, in which Desargues advanced a new ‘double-scale’ method of calculating perspective, Dubreuil’s much longer work appeals to the “painters..... More
A most unusual, beautiful, and rare world map-- the only one we have seen on the market that was conceived according to Buddhist cosmology. “It became the prototype of other Buddhist world maps” (Cortazzi). Accordingly, China and India are positioned at the center of the earth, and along with Japan..... More