La Parola Scritta

This is the editio princeps, or first printed edition, of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, the oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today. The Greek mathematician Euclid compiled the work around 300 BC. In 1482, Erhardt Ratdolt, famous for his beautifully produced scientific books, printed eight works – Euclid’s Elements among them. German Erhard Ratdolt ran a printshop in Venice from 1476 to 1486. Elements is the first printed book to contain geometrical figures. An elegant three-sided wooden block and a white-vine style woodcut initial, several hundred small ornamental capitals, and over four hundred and twenty carefully designed and perfectly printed marginal diagrams, confirm its standing as a landmark publication. The page layout, particularly the first page, is an outstanding example of Ratdolt’s consideration of the overall look and readability of his work. Note the closeness of the type to the initial and the close set of the text page. For the text, Ratdolt used a type called “rotunda” or “round-text.” The Italian writing-masters called this littera moderna to distinguish it from textura, blackletter, type. Ratdolt’s book was based on the standard Euclid of the later Middle ages: Adelard of Bath’s twelfth-century translation from the Arabic, revised in the following century by Campanus of Novara (d. 1296). In his dedication to this edition, Ratdolt suggested that the scarcity of printed mathematical works was due to the problems involved in printing the geometrical diagrams. He then happily announced that he had discovered a method of printing them as easily as the text. He did not elaborate upon this method, but it most likely involved the use of type-metal rule arrangements that could be printed along with the text.

 

Editio princips. Abraham ibn Ezra was born in Toledo, Spain, where he studied astrology, math, grammar, philosophy, theology, medicine and poetry. He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. Ibn Ezra lived at a time when Spain, under Muslim rule, had a highly developed culture influenced equally by Christian, Islamic, and Jewish sensitivities. Ibn Ezra, a Jew, left Spain in middle age and spent the last thirty years of his life traveling throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. His Book of the Nativities was one of eight astrological treatises written by him in 1148. The work describes the planetary influences upon man’s fate at the time of his birth. The University of Padua, near Venice, had a well-established school of astronomy. Peter D’Abano, revered scholar at the school, translated Ibn Ezra’s astrological treatise. D’Abano died in 1316, just before he was to be tried by the Inquisition for wizardry. His body was publicly burnt. Also contained in this edition is an essay by Henry Bates written in the thirteenth century about the astrolabe. Bates was a contemporary of D’Abano’s. Erhard Ratdolt is considered one of the best printers of the incunabula period. He used high-quality paper, printed clearly and legibly, and contracted with scholars to read and correct texts before he printed them. Ratdolt, an entrepreneur determined to make a quality product, often turned to the University of Padua for scholars cum editors.

   

Strabo’s Geographia was the first attempt to collect all the geographical knowledge available and to compose a general treatise on geography.The impact of early printers on their world was extraordinary. The works Aldus Manutius chose to print reflected the great diversity of the interests of his day. He printed Greek and Latin classical texts, grammars, religious writings, secular writings, political and scientific writings, histories, and geographies. But Aldus influenced his world with his craft as well as his scholarly pursuits. His work was recognized for its attractive and readable typography, clean lines and fine design. He designed and cut the first complete font of the Greek alphabet. He helped design a type after Italian cursive script said to be based upon the handwriting of Petrarch. This was the first italic font used in books. Well aware of the power of the press, he was particularly concerned with producing books of small format and low cost for the benefit of students.

 

Nearly unknown today, Ludovico Pittorio was a well-respected poet in his time. His works were specifically recommended to be read by lay confraternities, and contemporary poets dedicated their poetry to him. Georgio Rusconi da Milano (Georgius de Rusconibus Mediolanensis) was an exemplary humanist printer. His editions included a dictionary, but were focused primarily on classical authors like Ovid, Livy, Plutarch, Cicero and Quintilian. He also published works by Boccaccio and Erasmus. Rusconi began working with editors for his publications at least as early as 1503. He sometimes reprinted other printer’s works, without modifying the existing editorship. His works show no consistent standards of textual criticism or linguistic revision, and although he did occasionally correct some errors, he also replaced errors with still others. Later editions from Rusconi show that he often worked closely with contemporary authors and editors, to the extent of having one, Nicolo Degli Agostini, insert a plea to his readers stressing his need to recoup his expenses through sales if he were to continue to publish. In one book printed by Rusconi, Agostini advises the reader to “lend this one to nobody, but…make him buy it.” Rusconi began his printing career at least as early as 1500 when he went into partnership with Manfredus de Bonellis de Monteferrat, and continued printing until 1522, after which his heirs continued his press. His printer’s device was most often the common orb and double cross over his initials (G.R.M). This device is found in most of his publications between 1501 and 1521. Occasionally, Rusconi used woodcut representations of St. George the Dragon Slayer, possibly in part as an illusion to his own first name. It is likely that he borrowed the device from a 1493 edition of the story of St. George published by his soon-to-be partner, Bonellis. At any rate, the image was popular at the time, used by such painters and sculptors as Raphael and Tintoretto. Like many printing houses of the time, Rusconi’s business was a family affair. Two of his brothers published at least one book separately, using the orb and double cross device over their own initials. His sons published under his imprint after his death. Rusconi’s widow, Helisabeth de Rusconibus, continued to print in Venice, using her name on imprints as late as 1527. Rusconi’s house closed in the same year, a victim, as were others, of a prolonged period of political turmoil in Venice. Bound with the author’s Gorrica. Venice, 1520. Some contemporary manuscript markings.

 

Many editions of the Aeneid were printed by Venetian presses in the 1540s. Printed in octavo format, it was quite common for miscellanies from two or more editions to be bound together. This composite contains Books I-V from editions printed in Venice by Andrea Arrivabene, 1540-41; Book VI from an edition printed in Venice by Giovannie Padavano, Niccolo Zoppino, and Federico Torresano in 1544. Book IV of this copy has marginalia in a contemporary hand, including rustic drawings of pointing hands, or, manicules. Four wood engravings illustrate Book VI, which also has an index.

 

Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia (1500 – 1557) was born in Brescia. In 1512 the French army killed 46,000 residents in that city. Tartaglia was severely wounded and, for the rest of his life, spoke with difficulty due to his wounds. The word tartaglia means “stammerer.” Tartaglia was self-taught in mathematics, but by 1516 he was teaching mathematics in Verona. In 1534 he moved to Venice. Tartaglia was a contemporary of Girolamo Cardano. The two had a stormy relationship. Cardano established himself as the world’s leading mathematician after publishing a book in which he revealed Tartaglia’s solution to solving cubics, something he had sworn to Tartaglia he would not do. Tartaglia was also an engineer and surveyor. In these capacities he designed fortifications. He applied mathematics to a study of the paths of cannonballs, work later confirmed by Galileo's studies on falling bodies. Tartaglia made this first translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry into Italian, also the first translation of Euclid into a modern European language. Before this translation, Euclid was taught from two Latin translations taken from an Arabic source. These translations contained errors. Tartaglia based his translation on a Latin translation taken from an uncorrupted Greek text and corrected these mistakes. His commentary on the text was also very useful.

 

 

The son of poet Bernardo Giambullari and the product of a thoroughly humanist education, Francesco Giambullari became secretary to Alfonsa Orsina, the widow of Piero de Lorenzo de’ Medici. Her patronage gained him lucrative positions at the parish church in Careggi and as chaplain of Santa Maria Della Compagnia di Libbiano in Volterra. In 1550, he became librarian at the library of Florence, the first to hold this position. Giambullari’s work on the Florentine language was part of his effort to validate the writings of Dante. He began this work in 1538 and his reputation as a Dante scholar quickly grew. Giambullari was a staunch supporter of peculiar and rather obscure movement to support Florentine culture and language. This treatise on Dante’s “Inferno” includes an alphabet he designed to teach Florentine pronunciation. Giambullari claimed that the Florentine language was not derived directly from Latin, but rather had its roots in Aramaic via Etruscan. Printer “Neri Dortelata” was a pseudonym for one of Giambullari’s friends and supporters of his promotion of modern spoken Florentine based on this theory. Dortelata was particularly creative in his printing of "De’l sito, forma, & misure dello Inferno di Dante," a lecture on the location and shape of Dante’s Inferno. Dortelata, who used pre-existing type sets, used different typefaces to represent the sound of Giambullari’s proposed pronunciation of Florentine.

 

This edition of one of Euclid’s works on the theory of arithmetic was printed in italic by the famous printer and publisher, Antonio Blado. Blado worked in Rome from 1515 to 1567. The basis of italic type was the cursive humanist script and the script of the Papal chancery. Punch-cutter Francesco Griffo worked with printer Aldus Manutius in Venice around 1500, developing an italic. Around 1520, Blado worked with printer Ludovico Arrighi to develop an italic based on the Papal chancery. Blado’s reputation rests mainly on his use of italic types. He influenced the work of the best Italian printers to come. A few years after the publication of this edition, Blado was appointed Tipografo Camerale, or, printer to the Apostolic Chamber. In this edition, a woodcut portrait of Euclid replaces the Blado device of the eagle.

 

Daniel Bomberg was one of the first Christian printers of Hebrew books. Bomberg operated a press in Venice, investing four million gold ducats into his printing house. In 1516, Bomberg printed his first edition of the Rabbinic Bible. At that time there was a growing interest in the Hebrew language and the Old Testament among Christian scholars. Bomberg also recognized a market for Hebrew texts among Jews in Italy as the population grew with an influx of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish exiles. Bomberg’s publications provided the basis for the revival of western Semitic scholarship and studies both in Hebrew and Arabic. In all, Bomberg printed more than two hundred books in Hebrew, known for their outstanding scholasticism, beautiful paper, and typographical excellence. Bomberg’s placement of commentary surrounding the text (a popular early printing style based upon manuscript glosses) in his editions of the Bible influenced the appearance of many other types of Jewish literature. The commentary in Bomberg’s Rabbinic Bible appears to swallow the biblical text. Bomberg’s Bible was edited and accompanied by commentaries by some of the best Jewish scholars, including Rashi, ibn Ezra and ben Asher. Bomberg made use of as many manuscripts of the Old Testament as possible, and influenced many of the Old Testament translations by Reformation-era Biblical scholars. This copy contains several instances of Italian censure, where pens were used to strike out lines of commentary considered blasphemous, and the signatures of those censors. Each censor, in turn, found different passages by the commentators that did not agree with then-accepted New Testament theology. The University of Utah copy was part of a large private collection owned for centuries by one family. Parts of the collection were scattered across Europe after the family fled from Spain. This Bible, however, remained in the family and was brought to Utah from Latvia when family members migrated in 1935. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Alder of Salt Lake City, Nov. 1984.

 

Pietro Bembo was educated by his father, a man of some influence in the Venetian republic. In 1513, Bembo became secretary to Pope Leo X in Rome. After Leo’s death in 1521, Bembo retired to Padua where he pursued his intense literary interests. He wrote Latin lyric poetry and then turned to the vernacular, imitating the poetry of Petrach. A collection of his poetry was printed in 1530. Other works were printed throughout his lifetime. He is most remembered for the love letters that he exchanged with Lucrezia Borgia, although many scholars insist that the relationship was always platonic. He was a main character in Baldasarre Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. This first edition of the first volumes of his letters, published one year after his death was printed with the privilege of Paolo III by the Dorico brothers. At the same time they republished the Rime, printing it in a refined rounded italic which distinguished their work from more commercial Venetian editions. The typeface was designed by Lodovico de gh Arrighi. The second volume of Bembo’s letters was printed two years later in Venice, the third and fourth two years after that, also in Venice.

 

Giovanni Battista Giraldi, an Italian novelist and poet, added “Cinthio,” a nickname, to his name. He is usually referred to by that name. In 1525, Giraldi became professor of natural philosophy at the university at Ferrara, where he was born and educated. Twelve years later he became the university’s chair of belles-lettres. In 1560, he had a literary quarrel with his patron Alfonso II d’Este, resulting in loss of favor. He moved to Mondovi and taught literature there until 1568. He was asked to be the chair of rhetoric at Pavia, where he remained until 1573 when poor health forced him to return to Ferrara, where he died. Cinthio wrote the epic Ercole (1557), and nine tragedies. He also wrote a book of conduct, in the company of Castiglione and others, aimed at educating the courtier, gentleman, or prince in creating an ideal character. He was influenced by the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation in his literary idealogy, but his dramatic works were rather experimental (not to mention gruesome), anticipating modern European theater. His writings were published in many editions and translated into French and Spanish. Some of Giraldi’s published stories were used by Shakespeare as inspiration for the plots of “Measure for Measure” and “Othello.” Speculation is that the latter reached Shakespeare through a French translation. Printer Gabriele Giolito de’Ferrai (c. 1508-1578) was one of the earliest publishers of literature in vernacular Italian. In 1523 he and his father established the “Libraria della Fenice” (Bookshop of the Phoenix), a printing press and bookshop in an area of Venice known as one of the major centers of printing. Gabriele added shops in Naples, Bologna and Ferrara. His produced a mix of classical and contemporary literature, supporting the work of new writers. He dedicated himself to publishing works in Italian rather than Latin and Greek, languages unfamiliar to the non-scholastic community. In 1555, he published a celebrated edition of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, for the first time using the title Divina Commedia. His printer’s device, of which there were several variations, was that of a phoenix emerging from flames atop a globe with his initials, G. G. F. At his death, his sons, Giovanni the Younger and Giovanni Paolo continued this press until 1606.

 

This is the first Italian translation of Aristotle’s Poetics and the second of his Rhetoric, following a translation published in 1548 by Giocomo Fabriano. Demand was so high that the second edition was published only two years after the first. Bernardo Segni (1504-1558) studied Greek and Latin at Padua. He served for many years as a civil servant, working in the service of his maternal uncle, Niccolo Capponis, during which time he gathered information for his best work, Storie Fiorentine dall’anno MDXXVII, al. MDLV. His reputation for fine scholarship brought him to the attention of Cosimo I de Medici (1519-1574), who sent him on many diplomatic missions. Segni’s diplomatic missions included a meeting with the brother of Charles V, Ferdinand, King of Rome. He had reputation for level-headed thinking. He produced a number of translations of Aristotle’s works into Italian, printed by Lorenzo Torrentino in Florence. Bringing the work of Aristotle into print, in translation into the vernacular, no less, was a mission of Renaissance humanism, glorifying ancient works from the Classical world to a new world of rapid and broad dispersal of thought that had long been restricted to the sphere of Roman Catholic church clergy and a small group of academics. In this work, Rettorica, et poetica, Aristotle stated that there are two truths: poetic and historical. Dedication to Cosimo I de Medici. Woodcut historiated initials.

 

Printer Lorenzo Torrentino (1499-1563) was a Dutch-Italian humanist and printer for Cosimo, Duke of Florence. He was born in the Netherlands into a wealthy family. After his studies, he began working for printers and booksellers in Antwerp, Basel, Lyon, Venice and Bologna. There, he worked as a bookseller with Arnoldus Arlenius, a well-known and well-respected Greek scholar. They imported books in Greek and Latin from France and Germany, selling them throughout Italy. They also acted as liaisons between authors and printers. After the death of Filippo Giunta, the great Florentian pressman, printing in Florence deteriorated from an art to a trade. Duke Cosimo I brought Torrentino to Florence to improve the quality of printing in his city. In 1577 Torrentino opened his own press in Florence. He produced nearly two hundred and seventy-five editions. His work was of high quality and his reputation and business flourished. In 1562 he became director of a type foundry. His press was managed by his sons. His careful and artful typographic skills enabled him to contribute to the development of Italian languages. Like the best printers of the era, Torrentino carried equally the roles of editor, translator and commentator. University of Utah copy gift of Ivie J. and Jeanne M. Nielson.

 

The “Ad Herennium” is a treatise on oratory written around 86-82 BC, usually attributed to Cornificius, and sometimes, erroneously, to Cicero. Certainly, Cicero made use of it in his “De Inventione,” but he never made reference to it as one of his own writings. The work was modeled on Hellenistic rhetorical writing and is an interesting early extant example of Latin prose, the oldest known piece of Latin writing to exist in its entirety. It was first printed in Venice in 1470 by Nicolaus Jensen. This is the third Aldus edition of the complete rhetorical works of Cicero, including the anonymous “Ad Herennim,” edited and corrected by Cicero scholar Paulus Manutius. The first Aldus edition appeared in 1546 and was reprinted in 1550. Bound with Ciceronis De officiis libri tres; Cato maior,uel, De senectute: Laelius, uel, De amicitia: Paradox Stoicorum sex;…Printers device on title-page. From the Kenneth Lawrence Ott Collection donated to the Okanagan County Museum, Washington.

 

Paoli Manutii moved his father’s famous Aldine Press from a concentration on ancient Greek texts, his father’s love, to a concentration on classical Latin texts, his own love. In particular, Paoli maintained a lifelong passion for Cicero. He restored the reputation of the Aldine Press by publishing scholarly editions of Cicero’s letters and orations. Much of the correcting and editing was his own. He continued with his work on Cicero by adding commentary. He published his first edition of Cicero’s work in 1540, adding another edition in 1547. This is the first complete edition of Cicero’s orations, published in three volumes. From the Kenneth Lawrence Ott Collection donated to the Okanangan County Museum, Washington.

 

Sebastiano Fausto was a translator and author. In 1532 he produced a well-received edition of Petrarch with commentaries and, later, a vernacular edition of Erasmus’ Apothegms. Dialogo is his treatise on rules for rhetorical translation, based on Cicero’s writings on the subject. Fausto built on Cicero’s theories with commentary. He divided the process of translation into two distinct, tiered elements. First, “Argument, Arrangement and Elocution”: The translator as reader. Second, “Composition, Dignity and Number”: the Reader becomes Writer. Fausto recognized that comprehension and understanding of language is always relative. In the end a structured analysis of any work for translation gives way to a sense of the work as much as the reproduction of words and word order. In other words, a purely scientific translation based solely upon formal characteristics will not fill the bill: Translation also calls for a humanistic approach. Woodcut device on title-page. Bound in contemporary limp vellum with a small, circular coat-of-arms stamped on the front cover. Title in manuscript on spine.

 

Pietro Massolo, born in Venice, was a monk at Monte Cassino. This volume of poetry is dedicated to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, an influential friend of the Manutius family and the Aldine Press. Antonio Manutio (d. 1559) sometimes combined his own imprint with that of the Sons of Aldus. In this book, the title-page has a small variant of the Sons of Aldus device with different details in the elaborate surround. The figure of the dolphin is reversed. Antonio published only a few works, all of which appear to have been strictly of personal interest to him. When Antonio started his press, he required the help of his older brother Paulus (Aldus’s third son). Paulus was unhappy about the imposition, writing that he was “on the verge of madness and bankruptcy.” The last years of Antonio’s life were years of contention between the two.

 

Pietro Andrea Mattioli, the son of a physician, became a physician himself after studying in Padua. He served in the court of Ferdinand I and then Maximilian II in Prague. He published an examination of the origins and treatment of syphilis in which he was one of the first to recommend mercury as a cure. This is the first edition of the Apologia and the second printing of Mattioli’s herbal, which became the standard book on medical botany for European physicians during the second half of the sixteenth century. The second printing was substantially revised and enlarged and includes the woodcuts used in the first printing as well as over one hundred new cuts based on the drawings of Giorgio Liberale. New observations, descriptions of new plants, and its conception and execution as a practical scientific treatise, quickly set this work aside from others in botanical literature. Printed in italic, Roman, and Greek type, with historiated woodcut initials, and a woodcut printer’s device. Brown morocco backed paste paper covers heavy, original boards. A contemporary reader glossed the text with citations to classical and contemporary sources like Hippocrates. A later owner scattered a few German notes throughout and filled the final two leaves with pharmaceutical recipes in German. Past owners included Gottfried Heilius and Caspar Suevus who bought the book from Heilius’ library.

 

Ignazio Danti was born into a family of artists and scholars. His father and grandfather were architects. His father constructed astronomical and surveying instruments. His aunt, Teodora, published a work on Euclid’s Elements and books on art. His brother was a sculptor. As a young man, Danti entered the Dominican order, studying philosophy, theology, mathematics, astronomy, and cartography. When Cosimo Medici I became the second Duke of Tuscany he appointed Danti to teach science at Pisa and directed him to teach his sons mathematics. Cosimo’s eldest son, then thirty, resented the lessons and, after the death of his father, gave Danti twenty-four hours to leave Tuscany. Danti provided maps for Cosimo de’ Medici. He designed and number of astronomical instruments, brought about the reformation of the Gregorian calendar after having detected an eleven-day error, and was appointed Papal Cosmographer and Mathematician by Gregory XIII in 1580. This book was the first to be published in Italy on the astrolabe and contains the earliest known depiction of a woman using a scientific instrument. Woodcut vignette of Medici coat of arms on title-page. Printer’s mark on recto of last leaf.

 

By the middle of the sixteenth century the art of map printing, as distinct from the printing of charts, had reached a high state of development in Italy, particularly in Venice. Tomaso Porcacchi’s popular geography was reprinted in Italy several times until the late seventeenth century. One of the most influential geographical works of the sixteenth century, it describes the islands of Europe, the Pacific, southern Asia, and America, including Hispaniola, Cuba, and Mexico City. The work also includes Zaltieri’s famous delineation of North America (the first to divide Asia from Alaska), a navigator’s chart of the world, and a world map on oval projection after Ortelius, based on the projection used in the 1528 printed edition of Benedetto Bordone's Isolario. The copper engravings made for Porcacchi by Girolamo Porro are considered much superior to the woodcuts in the Bordone edition.

 

Francisco Maurolico learned Greek and mathematics from his father, who had fled to Sicily during the Turkish sack of Constantinople. He was ordained as a priest in 1521 and later joined the Benedictines. He lived his life in Sicily with short visits to Rome and Naples. He was in charge of the fortifications of Messina, and was appointed to write a history of Sicily. Maurolico took upon himself the recovery of classical mathematics, restoring several ancient works from incomplete manuscripts and translating texts by Theodosius, Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, and others. He gave methods for measuring the Earth in one of his books. These methods were used nearly one hundred years later by Jean Picard in measuring the meridian of the earth. He made astronomical observation, in particular a supernova appearing in Cassiopeia in 1572. At the end of his life he published several works, including Opuscula, in which he refined the proof-methods of classical mathematics.

 

Prosper Alpini, physician and botanist, was educated in Padua. For three years, beginning in 1580, he traveled through the Greek islands and Egypt. In 1593, he was appointed Chair of Botany at Padua. Alpini’s works were extremely popular during his lifetime. One of his best known is De plantis Aegypti liber, a description of fifty-seven plants found in Egypt and largely unknown in Europe, written in dialogue form. Alpini was the second European writer to mention the coffee plant in a printed book and the first to illustrate and describe it. The many woodcuts in this printing are more decorative than realistic.

 

Galileo's 1609-10 observations through a telescope boosted scientific discussion throughout Europe, including amongst the Jesuits. They reproduced Galileo’s observations and debated the cosmological order of the universe considering the new data. The debate culminated in the adoption of Tycho Brahe’s system and was made official with the publication of Giuseppe Biancani’s Sphaera Mundi. The Jesuit Biancani fully accepted Brahe’s amendation of the Copernican cosmography which acknowledged the heliocentricity of the planetary system, while preserving the geocentricity of the universe. Biancani wrote his treatise in 1615, but it was not published until 1620, after the Decree of the Congregation of the Index in 1616. Written at the request of his students, Biancani respectfully cited Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler repeatedly. He discussed the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, sunspots, and the new stars of 1572, 1600, and 1604, astronomical phenomena not observed before the development of the telescope. Biancani also presented his own theory of the earth’s tendency toward roundness, wherein natural forces operate to flatten mountains and fill valleys so that the surface would be completely covered by the ocean, as it was in the early formation of the earth. Biancani wrote that God created the earth on the third day as a smooth sphere. God then created the depths of the sea and formed the mountains. One of the many woodcuts in the text is an illustration of the moon, with very inaccurately drawn craters. Another is the first illustration of a thermometer.

 

Born in Pisa in 1564, Galileo studied medicine, mathematics, and philosophy. In 1592 he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics in Padua. His early researches were mainly on motion, particularly of falling bodies, but he became interested in astronomy. He developed a new type of telescope. Much of Galileo’s early work proved the theories of Copernicus, of which the Roman Catholic Church disapproved, placing an injunction not to hold or defend Copernican doctrine. Galileo ignored the injunction with the publication of Dialogo. Galileo’s Dialogo is a scientific and philosophical affirmation of the Copernican heliocentric theory over the earth-centered Ptolemaic theory of the solar system. Galileo deliberately chose to write this work in vernacular Italian rather than scholarly Latin in order to reach a larger audience. That, along with his attractive literary style, and, of course, the topic, made his work a great success, and a threat to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Publication took place between June 1631 and February 1632. The first printing numbered 1000 copies of 500 pages. This printing sold out before the end of September, when it was banned by the Pope. It was this book that brought Galileo before the Inquisition in 1633, where he was forced to recant his views. He was put under permanent house arrest. Dialogo was placed on the Index of prohibited book where it remained until 1835.

 

A treatise on the relationship between music and other arts, particularly poetry. The first part explores vocal and instrumental music, harmony, interval, tempo, the science of proportion and poetic meter. The second part examines music and Latin verse, particularly the epic. The third addresses classical melodic modes and Italian verse (Bembo, Petrarch, Chiabrera, Cavalcanti, Stigliani and others). Milanese poet Teodato Osio examined the emotional effects of music, continuing a philosophy that began at least as early as Plato. Osio was interested in astrology, mathematics, numerology, magic and divination. He valued the effect of music over that of visual arts such as painting and acting. Published one year before John Milton’s visit to Italy, L’armonia is Osio’s only published work. Decorated and illustrated with typographic diagrams in text, nine folding and two small engraved plates printed on stiff paper, engraved architectural and allegorical title-page with Time, Fame, the Muses with instruments and the arms of the dedicatee, Francesco Braganza di Melo. Bound in contemporary vellum over flexible paper boards.

 

This is the first detailed monograph on the anatomy of an invertebrate. Marcello Malphighi was the founder of histology and a renowned microscopist. He dissected and observed silkworms, publishing his findings in this short treatise. Until this publication, it was believed that silkworms had no internal organs. A short time after receiving Malphighi’s solicited manuscript, the Royal Society elected him an honorary member, and paid for the publication of the treatise.

 

Lorenzo Magalotti was born in Florence at a time of political upheavals and religious wars. He studied with Viviani, one of the last pupils of Galileo. Magalotti was one of the first members of the Accademia de Cimento, founded in Florence in 1657 by Ferdinando II de’ Medici and his brother Prince Leopold. During the ten years of the Accademia’s existence he acted as secretary. In 1667, Magalotti left his scientific studies and traveled as a diplomat in the service of the Medicis. Lettere scientifiche, published posthumously, contains essays on the physical sciences, and covers subjects as diverse as light, Galileo, the comet of 1664, odor, languages, the properties of snow and the properties of viper venom. Folding engraved portrait of the author, engraved vignette on title, initials. Original boards. Uncut.

 

Franco Sacchetti’s humorous anecdotes, masterpieces of post-Boccaccian fiction, provide a vivid portrait of life in fourteenth century Florence. Born to a noble Florentine merchant family, Sacchetti had a thorough and intimate familiarity with the lives and manners of his bourgeois peers and was deeply influenced by the writings of Boccaccio, whose death in 1375 roughly coincided with the beginnings of Sacchetti’s career as a writer. This collection gathers two hundred and twenty-three (a few of which are fragments) of what Sacchetti originally planned as three hundred short tales, based on manuscripts that were part of the collections of the library of San Lorenzo and of Lorenzo Gherardini (according to a printed note following the final tale). Two pirated editions appeared with the same imprint and date. A number of typographical differences distinguish the first edition from its counterfeits. The unsigned preface has been attributed to librarian, philologist, and professor of theological history Giovanni Gaetano Bottari. Among the preliminaries is a section entitled “Autori che hanno parlato di Franco Sacchetti e delle sue opera,” a bibliography of early writings related to Sacchetti, and at the end of the second volume is printed a letter from Sacchetti to Giacomo, count of Perugia, on paintings of the saints. The dedication is addressed to Bartolommeo Corsini and is signed by Filippo Umberto. Woodcut architectural device to both title pages, historiated tailpieces, historiated and vignette initials.

 

Universita di Torino was founded in 1404 in the midst of turmoil at the universities of Piacenza and Pavia from the Lombardy wars, attracting professors of theology, the arts, and medicine. By the sixteenth-century, students from more than thirteen nations attended Universita di Torino. Erasmus took a degree in theology here in 1506. The university was plagued by internal and external political pressures, particularly under the dukes Amedo VIII, Emanuele Filiberto, and Charles Emmanuel I, who alternately meddled in the university policies and suspended important financial support. Emmanuel I (1580-1630) channeled most university funding into his wars. Duke Victor Amadeus II, who was so instrumental in restoring Italian autonomy by forging a French-free Piedmont, is credited with reforming the university and with restoring its prestige through this constitution and series of regulations. The university came under state jurisdiction, with an official appointed by the court to direct the administration and censor school texts. This document provides a snapshot of university life and activities in Turin in the late eighteenth-century, covering everything from the administration of the university to the administration of the library and school festivals, holy days, and processions. A letter by Amadeus is reproduced at the end, followed by short statements summarizing the pedagogical focus of the schools of grammar, rhetoric, and humanities. For seventy years, these momentous documents retained their force, and it was only until Napoleon that the university was overhauled along French lines.

 

Biography of Peter the Great written in ottava rima comprising twelve canti by the Venetian nobleman Murari dalla Corte. Printed by the Giuliari of Verona, printers noted by contemporaries for their superior work. The house was founded by the educated Veronese Bartolomeo Giuliari, owner of a fine library, and flourished between 1795 and 1827. Count Murari dedicated his work to Czar Alexander I, in recognition of his humanitarian attitude toward Europe in the aftermath of the Napoleonic conquests. Alexander's full page portrait was engraved after a drawing by Saverio Dalla Rosa (1745-1821) who received orders for portraits from all over the world and lived in Russia for years.

 

Giambattista Bodoni is one of the great typographers and printers of all time. Bodoni was raised in a family of printers. He worked as an apprentice for the Vatican’s printing house in Rome, where he printed a Coptic missal and a Tibetan alphabet. His skill was so respected that he was allowed to place his name on the imprint for these publications. In 1766, the Duke of Parma hired Bodoni to organize a print shop there. Bodoni began by publishing type specimen books, harbingers of great things to come from the shop. European nobility recognized the quality of the printing and soon commissioned Bodoni to print editions of classical works. In 1770, Bodoni started his own type foundry. He became successful enough to open his own print shop, Officina Bodoni, in 1790. His editions were sought for the beauty of their production as much as for their content. He designed more than two hundred typefaces and produced approximately twelve hundred editions. So famous was Bodoni that the cathedral bells of Parma were rung at his death. Le più insigni pitture Parmensi, or, “Famous Paintings of Parma,” was printed in 1809, but not published until 1816, three years after Bodoni’s death, by his widow, the Duchess Maria Luigia. Engravings by Francesco Rosaspina after Francisco Vieira. Printed in Italian and French. University of Utah copy in original binding with gold crest stamp on front and back. From the Kenneth Lieurance Ott Collection donated to the Okanagan County Museum, Washington.

 

Born in Naples, Carlo Blasis moved with his family to Marseilles as a young boy.  His father, who came from a long line of naval officers, was a well-established musician and composer. He gave all of his children musical training. Blasis also studied architecture, drawing, geometry, anatomy, and dancing. As a dancer he made his first public appearance at in Marseilles, followed by a successful tour of provincial towns. While dancing at the Paris Opera he was dismissed after his popularity became more than the  French dancers could tolerate.  From there he went to Milan where he established his career at La Scala. He danced all over Italy and in London. He married Annunziata Ramaccine and danced with her until a leg injury forced him to abandon his career as a performer. In 1837, he was made Director of the Imperial Academy at Milan, where he taught Carlotta Grisi and Fanny Cerrito, both already established stars of the dance. He became famous for his rigorous dance classes. He published his first work, and the first codified analysis on ballet technique, Traite, and continued to write on the technique, theory and history of dance for the rest of his life. He developed the attitude position, based on the statue of Mercury by Geovanni da Bologna. He discovered the technique called “spotting,” which prevented dizziness while performing turns. He taught Enrico Cecchetti, who would later expand Blasis’s technique and would become famous in his own right for ballet instruction that is still used.

 

Father Samuele Mazzuchelli, a Dominican priest from Milano, traveled to the United States in 1828, staying for the next thirty-six years. Arriving only a few weeks after being ordained, he was the only Roman Catholic priest whose mission covered the territory of northern Michigan and all of present-day Wisconsin. He was remarkably productive. He claimed to have baptized fifteen hundred American Indians as well as ministering to Anglo pioneers. He founded thirty parishes and built twenty churches. In 1843, Mazzuchelli returned to Italy to recruit missionaries and secure funds to found a seminary. While there he published an anonymous book recounting his experiences, describing church missions in Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, and Illinois and including a visit to Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. Mazzuchelli wrote that he “desired to see and speak with the heresiarch known for several years in every part of the Republic and even in England.” He visited Joseph Smith in an unsuccessful attempt to convert him. Smith told Mazzuchelli that “he had many times seen God face-to-face and had had more revelations than the Apostle St. Paul.” Claims such as this re-enforced Mazzuchelli’s view of Smith as a “false prophet” and heretic. Mazzuchelli determined that Solomon Spaulding wrote the Book of Mormon and that “the theology of the Mormons is chiefly the work of a certain P. Pratt.” Mazzuchelli cited J.B. Turner’s Mormonism in All Ages, or the Rise, Progress and Cause of Mormonism as a source, a book which also criticized the Roman Catholic Church. University of Utah copy missing map 3.

 

In 1852, Leonetto Cipriani was appointed by the King of Sardinia as that country’s first consul in San Francisco. Cipriani, born into a Florentine family living in Corsica, fought against Austria in 1848 and was imprisoned and then exiled. After resigning as consul, he purchased cattle in the American mid-west with the intention of selling them in California. During his cattle drive, in 1852, he passed through Salt Lake City. There, a converted Sicilian, Domenico Ballo, introduced Cipriani to John Taylor. Taylor introduced Cipriani to Brigham Young. In this book, Cipriani reminisces about the Salt Lake Theatre, where Ballo conducted the orchestra, and conversations with Taylor regarding polygamy and politics. In the 1859 War of Independence he was a member of Napoleon III’s headquarters and served briefly as governor of Romagna.