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Lot 46

VIMERCATO,GIOVANNI BATTISTA.
Dialogo della descrittione teorica et pratica de gli horologi solari. Ferrara: Valente Panizza, 1565.

22 October 2014, 13:00 EDT
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VIMERCATO,GIOVANNI BATTISTA.

VIMERCATO,GIOVANNI BATTISTA. Dialogo della descrittione teorica et pratica de gli horologi solari. Ferrara: Valente Panizza, 1565.
4to (200 x 150 mm). [6], 171 pp, with 29 full-page woodcuts, 1 large folding woodcut, and 4 tables in text, woodcut arms of the dedicatee, Alfonso d'Este, duke of Ferrara to title, woodcut headpiece and large woodcut initials with city views. Modern limp vellum with loop and ball ties. Occasional very light marginal foxing.
Provenance: Notations to charts in an early hand.

FIRST EDITION. This influential and popular treatise on sun dials went through at least nine editions and was reprinted as late as 1672. Zeitlinger, Bibliotheca Chemico-Mathematica (1921), listed the 1672 edition and noted: "All editions of this work, whch was unknown to Lalande, Poggendorff, and Brunet, are now very rare." This, the first of two 1565 editions is probably the true first edition, as a 1557 edition that Riccardi cites but never saw is likely a ghost. "Panizza (the publisher) placed an extra leaf at the front of the volume with an address to the reader complaining of the treatment he received from the author. It had been agreed that Panizza would write the dedication, but when the printing was finished except for the preliminary leaves, the author appeared, carried off some thirty copies, and had another printer complete them for him with his own dedication (it is possible that the 1557 edition that Riccardi cites is actually this edition predated in the author's stolen copies)" (Mortimer Italian 16th Century Books 541, reproducing two of the illustrations). Adams Cambridge V807; Graesse v 6, pt 2, p 325.



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