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Lot 1001
EUCLID'S ELEMENTS, 1482 EUCLID. FL. 300 BCE. Elementa geometriae. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, May 25, 1482.
25 October 2022, 14:00 EDT
New YorkUS$80,000 - US$120,000
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EUCLID'S ELEMENTS, 1482
EUCLID. FL. 300 BCE. Elementa geometriae. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, May 25, 1482.
Folio (293 x 215 mm). Translated by Adelard of Bath. Edited and with commentary by Campanus of Novara. 136 (of 138) leaves. a10 b-r8 (lacking a1 blank on recto and with printer's address on verso and r8 blank). Incipit leaf (a2 recto) with headline printed in red and a three-quarters woodcut vine border. Over 500 woodcut or typemetal shoulder diagrams, 11- and 5-line woodcut vine initials. Re-stitched with new leather cords and endpapers, loosely inserted in early vellum remboitage, manuscript titling to tail-edge. A tall copy, repaired worming to a2, loss of approximately a dozen words and just touching a shoulder diagram, small repaired tear to a3 with loss of a couple of letters, repairs to lower margins of first 3 leaves, reinforcements at gutter margin in quire r, just touching letters and with associated short closed tears on 2 final leaves, traces of light dampstaining.
Provenance: early manuscript marginalia primarily in Books II-III.
FIRST EDITION OF EUCLID'S GEOMETRY, "THE MOST FAMOUS TEXTBOOK EVER PUBLISHED"(Norman) & THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL MATHEMATICAL WORK TO BE PRINTED.
The Elementa geometriae "exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible" (DSB). Euclid was known in antiquity simply as "the Writer of the Elements." His work was a magisterial compilation of mathematical knowledge to date, including his proof of the Pythagorean theorem (Book I, proposition 47). Books I-XIII are accepted as genuine; Book XIV is attributed to Hypsicles and Book XV to Isidorus Milesius.
Ratdolt's edition of Euclid is one of the most technically ambitious of all Venetian incunables. It is widely acknowledged as a tour-de-force of Renaissance printing, a masterpiece of typographical ingenuity. "An outstandingly fine piece of printing, and the care and intelligence with which diagrams are combined with the text made it a model for subsequent mathematical books. It was the first substantial book to be printed with geometrical figures" (PMM). It yet remains a matter of some bibliographic debate whether the diagrams were achieved with woodcuts or metalcuts. Bühler noted a stop-press correction on o8r; the present copy has the corrected version. The present copy is notably well-margined, without shaving to the all-important diagrams. See Curt Bühler in Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1966, pp 102ff; BMC V 285 (IB. 20513, 20515); Essling 282; HC *6693; Goff E113; Grolier/Horblit 27; GW 9428; Klebs 383; Norman 729; PMM 25; Redgrave, Erhard Ratdolt and his work at Venice (London 1894) 26; Sander 2605; Charles Thomas-Stanford, Early editions of Euclid's Elements (London 1926) la; Stillwell Science 163.
Folio (293 x 215 mm). Translated by Adelard of Bath. Edited and with commentary by Campanus of Novara. 136 (of 138) leaves. a10 b-r8 (lacking a1 blank on recto and with printer's address on verso and r8 blank). Incipit leaf (a2 recto) with headline printed in red and a three-quarters woodcut vine border. Over 500 woodcut or typemetal shoulder diagrams, 11- and 5-line woodcut vine initials. Re-stitched with new leather cords and endpapers, loosely inserted in early vellum remboitage, manuscript titling to tail-edge. A tall copy, repaired worming to a2, loss of approximately a dozen words and just touching a shoulder diagram, small repaired tear to a3 with loss of a couple of letters, repairs to lower margins of first 3 leaves, reinforcements at gutter margin in quire r, just touching letters and with associated short closed tears on 2 final leaves, traces of light dampstaining.
Provenance: early manuscript marginalia primarily in Books II-III.
FIRST EDITION OF EUCLID'S GEOMETRY, "THE MOST FAMOUS TEXTBOOK EVER PUBLISHED"(Norman) & THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL MATHEMATICAL WORK TO BE PRINTED.
The Elementa geometriae "exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible" (DSB). Euclid was known in antiquity simply as "the Writer of the Elements." His work was a magisterial compilation of mathematical knowledge to date, including his proof of the Pythagorean theorem (Book I, proposition 47). Books I-XIII are accepted as genuine; Book XIV is attributed to Hypsicles and Book XV to Isidorus Milesius.
Ratdolt's edition of Euclid is one of the most technically ambitious of all Venetian incunables. It is widely acknowledged as a tour-de-force of Renaissance printing, a masterpiece of typographical ingenuity. "An outstandingly fine piece of printing, and the care and intelligence with which diagrams are combined with the text made it a model for subsequent mathematical books. It was the first substantial book to be printed with geometrical figures" (PMM). It yet remains a matter of some bibliographic debate whether the diagrams were achieved with woodcuts or metalcuts. Bühler noted a stop-press correction on o8r; the present copy has the corrected version. The present copy is notably well-margined, without shaving to the all-important diagrams. See Curt Bühler in Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1966, pp 102ff; BMC V 285 (IB. 20513, 20515); Essling 282; HC *6693; Goff E113; Grolier/Horblit 27; GW 9428; Klebs 383; Norman 729; PMM 25; Redgrave, Erhard Ratdolt and his work at Venice (London 1894) 26; Sander 2605; Charles Thomas-Stanford, Early editions of Euclid's Elements (London 1926) la; Stillwell Science 163.