Monte, Guidobaldo del

Mechanicorum liber. Pesaro: for Hieronymus Concordia, 1577 [repeated in colophon]



Folio (12 7/8 x 8 ¾ in.; 328 x 223 mm). Woodcut title vignette of a globe on a lever, numerous woodcut text diagrams, large historiated initials, contemporary marginalia on four leaves; mended tear in lower margin of leaves A4, B3, and D1 touching woodcut frame, some light marginal soiling and spotting, quire M somewhat stained, a few dampstains in last 3 quires. Contemporary limp vellum, manuscript title on spine, remains of ties; soiled.

Adams U-7; Riccardi I, 178; Roberts, Bibliotheca Mechanica, p. 229 (citing colophon date of 1587); DSB 9: 487-488

First edition, "regarded by contemporaries as the greatest work on statics since the Greeks" and "possibly the greatest single influence on the mechanics of Galileo" (DSB).

A nobleman from the duchy of Urbino (1545-1607), Monte was inspector general of fortifications in Tuscany, and friends with the mathematicians Baldi and Commandino. He was instrumental in securing Galileo's first post at the University of Padua. This is his first book "intended as a return to classical Archimedean models of rigorous mathematical proof and as a rejection of the 'barbaric' medieval proofs of Jordanus de Nemore ... which mixed dynamical principles with mathematical analysis" (DSB).