Piccolomini | Della sfera del mondo, Venice, 1561, later vellum

Piccolomini, Alessandro

De la sfera del mondo... libri quattro, novamente da lui emendati, & di molte aggiunte in diversi luoghi largamente ampliati. De le stelle fisse... libro uno. Venice: Giovanni Variso, 1561

4to (200 x 145mm.), woodcut printer's device on title-page, with blank leaf *4, woodcut initials and diagrams, a few manuscript notes, eighteenth-century vellum

This edition contains two works of Piccolomini's that were originally issued together in 1540; his treatise on Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology Della sfera del mondo, and the star atlas Delle stelle fisse. Their popularity was shown by the numerous sixteenth-century editions that were printed. Delle stelle fisse was the first printed star atlas, and its novelty was that the constellations were depicted as seen from Earth and with attention to the actual positioning and scale of the stars within the constellation, rather than showing the object or person representing the constellation which was the case with earlier astronomical texts.

LITERATURE:

Edit16 40890

PROVENANCE:

inscription on flyleaf in biro dated 1962