DANTI, Egnatio

by Egnatio Danti

£7,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

First edition of Egnatio Danti s translation of Proclus Sfera and his companion treatise on the use of the sphere, and second edition of Piccolomini s treatise on the proportions respectively of water and dry land of the Earth. According to Graesse there was a 1540 edition of the latter, but from Ziletti s dedication a Venetian senator, it is clear that the book was first published in 1558. Houzeau Lancaster lists a very rare 1571 first edition of Danti s translation and treatise, but it is probably confusing the latter with Danti s commentary upon the translation of Sacrobosco s Tractatus de Spaera made by his grandfather Pier Vincenzo Rainaldi (called Dante after the author of the Divine Comedy ) and first published in 1571. Egnatio Danti (1536-86), referred to as Cosmographer of the Grand Duke of Tuscany on these title-pages, was an outstanding scientist who taught at Pisa and Bologna, drew maps for Cosimo de Medici, designed a number of astronomical instruments (two of which were set up in Santa Maria Novella, Florence), brought about the reformation of the Gregorian calendar after having detected a 11-day error, wrote the first book to be published in Italy on the astrolabe (1569), and was appointed Papal Cosmographer and Mathematician by Gregory XIII (1580). His translation of Proclus Sfera , dedicated to Isabella de Medici, opens with a two-page life of Proclus and contains long and detailed annotations, often flanked by diagrams, for each of the fifteen chapters of th

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.