Agostino. Le diverse et artificiose machine … Nelle qualsi si contengono varii et industriosi Movimenti, degni digrandissima Speculatione, per cavarne beneficio infinito in ogni sorte d’operatione. Co

by RAMELLI

£24,000 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

RAMELLI, Agostino. Le diverse et artificiose machine … Nelle qualsi si contengono varii et industriosi Movimenti, degni digrandissima Speculatione, per cavarne beneficio infinito in ogni sorte d’operatione. Composte in lingua italiana et francese. Paris: ‘In casa del’autore’ . 1588. Folio. Twentieth-century vellum over boards, modern gilt lettering to spine, edges stained red; ff. [16], 338, engraved architectural title page by Léonard Gaultier, engraved portrait of Ramelli by Gaultier to title-page verso, 195 engraved plates numbered I–CXCV (20 of which double-page), text within typographic frames, woodcut initials and tailpieces; recased, extremities lightly rubbed, small marks to boards, small inkstains to lower corner of textblock; 85-mm loss to title with with old paper repair, affecting 4 words of text (supplied in ink facsimile), occasional marginal staining and light offsetting, occasional tiny wormhole to inner margin (touching only double-page plates), but generally a very good, bright copy; ink annotations in a contemporary hand to final verso ( see below ). First edition, printed for the author, of one of the most celebrated illustrated books of the sixteenth century, and ‘one of the most elegantly produced of all technological treatises’ (Norman), written in Italian and French and featuring the earliest known depiction of a bookwheel, our copy including a contemporary, seemingly unpublished French vernacular love poem in manuscript. Born near the Swiss-Italian bo

• Binding: Hardcover

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