Girolamo. De subtilitate libri XXI. Nunc demum recogniti atq[ue] perfecti.

by CARDANO

£8,000 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Demonology, Cryptography, and Leonardo’s Flying Machines CARDANO, Girolamo. De subtilitate libri XXI. Nunc demum recogniti atq[ue] perfecti. Basel: Ludovicus Lucius . 1554. Folio. Recased in eighteenth-century vellum over boards, later red morocco lettering-piece, edges sprinkled blue; pp. [xiv], 561, [1], bound without final 2 blank ff.; woodcut printer’s device to title-page, woodcut portrait of Cardano to title verso, numerous in-text woodcut illustrations and diagrams, 5- and 8-line historiated woodcut initials; extremities very lightly rubbed; light, variable spotting, very light dampstaining to outer lower corner of first two books; early interlinear notes and reading marks to contents and to p. 489, occasional early underlining. Second edition, expanded and corrected, of Cardano’s encyclopaedia of sciences, with over one hundred woodcut diagrams and illustrations in the text. Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) was a mathematician, physicist, and astrologer from Pavia in northern Italy. A friend of Leonardo da Vinci and an early follower of Paracelsus, he gained fame for his algebraic studies and numerous inventions, including the universal joint, the combination lock, and Cardano’s rings. Arguably his magnum opus, De subtilitate is a vast and audacious encyclopaedia of the ‘subtle’: those things that elude the senses and pose a challenge to the intellect. A veritable ‘mine of facts, both real and imaginary’ (DSB), the work ranges across an astonishing array of subjects: from

• Binding: Hardcover

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