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BARTOLI Cosimo.
Del modo di misurare le distantie, le superficie, i corpi, le piante, le prouincie, le prospettiue, & tutte le altre cose terrene, che possono occorrere a gli huomini, secondo le regole d'Euclide, & de gli altri piu lodati scrittori.
Venice, per Francesco Franceschi Sanese, 1589
£1850.00
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4to (in eights). ff. 145 (iii) and two fld. plates. Italic letter, some Roman. Title within splendid woodcut architectural border with figures and the arms and devices of Cosimo de Medici, (the dedicatee), medallion portrait of Bartoli in woodcut frame on recto of A2, one hundred and sixty two woodcuts in text of various sizes, some full page, two folding plates, five pages of tables, woodcut floriated initials and ornaments, typographical headpieces. Very occasional light marginal spotting. A very good, well margined copy, crisp and clean, in contemporary vellum over boards, spine with deliberately half-exposed raised bands, tail corners and corner edges a little worn.
Second edition, a near exact copy of the first of 1564, of Bartoli's most important and influential work, treating mensuration, profusely and charmingly illustrated throughout with detailed woodcuts. Bartoli, unusually for his time, lists at the beginning of the work his various sources. His own reputation as a mathematician rests on this work, despite the fact that a close comparison of his text and diagrams and those of the sources he acknowledges prove the book to be little more than a translation. In fairness he did not claim anything more than the merit of having produced a synthesis of contemporary thinking on the subject for the benefit of a vernacular reading public. The most important of these sources is the Protomathesis of Oronce Fine; four books out of six of the 'Del modo di misurare' are based on this. Book one concerns the measurement of heights, depths and distances using instruments such as the quadrant, geometric square, carpenter's square and 'Jacob's staff', mostly translated from Fine's Geometrica with details taken from Alberti's 'Ludi Matematici'. He also added material on the use of the astrolabe not dealt with by Fine. Books two and three are on plane and solid geometry based on Fine but with minor additions from Durer's 'Underweysung der Messung'. Book four is devoted to aspects of cartographical surveying and deals with the construction and use of the compass and is perhaps the most interesting and original of this work. It is partly translated from Gemma Frisius' important treatise 'Libellus de locorum describendorum'. Books five and six are on geometry and arithmetic, again based on Fine's 'Arithmetica' with minor details culled from Rojas Sarmiento and a reference to the table of proportions from Carlo Lenzoni.
Bartoli (1503-1572) was an Italian diplomat and philologist as well as mathematician. He worked and lived in Rome and Florence as secretary to Cardinal Giovanni de Medici and diplomatic agent for Duke Cosimo I. He was a friend of architect and writer Giorgio Vasari, and helped him prepare his Vite for publication. As a member of the Florentine Academy he translated Durer's 'Underweysung der Messung' which was never published, but whose favorable reception encouraged him in the composition of the present work. Bartoli's importance as a synthesizer and popularizer has long been acknowledged. A very good copy of an influential work.
BM STC C16 It. p.73. Riccardi I p. 90. Smith, Rara Arithmetica p. 315. "Although the book is on practical mensuration the libro sesto is upon square cube root." Honeyman, 229 "the fourth book deals with the construction and use of the compass". Mortimer, Italy, 45 (first edition).
L1093
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