De la sfera del mondo libri quattro … De le stelle fisse libro vno con le sue figure.
[Colophon:] Venice: Giovanni Antonio and Domenico Volpini for Andrea Arrivabene, April, 1540. First edition, rare in such fine condition, of the first printed star atlas, “that is, the first printed set of maps of the stars, as distinct from simple pictures of the constellations such as illustrated the various editions of Hyginus. Of equal importance was Piccolomini’s pioneer use of letters to identify the stars – a practice adopted with some modification by Bayer and, through him, by all modern astronomers” (Warner, p. 200). “In 1540 the Italian astronomer Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–79) published a handbook of astronomy called De le stelle fisse (On the fixed stars) which contained charts for 47 of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, with stars down to 5th magnitude taken from the catalogue in the Almagest. Equuleus was the constellation missed out, because it had no stars bright enough for inclusion – Ptolemy had listed only four stars in it, all of which he described simply as ‘faint’. Although quite crudely drawn, Piccolomini’s set of charts is generally regarded as the first true star atlas, as distinct from the single-sheet hemispheres drawn by Albrecht Dürer and his followers … Whereas Dürer had numbered the stars of each constellation in the order they appeared in Ptolemy’s catalogue, Piccolomini labelled the brightest members with lowercase Roman letters, although with three exceptions: on the charts of Ursa Minor, Perseus, and Cetus the stars are labelled with capitals … Piccolomini’s innovation was a forerunner of the more extensive system of Greek letters that Johann Bayer was to use over 60 years later in his Uranometria atlas of 1603. Piccolomini’s constellations were drawn face-on as they appear in the sky, rather than the mirror-image globe view of Dürer, which made the atlas more readily usable by observers. Four different sizes of star symbol were used, indicating the stars’ brightnesses from 1st to 4th magnitude as estimated by Ptolemy, although in some constellations Piccolomini included 5th-magnitude stars to make up the shape. In all, his charts plotted 621 stars. In the handbook he provided description of each constellation and a mini-catalogue of the 455 brightest stars” (Ridpath). De le stelle fisse was issued with Piccolomini’s tables and his treatise on the universe, De la sfera del mondo, “a masterpiece of lucid and pleasant exposition of cosmography” (Suter, p. 215), and together they formed an enduringly popular account of the heavens. Piccolomini wrote in the vernacular as he was especially concerned to spread scientific knowledge beyond the universities. At least ten Italian editions were published, as well as French and Latin editions. Although not particularly rare on the market, copies such as ours with ample margins are scarce: the borders that frame the woodcuts are printed to the edge of the page and are found cropped in many copies. Born to the same Sienese family as Pope Pius II, Alessandro Piccolomini (1508-79) was a poet, philosopher, and astronomer whose scientific circle included Giambattista Benedetti, Bernardino Baldi, and Francesco Barozzi. He achieved prominence for his Italian translations of scientific and mathematical texts, including a paraphrase of Aristotle’s Mechanica which, according to P. L. Rose, would subsequently influence Galileo. “His De le stelle fisse (Concerning the fixed stars) and its companion volume, De la sfera del mondo (Concerning the sphere of the universe) were among the very first scientific expositions in the Italian language. These appeared at about the same time that vernacular popularisations were being written by Oronce Fine in France, Petrus Apianus in Germany, and Robert Recorde in England. “Although famous as the first star atlas, Piccolomini’s book might be better characterised as the first handbook for stargazers. He wrote it while a student at Padua, expressly for ‘the most noble, most beautiful and most kind lady” Laudomia Forteguerri, so that she could recognise the constellations in the sky and could know their legends and why are their named. The book is particularly notable for its series of woodcut sky maps. “On each of the charts, a series of symbols designate the stars of first through fourth magnitude, as specified in Ptolemy’s star catalogue. Piccolomini omitted stars listed by Ptolemy as fifth magnitude, and he also skipped some of the fourth magnitude once as well. He designated the principal stars with lowercase Latin letters, a, b, c, …, generally, but not strictly, in order of brightness. “Although the mythological constellation figures were not actually drawn, Piccolomini turned the constellations so that the appropriate part of the picture was more or less up; hence, the direction north falls randomly. On the charts north is only approximately marked, with the words ‘parte verso il polo’. Furthermore, here, he arranged each constellation to fit the page, so that the largest – Draco, Navis (now subdivided) and Serpens – are drawn at a fifth of a scale of Canis Minor, Corvus, or Triangulum, the smallest of his constellations. Although each woodcut contains a scale, no coordinate grid was included and no coordinates were given in the tabular listing, which describe the stars solely with reference to the anatomy of the mythological figures … “The publishers of the original 1540 edition, ‘At the side of the well,’ had a 12-year privilege from the Venetian Senate, and they issued three editions using the same woodcuts. As soon as the copyright expired, in 1553, another Venetian publisher put out an edition in which the charts were typeset, rather than reproduced from woodcuts. This version departed rather considerably (and not for the better) from the star placements of the original woodcuts. A few years later G. Varisco and Co. had a new set of wood blocks cut that were used for for five separate editions between 1579 and 1595. Meanwhile, in 1561, when one of the Varisco editions came out, another printer, Niccolo Bevilacqua, produced a different edition with typeset charts. And, shortly thereafter, the one and only foreign edition, with Latin wood blacks, was published in Basel” (Gingerich, pp. 523-533). De la sfera del mondo was also written at Padua and dedicated to Laudomia Forteguerri. It is written from the strictly Ptolemaic and Aristotelian point of view. “A specimen of Piccolomini’s defense of the traditional cosmography is contained in this work. As an example of how a sixteenth-century popular-science writer presents his case in an issue obviously starting to become alive even to the educated general public, this chapter is fascinating. THAT THE EARTH AS A WHOLE DOES NOT MOVE CIRCULARLY; AND FIRST THAT IT DOES NOT MOVE WITH A DIURNAL MOTION OF 24 HOURS, AS SOME BELIEVE. Having seen that the earth as a whole does not move either by approaching or by drawing away from the circumference of the heavens [the preceding chapter had proved that the earth does not move up or down in a straight line], we have yet, in order to conclude its total immobility, to see that it does not move circularly. We must know, then, that Aristotle reports in the second book of De coelo that there were some philosophers called Pythagoreans who said that the heavens do not move, but that to us it appears that they move on account of our being placed on the earth, which, moving circularly, carries us with it. So that it happens to us as customarily happens to those sailing along a river, to whom, because they are standing still in the boat, it seems that the boat stands still and that the trees and the stones on the banks of the river move in the contrary direction to the boat. Thus, if the boat proceeds toward the east it appears to him who is in it that those things along the shore move toward the west. Not otherwise, say those philosophers, does it happen to us in the case of the apparent motion of the heavens and especially of the primum mobile, which in fact does not move but appears to us to be moving toward the west because the earth which carries us moves contrary to the west, completing in 24 hours each of its entire rotations. And such a thing one likewise reads in Plato in the Timaeus where Plato, again, dilates upon this subject. Ptolemy argues against this opinion saying that even if one should grant that thus one could sometimes save the motion of the primum mobile from the east to the west, still one would never be able to save the motions of the seven planets, which … move in the contrary direction to the primum mobile from the west toward the east. And similarly, one would not be able to save eclipses of the sun and moon, and other aspects which the planets continually make among themselves, and many other of their accidents … Besides, if the earth moved with such speed as would be necessary if it were to complete each of its entire rotations in 24 hours, one would have to believe that churches, palaces, towers, and other buildings would be quickly ruined, as we see in the tremors which sometimes earthquakes cause on the earth. Though the shaking-power of their motion is not so great as would be the force of a circular rotation [of the earth] in so short a time, yet often through such tremors cities and entire provinces are ruined. And what more? If the earth moved circularly in the aforesaid manner, it would happen that if somebody threw a stone upward, coming down again it would strike the ground a long distance from him who threw it. One sees something similar in a boat moving along a river. For if they who are in the boat will throw a stone straight up above their heads, that stone coming down again will strike the water very far behind the boat which in the time of the ascent and descent of that stone will have passed forward. The same thing, then, would always occur to whoever threw any heavy object above his head, if it were true that the earth moved so rapidly in a circle. And none the less we see the contrary to be true: the many things which we throw upward, upon their falling down again land at our feet. Besides, if the earth moved with the said speed from the west toward the east, the parts of it which are not covered by water would necessarily have to enter every day under the waters which are in the direction of the east, and then would come out from under those [waters] which are in the west, and consequently everything would be submerged. And if somebody should say that this need not occur because the other three elements: water, air, and fire, move together with the earth with the same speed, I should reply that if this were so, if all four elements moved with the same velocity, it would follow that no one of these movements could be distinguished from an- other or discerned separately. Whereas we see that the motion of the air in the absence of every wind is plainly felt, and especially by him who is on a high hill. Ptolemy says, again, that since it is utterly certain that the highest speed possible to birds in the air, or to darts or arrows shot forth as vigorously as one likes by arm or bow, cannot be judged to be great enough that by continuing for an interval of 24 hours it could encircle the earth in so brief a time, it follows that if the earth moved as fast from the west toward the east as would be necessary if it were to complete each entire rotation in the said time, one would have to admit that, as the speedier, it would leave behind the birds, arrows, and darts, and consequently it would always seem to us as if all the things that move through the air moved toward the west and remained behind us-which we do not see, since one sees birds now flying toward the east and now toward the west according as their impulse carries them. And if, again, somebody should reply that the air moves with the same speed as the earth, and for this reason, since the air carries with it the birds and other things which are seen to move in it, it causes their motion to seem to us to be toward the east, I should reply that if this were the case things which move in the air would have to appear stationary to us, since we should be carried by the earth with the same velocity. And one sees this every day to be false. But such sensible arguments against the circular velocity of the earth are too obvious to need to be dilated upon any further. Nor perhaps should I have cited them if Ptolemy himself had not done so … “One wonders whether Piccolomini ever heard of Copernicus. As far as dates are concerned there is the possibility. The Commentariolus was completed before 1514 and De revolutionibus was published in 1543, the year after Piccolomini left Padua. But Piccolomini never mentions the name Copernicus in his cosmographical or astronomical writings. The idea of the earth's motion he attributes to the Pythagoreans – as did Copernicus himself – Giordano Bruno, and even [in later editions] Galileo. And it is never clear whether he is referring to contemporary Pythagoreans or to the ancient ones cited by Aristotle. Yet the fact that he spent so many pages laboring to refute the earth's motion, starting from his student days at Padua, is evidence that the notion of a moving earth had begun to seep into the intellectual atmosphere at the time and that it had even worked its way down to young students and the cultivated general public for whom he wrote in the vernacular” (Suter, pp. 215-218). “It is evident that the repeated printings of De le stelle fisse and its companion De la sfera del mondo that Piccolomini’s work helped to inform a populace eager to learn about the stars and about astronomy. Perhaps these works even served to build an Italian market for vernacular texts, such as Galileo’s Dialogo in the following century” (Gingerich, p. 534). Edit16 29469; Houzeau & Lancaster 2491; Riccardi I (II), 268-269. Gingerich, ‘Piccolomini’s star atlas,’ Sky and Telescope 62 (1981), pp. 532-534. Ridpath, Alessandro Piccolomini’s star atlas (http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/piccolomini.html). Warner, The Sky Explored, 1979.
4to (206 x 156 mm), ff. [8], 176, [2], general title-page and section-title for De le stelle fisse with woodcut printer's device, both parts with woodcut diagrams in text and woodcut historiated initials, De le stelle fisse with 47 full-page star-charts (numbered I-XXIII, XXV-XLVIII) and tables.
Item #6422
Price: $8,500.00
