Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, 1593

GALLUCCI, Giovanni Paolo (1538-1621). Speculum Uranicum. Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1593.

First edition of a scientific instrument in book form. With the eight-page user's manual that Houzeau & Lancaster note is usually lost. Named after Urania, muse of astronomy, and introduced by a magnificent allegorical engraved frontispiece, Gallucci’s book, with the help numerous volvelles, charts the movements of the heavenly bodies by the methods of Regiomontanus. Publishing his work soon after the papal bull of 1586 forbidding astrology, Gallucci, a mathematician who tutored the Venetian nobility and a founder of the Second Venetian Academy, asserts the importance of the rational, scientific investigation of the heavens—ushering in the Galilean era of observation-based knowledge. Houzeau & Lancaster 12742.

Folio (412 x 275mm). Title with engraved border by Giacomo Franco incorporating Zenarus’s dragon device, 16 large volvelles, pasted correction slip on A4v, 8 pp. "De Harum Paginarum" bound at rear (margin of title extended at gutter, the moving parts of the volvelles renewed in expert facsimile, light stain to upper corner through second half of volume, repaired wormholes at gutter of last few gatherings). Early vellum (rebacked with portions of original spine laid down, endpapers preserved). Provenance: deleted inscription on title-page – some early marginalia.