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“The most spectacular contribution of the book-maker’s art to sixteenth-century science” from the library of Castle Wolfegg

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Astronomicum Caesareum.

APIANUS, Petrus
Ingolstadt,
Peter Apian,
1540
Folio (468 by 310mm). [59] ll. [plus one cancel, see below], COMPLETE. Title-page framed by a woodcut border, on verso of the same leaf woodcut coat of arms of joint the dedicatees Charles V and his brother Ferdinand of Spain. 53 eleven-line and 39 six-line historiated woodcut initials by Hans Brosamer. 36 full-page woodcut astronomical figures coloured by a contemporary hand, of which 21 have a total of 83 volvelles [complete]. 24 have 43 (of 44) silk threads; and 11 (of 12) seed pearls, an additional black and white plate bound at rear. Full-page woodcut arms of the author by Michael Ostendorfer on fol. O6, a fine, unpressed copy in contemporary blind-stamped pigskin-backed wooden boards, spine covered in eighteenth century in sheep, preserved in a full morocco box.
17983

To scale:

notes:

notes:

First edition of "the most luxurious and intrinsically beautiful scientific book that has ever been produced" (de Solla Price), in an extraordinary hand-coloured early issue, as attested by the letterpress cancel slip on fol. K1r, preserved in a beautiful contemporary German binding, with turned wood depressions to accommodate the volvelles on the inside of each board.

The author of this popular textbook in astronomy is Petrus Apianus, astronomer and professor of...

bibliography:

bibliography:

Adams A, 1277; Schottenloher, Landshuter Buchdrucker, 42; Benezit II, 332; VIII, 49; Campbell Dodgson II, 242; DSB I, pp. 178-179; Lalande, p. 60; Gingerich, Rara Astronomica, 14; Stillwell, The Awakening Interest in Science during the First Century of Printing, 19; Van Ortroy, 112; Zinner 1734; D. J. de Solla Price, Science since Babylon, New Haven 1975, p. 104O. Gingerich, Apianus's Astronomicum Caesareum, «Journal for the History of Astronomy», 2 (1971), pp. 168-177; E. Poulle, Les instruments de la théorie des planètes selon Ptolémée, Genève 1980, 1.83; O. Gingerich, A Survey of Apian's Astronomicum Caesareum, in Peter Apian, ed. by Karl Röttel, Buxheim1995, p. 113.

provenance:

provenance:

Provenance: Wolfegger Kabinett (The Library of Castle Wolfegg near Ulm), from the estate of the Princes Waldburg.

Schloss Wolfegg is a Renaissance castle and seat of the princely family of Waldburg-Wolfegg, which still owns it today.

The Wolfegger Kabinett is a large private collection of mostly German graphics from the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Among its most famous pieces were the Waldseemüller map, the Mittelalterliches Hausbuch and the Kleiner Klebeband, all of which were sold in the early twenty-first century.

The Waldseemüller map - the first map to name America, was published In April 1507 in an edition of 1,000 copies by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. The only surviving example was discovered in an album in the Wolfegger Kabinett in 1901 by the historian and cartographer Joseph Fischer. The album was originally the property of Johannes Schöner (1477-1546), astronomer, geographer, and cartographer in the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. Later the family of Waldburg-Wolfegg acquired the map and it remained in their archives for more than 250 years. In 2001 the United States Library of Congress bought the map from Waldburg-Wolfegg family for ten million dollars. It is, therefore, not impossible, perhaps likely, that the present work was also acquired from Schöner by the family of Waldburg-Wolfegg.