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Books, Autographs & Prints

Tuesday 20 June 2023 e Wednesday 21 June 2023, 03:00 PM • Rome

139

Geometria - Viviani, Vincenzo

De maximis; et minimis geometrica diuinatio in quintum conicorum Apollonii Pergaei adhucdesiretum ad Serenissimum Ferdinandum, 1659

Estimate

€ 5.000 - 5.500

Sold

€ 6.390

The price includes buyer's premium

Information

Florence Giuseppe Cecchini, 1659. In folio, two books each with its own title page in red and black and woodcut Medici coat of arms, half-title (Demaximis, et minimis libri duo), numerous woodcuts in the text. (8cc), 154pp, 2 intaglio plates; (2cc), 154pp, 2 intaglio plates, (1cc dierrata). Copy in beards, coeval hardcover binding, handwritten title on the spine, sprayed edges, hundreds of small pen corrections by Viviani himself, as he describes in the lines above the Errata, also corrections on printed strips. 

Specialist Notes

The corrective practice of intervening with punctual pen corrections on the specimens, or on the individual print sheets (stop press correction or even pen correction), is attested since the fifteenth century. See the example of De Aetna by Pietro Bembo, 1495. Many editions, especially scientific ones, will undergo this practice, due to the need to intervene with precision on the reliability of the text. The most sensational case is that of Galilei with his Sidereus, where the author's interventions are not numerous but punctual. The same happens for this edition of Viviani, where a series of precise and punctual corrections allow the author to amend the text on key points.
Viviani's faithful reconstruction of the fifth book of Apollonius' Conics, undertaken after the first four books had been discovered and published. Before it appeared, Borelli actually found the text of the fifth book in an Arabic manuscript in the grand ducal library in Florence. This extraordinary manuscript actually included the first seven books of Apollonius, but Borelli kept the contents secret until Viviani could complete its publication. A translation from the Arabic appeared in 1661 under the direction of Borelli, revealing a "substantial similarity" between Viviani's reconstruction and the real

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