DELLA PORTA, Giovanni Battista (c.1538-1615)
Details
DELLA PORTA, Giovanni Battista (c.1538-1615). Magiae naturalis libri XX. Frankfurt: Wechel, 1597. Second edition of the complete text in twenty books, first published in Naples in 1589 and then soon forbidden for a decade. This edition precedes the lifting of the ban, granted in 1598. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the book is ‘De Catoptrici’, a treatise on optics and lens-making which established the technical and practical pre-conditions to Galileo’s observations. See Mortimer, Harvard Italian 400 and Riccardi I(ii) 307 (both the 1589 edition). Octavo (169 x 103mm). Woodcut initials, illustrations and diagrams in text, woodcut head- and tailpieces (leaf 2.2 repaired in lower outer corner, some light browning, one marginal paper flaw). Contemporary vellum, yapp edges with green silk ties, sides with black-stamped borders, corner-pieces and supralibros, paneled spine stamped in black, with ink lettering to the head (one tie perished and one detached, surface a little rubbed). Provenance: Nuremberg, Paulus Bernhardus (supralibros dated 1599).
