Beschreibung:

PACIOLI, Luca di Borgo Sansepulcro O.M. (c. 1445-1517). Divina proportione . Ed. Antonio Capella. - De l'architectura . - [PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA (1410-92).] Libellus quinque corporum regularium . Italian translation by Luca Pacioli. Venice: Paganino and Alessandro dei Paganini, 1 s t June 1509.
PACIOLI, Luca di Borgo Sansepulcro O.M. (c. 1445-1517). Divina proportione . Ed. Antonio Capella. - De l'architectura . - [PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA (1410-92).] Libellus quinque corporum regularium . Italian translation by Luca Pacioli. Venice: Paganino and Alessandro dei Paganini, 1 s t June 1509. Royal half-sheet 4 o (284 x 202mm). 3 parts in 1 volume. Collation: A 6 (preliminaries), B-D 8 E 1 0 (both works by Pacioli, E10 blank); a-b 8 c 1 0 (Piero della Francesca); [1-11 8 ] (88 WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS with letterpress captions printed on rectos only of 87 plates, captions to the genealogical tree on 8/7 in red, 8/8 blank). 154 leaves. Gothic, roman and greek types. Title printed in red and black with white-on-red woodcut initial D. Numerous woodcut diagrams in the wide margins of the text pages, white-on-black woodcut initials with criblé, knotwork, floral or ornithological ornament. (Slight spotting on title-page, narrow marginal damp-stain towards the end.) Contemporary Italian limp vellum, manuscript title along the spine, (a few small tears in the binding, ties removed). Provenance : Giouachino Gigliotti (contemporary inscription on title, manuscript diagram and calculations in the margin of c6v) -- Acquired from Martayan Lan 1987. FIRST EDITION OF ALL THREE WORKS. The edition as a whole is dedicated to the Florentine gonfaloniere, Pietro Soderini. The first work, dedicated to Ludovico Sforza and composed at Milan in 1497, treats divine proportion, containing a summary of Euclid's propositions on the golden section (Paganini had in fact just ten days earlier printed Pacioli's edition of Euclid) and a study of regular and semi-regular polyhedrons. The second work, on architecture, inspired by Vitruvius and Alberti, was composed later and dedicated to Pacioli's pupils at Sansepolcro, to which he added a treatise on the right proportions of roman lettering. The third work, dedicated to Soderini, is Pacioli's Italian translation of a Latin treatise of geometry by Piero della Francesca, who is unacknowledged. At the Sforza court Pacioli met Leonardo da Vinci who consulted him on matters relating to mathematics; together they fled to Florence after the capture of Milan by the French. Pacioli's writings are of the greatest importance for the study of Leonardo, specifically the plates that form the last part of this book. It starts with 4 architectural woodcuts, followed by 59 woodcuts of solid and open geometric forms after LEONARDO DA VINCI (his designs in the 1498 manuscript now in the Ambrosiana); a woodcut of the genealogical tree of proportion and proportionality copied from the block in Pacioli's 1494 Somma di aritmetica ; a woodcut of the geometric human head after PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA (a drawing from De prospectiva pingendi ); and 23 woodcuts of roman capital-letter forms (O twice, Z omitted) - original to this edition, although rumored in Tory's Champfleury to have been plagiarized from designs by Leonardo - which were intended to instruct stonecutters and architects. VERY FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL CONDITION, in its first binding and with the original set of endpapers. Adams P-7; Isaac 12513; Essling 1645; Mortimer French 346; Sander 5365/6.