Beschreibung:

RAMELLI, Agostino (c. 1531-after 20 August 1608). Le diverse et artificiose machine . Paris: by the author, 1588.
RAMELLI, Agostino (c. 1531-after 20 August 1608). Le diverse et artificiose machine . Paris: by the author, 1588. 2° (312 x 210mm). Roman (French) and italic (Italian) types. Engraved title within architectural frame by Leonard Gaultier, each leaf of text printed within a border of typographical fleurons, engraved portrait of Ramelli by Gaultier on title-page verso, 194 engravings (174 full-page, 20 double-page) numbered I-CXCV (CXLVIII and CXLIX combined on a single engraving), three signed with the cipher 'JG'. (Some occasional soiling, tiny single wormhole to bottom margin, some small marginal repairs to wormtracks, occasional light waterstaining, I1 with small repair affecting tiny bit of text, some plates substituted with others resulting in alterations to figure numbers, foliation and some text lightly deleted.) 18th-century calf, with Gabriel Le Lieupure Baumont’s name in gilt on covers, spine gilt, marbled endpapers (some restoration, rubbing to extremities, some scuffing). Provenance : Gabriel Le Lieupure Baumont (book collector; binding, inscriptions and annotations) — Signor Colonel La Barre Duparq (book ticket) — Augustin Seguin (bookplate) — Jacobi Piou Museum (bookplate dated 1783). FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE GREATEST ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE 16TH CENTURY, MASTERPIECE OF BOOK DESIGN. Gabriel Le Lieupure Baumont’s highly personalized copy. ‘The plates in Ramelli’s treatise are artistically as well as technologically superb, the bilingual text beautifully printed, and both plates and text surrounded by handsome borders of typographic ornaments. The reasons for this sumptuousness were twofold: first Ramelli had dedicated the book to his patron Henri III; and second, he had previously had several designs stolen from him by a trusted associate (probably Ambroise Bachot, later engineer to Henri IV), who published them in corrupt and mutilated form and claimed them as his own. As a result of this experience Ramelli planned his treatise as a particularly lavish work that would be difficult to counterfeit, and produced and published it from his own house where he could maintain absolute control over the project’ (Norman). The book itself is a very fine example of the exquisite work of late 16th-century French printers and artists. Ramelli’s work had a great influence on later mechanical engineering. Gabriel Le Lieupure Baumont also owned a copy of Vitruvius’s Les dix livres d'architecture (Paris, 1673). Mortimer French 452; Brun, p.280; Norman 1777; Dibner Heralds 173.