EUCLID.

In Fiorenza [Florence]: Nella Stamperia de’ Giunti, 1573

3 parts in 1 volume with continuous signatures, 4to, pp. (viii), 110, (2) blank but for ornament on verso; (16); (18). Without the final blank leaf. Separate title-pages to the second and third parts, the third part printed in double columns with Greek and Latin text. Woodcut vignette on title, woodcut diagrams and ornaments in the text. Some light foxing, small piece torn from lower margin of O4. 19th century red half morocco, marbled sides and endpapers (a few small holes in marbling of upper cover, tips of upper corners worn). Old and unobtrusive library stamp at foot of title, bookplate of David L. DiLaura.

First edition of Egnazio Danti’s annotated translation of Euclid’s Optica and Catoptrica, the first vernacular and the only sixteenth-century Italian edition. To these is appended the first publication of the Capita opticorum of Heliodorus of Larissa, in an Italian translation followed by the Greek editio princeps and a Latin translation. Euclid’s Optica, an elementary treatise on perspective, was the first Greek work on the subject. The Catoptrica, on mirrors, is actually not by Euclid but is probably the work of Theon. Riccardi (I, 391) regards this edition as valuable for the commentary by Danti, who was cosmographer at the court of Cosimo I in Florence. The Capita opticorum of the second-century Greek mathematician Heliodorus is a commentary on, and abridgement of, Euclid’s optics, Ptolemy’s optics, and Theon’s recension of Euclid. It appears in print here for the first time, and is his only known work. “It is important for its allusions to various ancient sources and for giving information on optics as generally understood at the time” (DiLaura). DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 32 and 33.

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