?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CRYPTOGRAPHY.) Porta, Giovanni Battista della. De furtivis literarum notis, vulgo de ziferis libri IIII. Woodcut arms of the dedicatee, Philip II of Spain, on title; 3 elaborate full-page woodcut dials, lacking the volvelles; 20 woodcuts of cipher messages in text. [20], 228 pages. 4to, 208x151 mm, contemporary limp vellum, recased, endpapers renewed; light marginal dampstaining toward beginning. Bookplate of Washington University Libraries (Philip Mills Arnold Semeiology Collection, released). Naples: Giovanni Maria Scoto, 1563
first edition. "Along with Trithemius and Vigenère, Porta is generally regarded as one of the founders of modern cryptography . . . his encyclopaedic work on the subject includes historical sections on deciphering and on cryptography in the ancient world"--Arnold Semeiology Collection 5. Harvard/Mortimer-Italian 397.
