?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 60,000 - $ 80,000
EUCLID. Elementa geometriae. Latin translation by Adelard of Bath from an Arabic version of the original Greek; edited with commentary by Giovanni Campano of Novara. White-on-black woodcut border on a2r; typemetal marginal diagrams and woodcut white-on-black decorated initials of various sizes throughout. [137] (of [138]) leaves; lacks final blank. Gothic type, with 2-line heading on a2r printed in red. Folio, 249x212 mm, later limp vellum with spine title in ink, lacking ties, spine darkened, chipped at bottom, portions of vellum missing from fore edge of rear cover; contents washed with light residual marginal dampstaining mainly in second half of volume and slight traces of mold at very end, margins substantially trimmed entering top of woodcut border and some headlines and slightly affecting some diagrams on a2v-a5v, scattered early marginalia, initial leaf loose with crude repair in lower outer corner and old inscription and scrawling on otherwise blank recto, restoration in blank lower outer corner of a2-5, gatherings b and q inside paper sewing guards with b8 loose. Later 19th-century owner's note (copied from Brunet) on front free endpaper. (Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 25 May 1482)
first edition of the foundation text of geometry, the first major mathematical work to appear in print. Ratdolt's production was also notable for his innovative printing of the extensive and often complex geometrical diagrams, a significant typographical achievement influencing the design of subsequent editions and similar works into the 16th century. Of the variants found in the first gathering of this edition, this copy has the 2-line heading in the same type as the text on a1v; woodcut border and initial on a2r, with heading beginning "Preclarissimu[m] opus elemento[rum]"; and headlines on a2v-a9v. The last line of o8r ends with the corrected text "perpendiculares a" instead of "[per]pendiculares a corau." Hain-Copinger 6693; GW 9428; BMC V, 285; ISTC ie00113000; Sarton I, 153-54, and II, 985-86; Thomas-Stanford 1a.
