?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
MERCATI, MICHELE. Metallotheca. 7 engraved plates, including 2 double-page; 139 text illustrations. [8], xiii-lxiv, 378, [17] pages, including half-title. Folio, 382x254 mm, early 20th-century 1/2 vellum; small stains spattered across E2, dark stains in gutter through second half of volume with traces of mold at very end. Federico Caproni bookplate ("Biblioteca Caproni, Vizzola"). Rome: Giovanni Maria Salvioni, 1717
first edition of the posthumously published catalogue of the collection of rocks, fossils, and minerals assembled by Mercati (1541-93), a physician, naturalist, and superintendent of the Vatican botanical garden. DSB IX, 308-09; Hoover 581; Impey & MacGregor, The Origin of Museums, pages 206-07; Sinkankas 4390.
