Apr 11, 2013 - Sale 2309
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Sale 2309 - Lot 137

Price Realized: $ 8,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
NUNES, PEDRO. De arte atque rationi navigandi libri duo [and other texts]. Woodcut royal arms of Portugal on title; full-page woodcut illustration of compass on a6v; woodcut text diagrams throughout. [12], 201 [i. e., 200]; [2], 56, [2]; [2], 63 [i. e., 62], [2] pages, including blank f6 and final leaf with woodcut diagram on recto. 3 parts in one volume. Folio, 261x189 mm, later limp vellum with thong catches and cord clasps; title stained in outer margin, with old partly scored inscription, 2 rust holes in next leaf not impairing legibility, K1.4 browned, scattered underscoring and partly cropped early marginalia. Signature of Samuel Schwarz dated 1943; bookplate of J. G. Mazziotti Salema Garção; bookplate and embossed stamps of Alfonso Cassuto. Coimbra: António de Mariz, 1573
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Additional Details

Second collected edition, correcting the first published in 1566, of writings by the foremost Portuguese mathematician and navigational theorist of the 16th century. Of Jewish descent, Nunes (1502-78) served as royal cosmographer and taught at Lisbon and Coimbra. The two books referred to in the title are revised and enlarged Latin translations of works in which he first described the geometry of rhumb lines or loxodromes, which originally appeared in his 1537 Portuguese version of the Sphaera mundi of Joannes de Sacro Bosco; Stillwell characterizes the two together as "the first scientific treatise on navigation." Next in this collection is his commentary on the planetary theories of Georg Peurbach, followed by his critique of the solutions proposed by the French mathematician Oronce Finé to the classic geometric problems of squaring the circle, trisecting the angle, and doubling the cube. The volume concludes with his treatise on the duration of twilight, which contains a Latin translation of the tract by the Arab scientist Alhazen on meteorological optics and a description of the nonius, an instrument Nunes devised to increase the accuracy of astrolabes. Anselmo 861; DSB X, 160-62; Houzeau & Lancaster 2478; Leitão 10; King Manuel 142; see Grolier/Horblit 80 and Stillwell 717 and 863-64.