Apr 22, 2025 - Sale 2701
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Sale 2701 - Lot 335

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
Regiomontanus [aka Johannes Müller von Königsberg] (1436-1476)
Ephemerides Anno Salutis M.cccc.xciiij. [-M.ccccc.v.], 1494-1506.

Venice: Johannes Emericus, de Spira, 1494.

Quarto, 168 leaves of 194 (lacking first signature [a12], containing prefatory material and general tables; and last signature [o14], containing the Ephemerides for the year 1506); illustrated with 11 woodcut text diagrams; with divisional title pages for each year; bound in full contemporary blind-decorated tanned sheepskin, with rolled tools depicting a hunting scene in the outermost compartment; lacking the four original alum-tawed ties; printer's waste pastedowns from a 15th-century edition of Herolt's Sermones; (joints worn, some chipping with loss; minor worming, original ties lost); housed in custom box; Parisian purchase note dated 16 December 1541 on front pastedown; with a slightly later inscription torn away from general title and later signature of Picquet on front free fly leaf; a remarkable binding; 8 1/4 x 6 1/8 in.

Rare, ISTC lists only one copy in American libraries; Goff Suppl. R109b; HC 13794*; BSB-Ink R-66; GW M37515; ISTC ir00109750.

Regiomontanus, "the most important astronomer of the 1400s," completed this work in 1474 (Quoted from Owen Gingerich's, The Book Nobody Read.) It was the first of its kind, a practical "diary" (from the Greek) of sorts, listing the positions of celestial bodies in the night sky for the use of astronomical research and celestial navigation.

Ex libris Professor, Astronomer, Historian & Bibliophile Owen Gingerich.
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