FINE, Oronce

Quadratura circuli

      FINE, Oronce (1495-1555). Quadratura circuli, tamdem inventa & clarissimè demonstrata. De circuli mensura, & ratione circumferentiae ad diametrum, demonstrationes duae. De multangularum omnium & regularium figurarum descriptine, liber hactenus desideratus. De invenienda longitudinis locorum differentia, aliter quàm per lunares eclipses, etiam dato quovis tempore, liber admodum singularis. Planisphaerium geographicum, quo tum longitudinis atque latitudinis differentiae, tum directae locorum deprehenduntur elongationes.. Paris: apud Simonem Colinaeum, 1544. Collation: Folio: ( 6 A-B6 C-E8 F-H6, 60 leaves. Roman letter, title within a strapwork border, woodcut decorations and diagrams in the text (see below). Condition: 906 x 212mm. Wormhole in title with slight loss in the woodcut border, light foxing and browning, mostly confined to the margins; a clean and fresh copy. Binding: Contemporary limp vellum, manuscript lettering on spine and lower edge. Some light wear, wormholes to lower cover, ties lacking. Provenance: Old circular library stamp in blank margin of title erased; bookseller's ticket of Malvasia, Milan. References: Mortimer 229; Adams F479; Norman 795 (bound with Cardano, Artis Magnae); Renouard Colines pp. 393-395; Morison, Four centuries of fine printing, figs 109-114. First edition. ¶ An interesting collection of treatises on circle squaring and scientific instruments and one of the monuments of French sixteenth-century typography. It comes late in the output of Simon de Colines (d. 1546), 'one of the key figures in the transormation of the printed book... His books show a refreshing awareness of type and related typographic decoration and an overall artfullness in book design' (Joseph Blumenthal, Art of the printed book (1973) p. 15). Oronce Finé himself designed the illustrations and some of the decorations and initials, while other initials are probably by Geoffroy Tory (1480-1533). 'Although he made few original contributions to science, Fine's numerous scientific works helped to popularize the traditional mathematics and Ptolemaic astronomy taught in the universities of his day. In the first two of the five teatises in this collection Fine attempted to find a more precise value of (; the remaining three deal with the geometry of various polygons, teh determination of longitude from lunar data, and the geography of the planisphere' (Norman 795). Woodcuts: The criblé title-border of strapwork ornament is similar in style to that designed by Finé for Colines and first used on the Arithmetica of Martnez Siliceo in 1526. The block for this 1544 border passed to Michel de Vascosan and occurs on his Le Féron of 1555. The ornamentation includes an initial D containing the Dauphiné arms encircled by Finé's name, 'Orontivs', first used in his 1536 edition of Euclid. There is also a criblé dolphin headpiece possibly also by Finé; the Colines criblé initials attributed to Geoffroy Tory; and a second head- and tailpiece in another style. There are 42 woodcut illustrations, mostly diagrams decorated with florets, but including 8 large cuts of instruments. The florets, the birds in the cut on F6v and the sleeping dog on H2r are all characteristic of Finé's illustrations for his own books. Literature: A.F. Johnson, 'Oronce Fine as an illustrator of books', Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1928) 107-109.