BOSSE, Abraham.

Moyen Universel de Pratiquer la Perspective sur les Tableaux, ou Surfaces Irregulieres.Paris, Abraham Bosse, 1653 (1669 issue). 8vo in 4s. With engraved frontispiece, plus engraved part-title and 32 numbered engraved plates printed on 18 leaves (15 printed on both sides), including 2 folding. Contemporary mottled calf with gold-tooled spine and board edges. Red sprinkled edges.

      - (1), (1 blank), "75" [= 78], (1) pp. Brunet I, col. 1127; Cicognara 820; Goldsmith, STC BMC French 1487; Ornamentstichsammlung 4718; DSB II, pp. 333-334; NBG VI, cols. 786-787.First edition, second(?) issue, with the folding plate 32 dated June 1669, of Bosse's practical and beautifully illustrated handbook of perspective and projective geometry, a seminal work in the development of art and architecture. Bosse (1602-1676), draftsman and engraver, worked closely with mathematition Girard Desargues, who presented the now standard theory of mathematical perspective in 1636. It was largely through Bosse's more detailed and extensively illustrated publications (also translated into Dutch and other languages) of Desargues's ideas and sometimes also his texts, that knowledge of mathematical perspective spread to artists, architects and others around the world. Bosse also made original contributions by extending Desargues's work, most importantly in the present work, where he includes not only the relatively simple projection of figures constructed from straight lines, but also the much more difficult projection of and onto regular and irregular curved surfaces.Desargue and Bosse's work on perspective was hotly debated but gained the support of the Académie Royale, which assigned Bosse a teaching position and offered him an honorary membership. There are at least two issues of the first edition, the 1653 issue for which Cicognara calls for 31 numbered plates and an engraved dedication to the Cologne banker and collector Everhard Jabach (1618-1695), and the present 1669 issue with the folding plate 32 and no engraved dedication, but copies are known with 32 plates and the dedication. Our copy exactly matches the collation given in the Berlin Ornamentstichsammlung, with the 1669 plate and without the dedication. The four-page avertissement is followed by a general introduction in 13 chapters (pp. 5-39), the present copy with plate 32 before chapter 12. The letterpress notes to plates 1-31 follow (pp. 41-78, the last misnumbered "75"), preceded by the engraved part-title with a Greek-key border: "Explication par Figures et par Discours, des choses ci devant dites" (dated 1653, like the letterpress general title-page: the note on the last letterpress page, below the errata, notes that the ptrinting was completed on 5 May 1653).With a pencil note indicating this copy came from the 1879 auction of the library of the art historian Marie-Joseph-François Mahérault. A good copy. Binding slightly rubbed, with cracks in the hinges and with the head and foot of the backstrip damaged. First edition of a seminal work on perspective with the 1669 extra folding plate.