MONTE, Guidobaldo del.

Perspectivae Libri Sex.

      Pesaro Hieronymus Concordia 1600. - Folio [34 x 245 cm] (2) ff., 310 pp., (1) f. Bound in contemporary cartonnato, untrimmed. Tiny wormtrack through title and following leaves; another smaller track affecting partial letter on title and same on a few subsequent leaves; minor staining on a handful of leaves, but generally a fresh and broad-margined copy, retaining original size, excellent. Scarce first, sole edition and unusually genuine copy of "one of the most important contributions to both theoretical and applied perspective" (Breman apud Wiebenson), by the great mathematical physicist and Galileo patron, Guidobaldo del Monte. The book?s outstanding achievement was to establish for the first time the concept of the vanishing point, which has remained the cornerstone of all theories of perspective to the present day. "Guidobaldo?s book rightly came to be regarded as the main source of reference for anyone seriously interested in the underlying geometry of perspectival projection." -- Kemp, p. 91. The work had wide repercussions from the Florentine painter Cigoli to Galileo, who is known to have seen the work in manuscript as early as 1594 and whose treatment of the moon?s shadows in the illustrations to the Sidereus Nuncius have been shown to be influenced by Monte: "Book V on how cones and irregular geometric solids cast shadows and his treatment of the moon and on that and inclined planes would certainly have been read by Galileo." -- Edgerton, p. 226. The sixth book on scenography "ranks in the literature of theater perspective along with Serlio, Sabbatini. and Carini-Motta." -- Breman. * Berlin 4703; Vagneti E ll b 41; Wiebenson III B 12; M. Kemp, The Science of Art, pp. 89ff.; P.L.Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, pp.222-36; Drake, Galileo at Work, 35, 66-7; Edgerton, Art Journal XLIV (l985) 225-48, with further references in n. 9. [Attributes: First Edition; Soft Cover]