VITRUVIUS /RYFF, Walter, ed

De Architectura Libri Decem...nuc in primum in Germania qua potuit diligentia excusi, atque hinc inde schemetibus non iniucundus exornati... FRONTINUS. ...de Aquaeductibus urbis Romae... CUSANUS, Nicolaus. De staticis Experimentis, fragmentum

      4to. [19.5 x 13.5], (26) ff., 314 pp (i.e. 312; pp. 97-98 omitted in pagination, as described by Fowler), (26) ff., including numerous woodcut initials and numerous woodcuts in text. Bound in early stiff vellum, raised bands on spine, with title neatly stenciled. Ownership inscription of Lorenz Vibrosch (?) on title; annotated through book VII with subject headings in what is likely a 17th-century hand. Some toning and light, even browning; iron in ink annotations occasionally bleeding through extreme outer margin, with minor loss to annotation and the blank margin supporting it. Withal, a fresh, unwashed copy, with good strikes of the woodcuts. Scarce first edition of the first edition of Vitruvius published in Germany, illustrated with reduced copies of the woodcuts found in the 1521 Como edition; also containing an edition of Frontinus on aqueducts, the most important ancient treatise on the subject, as well as the second edition (first c. 1500) of an important text by Nicolaus of Cusa containing the first experiment in plant physiology. The first edition of Vitruvius published outside Italy, Ryff's redaction (which preceded his German translation of the work by five years) is his first piece of scholarship in the field of architecture. Walther Hermann Ryff's reputation was cemented by his Vitruvian editions: he "skillfully won himself a readership scarcely familiar even with such terms as !architect' and !architecture'" (Kruft p. 71). Ryff (Rivius, d. 1548) was a humanist-trained doctor and mathematician from Nuremberg, who "had an extensive knowledge of published Renaissance writings on architectural theory. (A year before his translation of Vitruvius he published a substantial volume of texts and commentaries on the subject, in German, from mainly Italian sources)" (ibid p. 470). There are two known states (or issues) of this edition; that offered here contains a preface by Messerschmidt, as opposed to the author.Following the text of Vitruvius are Frontinus's important work on the aqueducts of Rome, and the treatise on "Static Experiments" by Nicolaus de Cusa. "In this he records the famous experiment, antedating Hales 200 years, of weighing earth and seeds, then the resulting plants, their ashes, and the earth in which they had grown" (Osler 7465), and establishing that plants absorb something of weight from the air. This is considered the first experiment in plant physiology in modern times, and incidentally, the first formal proof that air has weight (see H. Viets, "De staticis experimentis of Nicolaus Cusanus," in Annals of Medical History (1922), pp. 115-35 and R. Benedict, "The first experiment in plant physiology," in Science (1939), pp. 411-12). The treatise was first published at Strasbourg about 1500 (Goff N-97); this is its second appearance in print. * VD16 V-1763; Fowler 401; Berlin Katalog 1806; Adams V-906; Cicognara 707; not in Millard, Northern European.