BIBLIA LATINA.

A single folio leaf (389 x 281 mm.), containing Luke XVII:23–XIX:13 (leaf 230 of volume 2), double column, 42...

[Mainz: Printed by Johann Gutenberg & Johann Fust, c. 1450-1455, not after August 1456.]

A fine single paper leaf from the first substantial book printed with movable type in the western world, now known simply as the Gutenberg Bible or the 42-line Bible.

£100000

MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

Urbis Romae topographia. 

Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

£5500

[COLONNA, Francesco.] 

Poliphili hypnerotomachia, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse ostendit, atque obiter plurima scitu...

Venice, [heirs of Aldus], 1545. 

Second edition, scarcer than the first (also an Aldine, published in 1499), of the most beautiful illustrated book printed in Italy in the fifteenth century.  Known for its fine woodcut illustrations, mysterious meanings, and the cryptic inclusion of Colonna’s name, the Hypnerotomachia...

£24000

CARTARI, Vincenzo.

Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi.

Venice, per Francesco Marcolini, 1556.

First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients. Cartari concentrated on the iconography of the gods, explaining their guises and detailing their several attributes. His book was expressively written to aid artists, painters and sculptors, to understand...

£1100

DIODORUS Siculus. 

Bibliothecae historicae libri XV.  Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum...

Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559. 

Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.  Although Diodorus’s text, published in Greek for the first time by Estienne in the same year, offers a history of the world from its inception until Caesar, it came down...

£2500

VITRUVIUS, and Daniel BARBARO.

De architectura libri decem, cum commentariis … multis aedificiorum, horologiorum, et machinarum...

Venice, Francesco Franceschi & Johann Criegher, 1567.

First Latin edition of Barbaro’s influential commentary, written in collaboration with and finely illustrated by Palladio; ‘the culmination of the Renaissance tradition of Vitruvian studies’ (Cellauri, p. 57 trans.) which ‘served as a foundational text into the next century, as...

£3750

PERUCCI, Francesco.

Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.

Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.

First edition of Perucci’s extensively illustrated account of funeral practices, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector. A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and later the Royal Society, Walter Bowman (1699–1782) travelled extensively over the course of five decades...

£1350

[LOO, Pieter van, (attributed).] 

156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits. 

[Holland, c. 1760–80]. 

A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). 

£110000

LA ROQUE, Jean de.

Voyage de Syrie et du Mont-Liban. Contenant la description de tout le pays compris sous le nom de Liban et d’Anti-Liban,...

Amsterdam, Herman Uytwerf, 1723.

Second edition (first Paris 1722) of La Roque’s account of his first journey to the Arab world, undertaken in 1689 when he visited Syria and Lebanon. The son of a Marseille coffee merchant, La Roque (1661–1745) was a journalist, traveller, and one of the founders of the Académie de Marseille....

£1500

LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.

Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...

Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.

First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).

£475

WISE, Francis.

A Letter to Dr Mead concerning some Antiquities in Berkshire, particularly shewing that the White Horse, which gives...

Oxford, Printed for Thomas Wood … 1738

First editions. A Letter to Dr Mead was the first serious archaeological study of the Uffington White Horse. Francis Wise, Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University and later a friend of Samuel Johnson, contends that the horse, which he eulogises as a work of art, had Saxon origins, because...

£350

[BRISTOL.] 

The Bristol Contest, being a Collection of all the Papers published by both Parties, on the Election, 1754. 

Bristol, ‘sold by the Printing-Office … and by J. Palmer’, [1754]. 

Extremely rare first edition of this Bristol-printed political pamphlet, bound with the first edition of a French work on pyrotechnics used both for spectacle and for war. 

£650

CAPPONI, Alessandro Gregorio, Marchese.

Catalogo della Libreria Capponi o sia de’ Libri Italiani del su Marchese Alessandro...

Rome, Bernabò & Lazzarini, 1747

First and only edition of the catalogue of this remarkable library assembled by Capponi (1683–1746) and containing over five thousand titles, mainly of early Italian literature. The catalogue was compiled by Alessandro Berti with bio-bibliographical notes by Domenico Giorgi. The collection now...

£900

MONALDINI, Venanzio.

Risposta alle reflessioni critiche sopra le differenti scuole di Pitture del Sig. Marchese d'Argens.

Lucca, per il Busdrago, 1755

Not in Cicognara or Schlosser-Magnino.

£120

[POTE, Joseph].

Les Delices de Windsore; or a Description of Windsor Castle, and the Country adjacent, treating, I. Of the Castle....

Eton: Printed by Joseph, and Thomas Pote, 1755.

First edition of a much-reprinted pocket companion to Windsor ‘for the use of Strangers, and other Persons, who visit this our Royal Castle’. It is ‘for the most part an Extract from a larger Work publish’d in Quarto a few Years since’ (Pote’s own work The History and Antiquities of Windsor...

£325

ROUQUET, Jean-André. 

The present State of the Arts in England.  By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...

London, for J. Nourse, 1755. 

First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). 

£19500

BELLONI, Girolami, Marchese.

Del Commercio dissertazione.

Rome, Niccolo and Marco Pagliarini, 1757.

Second edition to be authorized by Belloni, (first, 1750) – the first edition to include the author’s considerations on ‘imaginary money’ (pp. 135-154) – of a work notable for its argument in favour of restrictions on the export of money by the Vatican banker Girolamo Belloni (1688–1760)....

£300

[BASKERVILLE PRESS.]

The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

Third and final edition of Baskerville’s octavo prayer book. The prayers for the Royal Family on cancels B8, C6, and D3 include the name of Queen Charlotte, whom George III married in 1761. This copy also includes the ‘occasional prayers’ which were only printed for part of the edition and are...

£1200

[HILLER, Johann Adam, editor].

Anecdoten zur Lebensgeschichte berühmter französischer, deutscher, italienischer, holländischer...

Leipzig, Lankisch, 1762.

Scarce first edition of Hiller’s two-volume collection of literary, philosophical and historical anecdotes. The editor’s note at the end mentions the contemporary publication of a French work of similar inspiration, and states the editor’s intention to translate it and publish it as a sequel to...

£175

[SCHLOSSER, Johann Albert]. BODDAERT, Pieter.

Epistola ad virum celeberrimum Johannem Burmannum … De Chaetodonte Argo descripto...

Amsterdam, apud Cornelium van Tongerlo, 1770

First and only edition of Boddaert’s description of this Indo-West Pacific fish species found in the Schlosser natural history cabinet. This is the first monograph on this particular fish species. Boddaert substantially redescribes and for the first time illustrates the species. In his description...

£675