“One of the Most Elegantly Produced of All Technological Treatises”
Diverse et artificiose machine.
Paris: In casa del'autore, 1588.
Le Diverse et artificiose machine. Paris: In casa del'autore, 1588.
Full Description:
RAMELLI, Agostino. Le Diverse et artificiose machine...Nellequali si contengono varii et industriosi movimenti, degni digrandissima Speculatione, per cavarne beneficio infinito in ogni forte d’operatione; composte in lingua Italiana et Francese. Paris: In casa del’autore, 1588.
First edition. Folio (13 5/8 x 8 7/8 inches; 346 x 224 mm.). [16], 338 leaves. Text in French and Italian in Roman and Italic types respectively. Engraved title (*1) within architectural border and with engraved portrait of the author on the verso, both signed with the monogram of Léonard Gaultier (1561-1641). Complete with 194 text engravings numbered I-CXCV (numbers CXLVIII and CXLIX combined as one double-page illustration), twenty of which (numbers XCV, CXLI-CXLV, CXLVII, CXLVIII/CXLIX, CLI-CLIII, CLXXXI-CLXXXIII, CLXXXVI, CLXXXIX-CXCII, and CXCV) are double-page and the remainder full-page. Plates CL, CLI, and CLII signed with the monogram “JG,” which some bibliographers have identified as Jean de Gourmont. The remaining plates are unsigned and have been attributed to an unkown atelier, although Gnudi has made an interesting case for attribution to Ramelli’s disgruntled associate Ambroise Bachot. Four-line historiated and two-line floriated woodcut initials, woodcut tail-pieces and corner ornaments.
Contemporary full calf. Boards and spine ruled and stamped in blind. Blind central device edges sprinkled red. Some wear to binding, including a repair to leather of front board. Leaf uii with a small repair, not touching text or image. Lear A with repair that is just touching the border and a few letters of text on the recto and the border on the verso. Leaf Bb8 with the bottom outer corner renewed, not touching text, all with no loss of text. final figure CXCV with a small repair to bottom margin, not touching image. Some generally foxing and toning and a few insignificant rust spots. Overall, an excellent copy.
“Ramelli’s book on machinery, one of the most elegantly produced of all technological treatises, emphasized and exploited the unlimited possiblities [sic] of machines. For example, the dozens of water-powered pumps and mills shown in his treatise clearly demonstrated that non-muscular power could be substituted for horse- or human-power in any mechanical task requiring continuous or repetitive application of force, and the portrayal of more than twenty types of water pump (including his own invention, the rotary pump) destroyed the notion that there were necessary limits to the configuration or arrangement of a machine. Ramelli’s mechanical astuteness showed itself both in his inventions and in his innovative combinations of fundamental elements. His machines became part of the common stock of mechanical knowledge, and his mechanical treatise remained a primary influence for at least two centuries.
The plates in Ramelli’s treatise are artistically as well as technologically superb, the bilingual text beautifully printed, and both plates and text surrounded by handsome borders of typographic ornaments. The reasons for this sumptuousness were twofold: First, Ramelli had dedicated the book to his patron Henri III; and second, he had previously had several designs stolen from him by a trusted associate (probably Ambroise Bachot, later engineer to Henri IV), who published them in corrupt and mutilated form and claimed them as his own. As a result of this experience Ramelli planned his treatise as a particularly lavish work that would be difficult to counterfeit, and produced and published it from his own house where he could maintain absolute control over the project. He succeeded in preventing any pirated editions and made the book so expensive and difficult to produce that it was reprinted only once, in a German edition of 1620, before the twentieth century” (Norman Library).
Dibner 173. Harvard, French, 452. Norman Library 1777. M.T. Gnudi, “Agostino Ramelli and Ambroise Bachot,” Technology and Culture 15 (1974), pp. 614-625.
HBS 69495.
$27,500.
Price: $27,500.00
Item #69495