First Edition in Spanish of Euclid's "Elements of Geometry"
Seis Libros Primeros Dela Geometria de Euclides. Traduzidos en lengua Española por Rodrigo Çamorano.
Sevilla: En Casa de Alonso de la Barrera, 1576.
Los Seis Libros Primeros Dela Geometria de Euclides. Traduzidos en lengua Española por Rodrigo Çamorano. Sevilla: En Casa de Alonso de la Barrera, 1576.
Full Description:
EUCLID. Los Seis Libros Primeros Dela Geometria de Euclides. Traduzidos en lengua Española por Rodrigo Çamorano... Sevilla: En Casa de Alonso de la Barrera, 1576.
First edition in Spanish of Euclid's "Elements of Geometry". Small quarto (8 x 5 7/8 inches; 200 x 150 mm). 121, [1, errata] leaves. Title-page with woodcut armorial device. Woodcut geometric illustrations in the text. Woodcut tailpiece and initials. Translated into Spanish by Rodrigo Zamarano. No other auction record of this first Spanish edition is listed on Rare book Hub.
Contemporary limp vellum. Vertical manuscript title on spine. Without original ties. Vellum wrinkled and soiled. Some light dampstaining to lower margin of final 20 leaves not affecting text. Leaf A3 with a tear to top margin, not affecting text. Housed in a quarter orange morocco clamshell. Overall very good.
"Zamarano’s translations of the first six of thirteen books comprise the first printing of any text by Euclid in Spain, and the only edition of this translation prior to 1999. Rodrigo Zamarano was an astrologer, mathematician, and cosmographer to Philip II." (Sotheby's)
“Euclid’s ‘Elements of Geometry’ is the oldest mathematical textbook in the world still in common use today. Its author was a Greek mathematician living about 300 B.C. who founded a mathematical school in Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy I. The ‘Elements’ is a compilation of all earlier Greek mathematical knowledge since Pythagoras, organized into a consistent system so that each theorem follows logically from its predecessor; and in this simplicity lies the secret of its success. Of the thirteen books into which it is divided, nos. 1 to 4 are on plane geometry; 5 and 6 on the theory of proportion due to Eudoxus and its application; 7 to 9 on the properties of numbers; 10 on irrational quantities; 11 to 13 on solid geometry culminating in the proof that there are only five regular solids; books 14 and 15 were added later but are not by Euclid...The ‘Elements’ remained the common school textbook of geometry for hundreds of years and about one thousand editions and translations have been published” (Printing and the Mind of Man 25, citing the 1482 first edition).
HBS 69694.
$17,500.
Price: $17,500.00
Item #69694