Ledermüller, Martin Frobenius | First French edition of Ledermüller’s classic treatise on the microscope

Ledermüller, Martin Frobenius 

Amusement microscopique tant pour l’esprit, que pour les veux… Nuremberg: De Lanoy for A.W. Winterschmidt, 1764, 1766, 1768, and supplement

3 volumes, 4to (252 x 200 mm). Hand-colored allegorical frontispiece to volume 1 engraved by Winterschmidt after Johan Justin Preissler, 152 engraved plates of microscopic sections, views, and apparatus after the author, 148 of which hand-colored, including a hand-colored plate labeled Tab. 1 bound as frontispiece to volume 3, woodcut head and tailpieces; a few marginal stains and creases, primarily marginal dampstaining affecting about 30 leaves in volume 2, very slight offsetting of a few plates onto text leaves, contains supplement, one unlabeled plate bound in text, potentially one of two occasionally found in the supplement to volume 3. Full contemporary sheep, covers with double gilt fillets and floral gilt cornerpieces, smooth spines, second and third compartments gilt-lettered, others with repeat floral motif in gilt, marbled endpapers, edges red; rubbing to extremities, some loss to head and tails of spines, cracking to joints with some loss, a few stains to covers.

First French edition of Ledermüller’s classic treatise on the microscope, with 152 illustrated views of insects, plants, parts of the human body, and minerals.

The supplement bound at the end of volume 3—which is often missing—includes an additional exploration of house flies, but lacks the two accompanying illustrations sometimes found. One unlabeled plate of a fly has been inserted before plate 41, perhaps one of these missing plates.

REFERENCES

Nissen 1156

PROVENANCE

Sotheby’s London, 3 December 1998, lot 78