Galilei, Galileo | Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari, Rome, 1613, first edition

Galilei, Galileo

Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari. Rome: Giacomo Mascardi, 1613

First edition of Galileo's letters to Marcus Welser of Augsburg, in which he argued that sunspots existed on the solar surface rather than as satellites of the sun. Galileo's text established for the first time that the sun and the earth rotated on their own axes; the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter is also described. This was the first work in which he espoused the theories of Copernicus

The flyleaves of the present copy include a mid-seventeenth-century transcription of nine lines from the poem "Al Signor D. Virgino Cesarini" by the Italian Baroque poet Fulvio Testi (1593–1646): "Sa se quest' ampia mole | Sia com' altri affermò di moto priva | o' pur si giri, e lento il Ciel si giaccia. | Sa qual effetto al sole, | Ch'e' fonte di splendor, da cui deriva | La bella luce al Di, macchi la faccia. | Il misurar procaccia | Delle Medicee Stelle il nuovo vaggio, | Onde il Polo arriccho' d' Ytruria il Saggio." (Does he know if this vast mass | Is, as others have claimed, devoid of motion, | Or if it does indeed revolve, while the heavens lie still. | Does he know what effect on the sun, | Which is the source of splendor, from which derives | The beautiful light of the Day, tarnishes its face? | He seeks to measure | The new course of the Medici Stars, Whereby the Pole enriched the Wise Man of Etruria).

4to (222 x 165 mm). Transalpine issue without the reprint of Christoph Scheiner's letters to Marcus Wellser, title-page with woodcut arms, imprimatur on verso, 38 full-page engravings of sunspots, 5 engraved plates of the Jovian satellites, 9 diagrams in text, 8 of which woodcuts and one engraving, errata, register and colophon on terminal leaf; lacking the portrait, supplied in facsimile, V2.3 shaken, scattered light foxing. Quarter vellum, laminated paper covers; a trifle soiled.

REFERENCES

Buffalo/Sparrow 77; Carli & Favaro 12; Dibner, Heralds 7n; Honeyman sale 5:1402; Riccardi 1.i 509–10, no.6; Rocco/Cinti 43–44

PROVENANCE

"W. il Dott[ore]. | Paioli. 1652" (ownership inscription to endleaf accompanied by a 9-line quotation from a poem by Fulvio Testi and a 13-line note about Galileo) — Robert S. Dunham (acquired from F. Thomas Heller, New York, in September 1949, pencil acquisition note to front pastedown; Sotheby's New York, 11 December 1993, lot 682)