Description

first edition, title and final leaf with woodcut of the tree of proportion and proportionality in red and black, woodcut initials, some criblé, diagrams in margins, woodcut illustrations including the human head, 3 architectural subjects, the alphabet (without Z) & the suite of polyhedral shapes, the latter after Leonardo da Vinci, some early ink annotations in Italian, washed, trimmed and with some paper repairs (to blank margins and worm-holes) and the lower half of the final leaf (woodcut of tree of proportion) supplied in good facsimile, 2 leaves bound out of order, modern brown calf in period style with clasps, cloth drop-back box, [Mortimer, Harvard Italian 346], folio (trimmed down to a 4to size), Venice, Alessandro & Paganino de Paganini, 1509.

***A professionally restored copy of one of the great renaissance books. Pacioli was born in Borgo Sansepolcro and entered the Franciscan order sometime between 1470 and 1476 where he taught mathematics, first as a tutor and then as a lecturer at the University of Perugia. In 1496 he went to Milan, where he met Leonardo da Vinci, who drew the various figures of polyhedra for this work. He completed the work in 1498 and dedicated it to his Milanese patron, Ludovico il Moro. It was eventually published in Venice in 1509 with the addition of a short tract on architecture and an Italian version of Piero della Francesca's De quinque corporibus regularibus. .