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DELLA PORTA, Giovan Battista (c.1538-1615). De refractione optices parte: libri novem . Naples: Horatius Salvianus for Joannes Jacobus Carlinus and Antonio Pace, 1593.
DELLA PORTA, Giovan Battista (c.1538-1615). De refractione optices parte: libri novem . Naples: Horatius Salvianus for Joannes Jacobus Carlinus and Antonio Pace, 1593. 4º (215 x 150mm). Title device, woodcut diagrams and ornaments. (Title with large repair at lower margin affecting imprint, a few letters of imprint in facsimile, browning and waterstaining mainly in earlier part.) 20th-century vellum-backed boards, uncut. Provenance : Libreria Antiquaria Mediolanum (bookseller’s label). FIRST EDITION . The De refractione was an expansion of book XVII of the Magiae of 1589 on the properties of refracting lenses. della Porta ‘did not invent the camera obscura, but he is the first person to report adding a concave lens to the aperture. He also juxtaposed concave and convex lenses and reports various experiments with them. But … he limits his purposes to clarifying the image and to a geometrical explanation of the refracting properties of such lenses. Despite his claim to priority he did not invent the telescope’ (DSB XI, p.97). This copy has the dedication leaf to Ottavio Pisani inserted in quire A. Adams P-1929 (calls for a blank A5 not present here); BL/STC Italian Books p.536; Riccardi I(ii), 309: ‘interessantissima e rara opera’.