Beschreibung:

PEURBACH, Georg von (1423-1461)] -- [Oronce FINE (1494-1555)]. La Théorique des cielz, mouvemens et termes practiques des sept planètes ... rédigée en langaige francois. Avec les figures très utiles en leurs lieux proprement inserées. Paris: Simon du Bois for Jean Pierre de Tours, 31 August 1528.
PEURBACH, Georg von (1423-1461)] -- [Oronce FINE (1494-1555)]. La Théorique des cielz, mouvemens et termes practiques des sept planètes ... rédigée en langaige francois. Avec les figures très utiles en leurs lieux proprement inserées. Paris: Simon du Bois for Jean Pierre de Tours, 31 August 1528. 2° (271 x 196mm). Lettres bâtardes, title in large letters with calligraphic initial, last page of text and colophon decoratively arranged, 47 woodcut diagrams by the author, most showing planetary motion, also including an armillary sphere on g6v and h2v, woodcut historiated initials, with the final blank. (Small hole in title not affecting text, some mainly light soiling.) Old vellum, integrating an illuminated manuscript leaf (rebacked, soiled and rubbed). Provenance: François Pomard, bookseller of Moissac, France, bought on 5 October 1582 (inscription on endpaper). FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST TREATISE ON ASTRONOMY IN VERNACULAR FRENCH , with all the woodcut illustrations after the author. Although the book appeared anonymously, Oronce Finé's device ('virescit vulnere virtus') appears on two leaves (a1v and h1r). Moreover, the woodcut with the armillary sphere on g6 is signed with his monogram ‘OF’. Oronce Finé was regarded as one of the greatest scholars in France. François I took him to Piedmont and consulted him about the fortifications of Milan and the siege of Pavia. He occupied the first chair of natural science at the royal college, founded only one year earlier, from 1531 until his death. He also promoted modern cartography and participated in the construction of the astronomical clock of the library of Sainte-Geneviève, where it can still be viewed today. The text is an adaptation of the treatise of Georg Peurbach ( Theoricae novae planetarum ), to whom he owes, together with his pupil Regiomontanus, the renaissance of the study of astronomy. The illustration-cycle comprises 47 woodcuts, all designed by Finé himself, representing diagrams as well as astronomical figures and planetary constellations. Bechtel F-106; Brun p. 188; Brunet II, 1260; Giovanna Grassi, Union Catalogue of Printed Books of 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries in European Astronomical Observatories , Rome, Vecchiarelli editore, 1989, p. 256 (for the 1557 edition printed by Cavellat); Mortimer/Harvard French, 224.