Aguilon (François d'). Opticorum libri sex, 1st edition, Antwerp: ex officina Plantiniana, 1613, half-title, engraved allegorical title-page and 6 headpieces after Peter Paul Rubens by Theodor Galle one engraved and numerous woodcut diagrams in the text, publisher's woodcut device to final leaf, browning, smudge to half-title, light worming to head of gutter from quire 3* to S, small worm-hole in lower margins from quire A, becoming more extensive from quire 3C to 3I and reducing thereafter, bookplate of Michael Jaffé, 20th-century mottled half calf, folio (34.2 x 22.5 cm) (Qty: 1) Provenance: 1) 'Da livraria do Marques de Alegrete, artes ciencia, CX6' (early ink inscription to half-title verso); the marquessate of Alegrete is a title in the Portuguese nobility created in 1687 by Pedro II. 2) Michael Jaffé CBE (1923-1997), English art historian and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (bookplate). Jaffé wrote three substantial books on Rubens: Rubens (1967); Rubens and Italy (1977); and Rubens: catalogo completo (1989). Becker 6; DSB I p. 81; Judson & Van de Velde, Book Illustrations and Title-Pages (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard XXI), 10; Norman 25. D'Aguilon's 'master treatise on optics' (DSB) is a synthesis of the works of Euclid, Roger Bacon, Kepler, Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), and others. 'A remarkable collaboration between the scientific, printing and visual arts ... Aguilon's work ... contained the first discussion of the stereographic process (which Aguilon named), one of the earliest presentations of the red-yellow-blue colour system, an original theory of binocular vision and the first published description of Aguilon's Horopter' (Norman). It is also the first published book with a title-page designed by Rubens, and is considered 'a landmark of baroque book illustration' (Becker); Rubens's title-page combines allegory, myth and architecture in a symbolic representation of optics not only as the queen of mathematical sciences, but also as a form of spiritual knowledge (see Bertram, Elevating Optics: The Title Page by Peter Paul Rubens of Franciscus Aguilonius’s Opticorum Libri Sex (1613) in its Historical Context, Explorations in Renaissance Culture (online), volume 42, number 2, 2016).
Aguilon (François d'). Opticorum libri sex, 1st edition, Antwerp: ex officina Plantiniana, 1613, half-title, engraved allegorical title-page and 6 headpieces after Peter Paul Rubens by Theodor Galle one engraved and numerous woodcut diagrams in the text, publisher's woodcut device to final leaf, browning, smudge to half-title, light worming to head of gutter from quire 3* to S, small worm-hole in lower margins from quire A, becoming more extensive from quire 3C to 3I and reducing thereafter, bookplate of Michael Jaffé, 20th-century mottled half calf, folio (34.2 x 22.5 cm) (Qty: 1) Provenance: 1) 'Da livraria do Marques de Alegrete, artes ciencia, CX6' (early ink inscription to half-title verso); the marquessate of Alegrete is a title in the Portuguese nobility created in 1687 by Pedro II. 2) Michael Jaffé CBE (1923-1997), English art historian and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (bookplate). Jaffé wrote three substantial books on Rubens: Rubens (1967); Rubens and Italy (1977); and Rubens: catalogo completo (1989). Becker 6; DSB I p. 81; Judson & Van de Velde, Book Illustrations and Title-Pages (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard XXI), 10; Norman 25. D'Aguilon's 'master treatise on optics' (DSB) is a synthesis of the works of Euclid, Roger Bacon, Kepler, Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), and others. 'A remarkable collaboration between the scientific, printing and visual arts ... Aguilon's work ... contained the first discussion of the stereographic process (which Aguilon named), one of the earliest presentations of the red-yellow-blue colour system, an original theory of binocular vision and the first published description of Aguilon's Horopter' (Norman). It is also the first published book with a title-page designed by Rubens, and is considered 'a landmark of baroque book illustration' (Becker); Rubens's title-page combines allegory, myth and architecture in a symbolic representation of optics not only as the queen of mathematical sciences, but also as a form of spiritual knowledge (see Bertram, Elevating Optics: The Title Page by Peter Paul Rubens of Franciscus Aguilonius’s Opticorum Libri Sex (1613) in its Historical Context, Explorations in Renaissance Culture (online), volume 42, number 2, 2016).
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
