Beschreibung:

LUBIENIECKI, Stanislaw (1623-1675). Theatrum cometicum, duabus partibus constans, quarum altera ... cometa anni 1664 & 1665 variis virorum per Europam clariss. cum quibus auctor de hoc argumento contulit, observationibus, dissertationibus, animadversionibus descriptos, & quinquaginta novem figuris aeneis illustratos ... altera continet historiam CCCCXV. cometarum, a tempore diluvii ad ann. 1665 ... et theatri cometici exitus, sive de significatione cometarum . Amsterdam: Daniel Baccamude for Francis Cuyper, 1668-1666-1668. 3 parts in one volume, 2° (318 x 200mm). Letterpress title to each part with woodcut ornament, half-title to part two. Engraved additional part titles by Sebastien Stopendaal after M. Scheits, 79 (of 81) engraved plates, including 16 double-page, 4 double-page and folding, and 8 folding plates, by G. Gerardi, G. Gerritsz, B. Stoependael and J. Veenluysen after H.M. Winterstein, M.C. Isenius et al., 2 portraits by L. Visscher after Scheits and by and after Matthias van Sommeren, woodcut diagrams, tailpieces and initials. (Some occasional spotting and variable light browning, small flaw affecting 3 words on part I, 6F3, bifolium part III A2.3 detached, lacking final 2 leaves L1-2 of part III, additional titles trimmed touching borders, a few, mainly marginal, manuscript annotations on plates, one folding plate creased and torn on fold.) Contemporary vellum, yapp fore-edges, titled in manuscript on the spine (slightly scuffed, somewhat marked and discoloured, pastedowns lifting, short split at foot of upper hinge). Provenance : extensive [?]19th-century manuscript notes in German on versos of part I additional title and title; S. [?]Veerlov (inscription on title); Wilhelm Junk, Berlin (bookseller's ticket on upper pastedown, c.1913). FIRST EDITION. 'CET OUVRAGE EST SI RARE, QUE BENTKOWSKI ... QUI N'A VU QUE LA 1RE PARTIE, DOUTE SI LA CONTINUATION AIT PARU' (Graesse). The first part of the work contains a series of 38 substantial reports on sightings of comets during the fall that occurred between December 1664 and January 1665, which excited widespread scientific and popular interest at the time: John Evelyn recorded in his Diary that he 'met at the R[oyal]. Society , where we had severall letters read, from correspondents beyond sea, about the Comet which now appeared: orders were given for accurate observations to our Curator &c.' (14 December 1664), while Samuel Pepys noted that, 'Mighty talke there is of this Comet that is seen a'nights; and the King and Queene did sit up last night to see it, and did it seems' ( Diary , 17 December 1664). The descriptions are from a range of observers in different countries, including Erasmus Bartholin, author of De cometis anni 1664 et 1665 opusculum (Copenhagen: 1665), Albert Curtz, Otto von Guericke, Joannes Hevelius, Athanasius Kircher and Johann Ernst Rautenstein (whose portrait appears in part III), and span Europe from Scandinavia to Czechoslovakia. The second part provides a chronology of 415 comet-sightings from the flood (the first report is dated to 2312 BC) to 1665, with commentaries, drawn from a range of historical sources. The finely-engraved plates that illustrate the first 2 parts locate the comets on celestial charts, and plot their paths, periods of visibility and duration. Only two complete copies of the first edition are recorded at auction since 1975 by ABPC : the Honeyman and Dunham copies. A third copy, with 3 additional titles and 81 plates, but lacking one of the 2 portraits, was sold by Sotheby's, London on 13 April 1989, lot 94. Of the three copies held by the British Library, two are substantially defective. Cf. Brown Astronomical Atlases, Maps and Charts p. 44 (1681 edition, 'interesting but rather rare work'); Brunet III, 1194; Graesse IV, p. 270 (calling for 84pp. in the third part: the present copy ends on p. [80], but appears textually complete, suggesting that the two missing leaves contain postliminary matter); Poggendorff I, 1508. No