PICCOLOMINI, Alessandro (1508-1578)]. De la sfera del mondo. Libri quattro ... De le stelle fisse. Libro vno . Venice: al segno del Pozzo (Giovanantonio & Domenico dei Volpini for Andrea Arrivabene), 1540. 4° (195 x 141mm). Woodcut device on titles, 47 woodcut star maps, numerous woodcut diagrams, with the 2 final leaves of errata and colophon (a few light stains, ownership inscription rubbed away from title with no loss, fore-margins of some star maps shaved with very slight loss). 18th-century half sheep, later label (rubbed). FIRST EDITION of the Sienese polymath's 'remarkable exposition of the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian geocentric cosmography, [with] its appendix, De le stelle fisse , represent[ing] the first printed star atlas, containing maps of the stars as opposed to simple pictures of constellations, and introducing the practice of identifying stars by letters, a method later adopted and expanded by Bayer', Norman 1696 (1559 edition). The author, in his youth, published plays and other secular writings, works of which he was heartily ashamed in later life when he had become Archbishop of Patras and Coadjutor-elect of Siena. He was also president of the Accademia degli Intronati, refounded by a Piccolomini cousin in 1525 from the ashes of the Accademia La Grande, started in the previous century by Pius II (another Piccolomini). Besides this he edited several texts of Aristotle, was the author of a volume of verse and also several philosophical and political works. Censimento CNCE 29469; Houzeau & Lancaster I, 2491; Sotheran I, 3625.
PICCOLOMINI, Alessandro (1508-1578)]. De la sfera del mondo. Libri quattro ... De le stelle fisse. Libro vno . Venice: al segno del Pozzo (Giovanantonio & Domenico dei Volpini for Andrea Arrivabene), 1540. 4° (195 x 141mm). Woodcut device on titles, 47 woodcut star maps, numerous woodcut diagrams, with the 2 final leaves of errata and colophon (a few light stains, ownership inscription rubbed away from title with no loss, fore-margins of some star maps shaved with very slight loss). 18th-century half sheep, later label (rubbed). FIRST EDITION of the Sienese polymath's 'remarkable exposition of the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian geocentric cosmography, [with] its appendix, De le stelle fisse , represent[ing] the first printed star atlas, containing maps of the stars as opposed to simple pictures of constellations, and introducing the practice of identifying stars by letters, a method later adopted and expanded by Bayer', Norman 1696 (1559 edition). The author, in his youth, published plays and other secular writings, works of which he was heartily ashamed in later life when he had become Archbishop of Patras and Coadjutor-elect of Siena. He was also president of the Accademia degli Intronati, refounded by a Piccolomini cousin in 1525 from the ashes of the Accademia La Grande, started in the previous century by Pius II (another Piccolomini). Besides this he edited several texts of Aristotle, was the author of a volume of verse and also several philosophical and political works. Censimento CNCE 29469; Houzeau & Lancaster I, 2491; Sotheran I, 3625.
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