118-1038
Piccolomini,A.
La sfera del mondo - De le stelle fisse. 2 Tle. in 1 Bd. Venedig, G. Varisco u. Paganini (1564, Vorwort dat.). Kl.4°. Mit 2 Holzschn.-Druckerm., 48 ganzseit. Sterntafeln auf Tafelseiten u. zahlr. Holzschn.-Fig. im Text. 6 Bl., 252 S., 32 (recte 30) num. Bl., num. Bl. 25-93, 3 nn. Bl. Ldr. d. 20. Jhdt.
Riccardi I/2,270,. Houzeau-L. 2491. - "Alessandro Piccolomini, Archbishop of Paris, was an early popularizer of science who wrote his astronomical treatises in the vernacular in order to extend scientific knowledge beyond the confines of church and university. His `De la sfera del mondo`, first published in 1540, is an unremarkable exposition of the traditional Ptolemaic-Aristotelian geocentric cosmography, but its appendix, De le stelle fisse, represents 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 letter, a method later adopted and expanded by Bayer." - Tls. leicht stockfleckig. Tit. tls. fingerfleckig. Einige, unterschiedlich große Braunflecken in den Blatträndern. - Some slight foxing. Title with fingerstains. Some brownstains of varying sizes in the margins.
