[Blue paper] Euclides (fl. 3rd century BC). De gli elementi di Euclide libri quindici... Tradotti ... da M. Federico Commandino.... Urbino, Domenico Frisolino, [before 3 September] 1575.
[Blue paper] Euclides (fl. 3rd century BC). De gli elementi di Euclide libri quindici... Tradotti ... da M. Federico Commandino.... Urbino, Domenico Frisolino, [before 3 September] 1575.
Euclides (fl. 3rd century BC).
De gli elementi di Euclide libri quindici... Tradotti ... da M. Federico Commandino....
Urbino, Domenico Frisolino, [before 3 September] 1575.
A rare, luxury copy of a scientific book
Euclides (fl. 3rd century BC).
De gli elementi di Euclide libri quindici... Tradotti ... da M. Federico Commandino.... Urbino, Domenico Frisolino, [before 3 September] 1575.
Folio (306x211 mm). Printed on blue paper. Collation: *2, **4, ***2, A-Z4, AA-ZZ4, AAa-ZZz4, AAAa2. [8], 278 leaves. In this copy fol. TT2 is bound after fol. VV2. Italic and roman type. Pages framed within woodcut line-border. Numerous woodcut diagrams in the text. Ten-line animated initials at the beginning of each Book. Contemporary gilt- tooled limp vellum. Covers within gilt border, fleuron at the centre. Smooth spine, decorated with gilt tools, inked title. Gilt edges. Minor loss to spine. A very fine copy. A few corrections in an early hand.
Provenance: ‘Di Casa Doni’ (early ownership inscription on the front pastedown; on the title-page ‘Casa Donj comprato dal [?]).
An extraordinary, blue-paper copy of the first edition of the Italian translation of Euclid’s Elements. The translator and commentator is the humanist mathematician from Urbino Federico Commandino (1509-1575). Luxury copies of sixteenth-century scientific books are unusual and were surely intended for presentation.
In 1565, Commandino was visited by English philosopher, mathematician, and astrologer John Dee (1527-1608), who gave him a manuscript translation into Latin of an Arabic work related to Euclid’s De divisionibus. Commandino published this Latin version – De superficierum divisionibus liber Machometo Bagdedino ascriptus – in Pesaro in 1570, adding a short treatise of his own to condense and generalize the discussion of this work. Two years later, at the request of Francesco Maria ii della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Commandino translated Euclid’s Elements into Latin and published it, along with an extensive commentary, in 1572, again in Pesaro. Then, in 1575, for those of his countrymen who did not know Latin, Commandino supervised an Italian translation of the Elements together with his commentary, which he entrusted to some of his students. De gli elementi di Euclide libri quindici is the first book printed in Urbino in the sixteenth century, and the publication is dedicated – as was the Latin version of 1572 – to his patron Francesco Maria della Rovere. The volume was issued by Domenico Frisolino, whom Commandino had probably called to Urbino for this purpose, Frisolino having established the first printing house in the city in the latter months of 1574. The press was located in the home of Commandino himself, as attested by the colophon: ‘IN URBINO IN CASA DI FEDERICO COMMANDINO, CON LICENTIA DEI SUPERIORI. MDLXXV’.
For the Italian Euclid, Frisolino re-used the blocks for the diagrams and initials first employed by Camillo Franceschini in the Latin edition of 1572, with the exception of the title-border block, which was ultimately not given to him. On 13 November 1574, Commandino drew up a contract for buying paper with Melchiorre Silvestri and Magister Pietro Bramante, who were active in the paper mill of Fermignano, a small town near Urbino where the manufacture of paper had begun in 1411. The Fermignano paper mill was owned by the Montefeltros. The Harvard College Library preserves a copy of Commandino’s Elementorum libri xv of 1572 likewise printed on blue paper, suggesting both copies may have been printed on blue paper produced by the Fermignano paper mill.
The present copy is exceptionally printed on blue paper, and was certainly destined by the Italian mathematician for a distinguished recipient or patron. The ownership inscriptions visible in this fine volume suggest that it may have later been preserved in the celebrated Casa Doni in corso de’ Tintori, the residence of the wealthy Florentine family, whose member Agnolo Doni is widely known for having commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint The Holy Family (or Tondo Doni, executed between 1504 and 1507), along with portraits of himself and his wife Maddalena to Raffaello Sanzio in 1506/7.
As for the possible owner of Commandino’s Euclides, we might suggest the name of the learned Giovan Battista Doni (1595-1647), renowned author of the Compendio del Trattato de’ generi e de’ modi della musica (Rome 1635), which also deals with the musica scenica. In his preface, Commandino highlighted, in particular, the relationship between mathematics, music, and scenography, as a case for the practical application of perspective.
Adams E-995; STC Italian 239; Honeyman II, 1009 and 1010; L. Moranti, L’arte tipografica in Urbino (1493-1800), Firenze 1967, no. 4; Riccardi I, 363; Steck, p. 25; Thomas-Stanford 42; P. L. Rose, “Commandino, John Dee, and the De superficierum divisionibus of Machometus Bagdedinus”, Isis, 63 (1972), pp. 88-93; E. I. Rambaldi, “John Dee and Federico Commandino: An English and an Italian Interpretation of Euclid during the Renaissance”, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 44 (1989), pp. 211-247; F. Mariani, La cartiera dei Duchi d’Urbino a Fermignano. 1408-1870, Fermignano 2008.
