CATALDI Pietro Antonio Trasformatione Geometrica dove si mostra come dato un retti lineo e gli stesso si riduca alla forma di qual si voglia retti lineo.

Riccardi, I, 304,10 ; de Vitry, 117. 

First edition, extremely rare, of this work on the transformation of selected geometrical figures. 

A beautiful, unusual copy; containing not only the original Italian but also the Latin translation which appeared the following year. This highly unusual bilingual copy betrays the distinct audiences and purposes the Italian and Latin texts addressed : the Italian was expressly addressed to architects and stonemasons, the Latin to mathematicians. 

Developing theorem advanced in his 1603 treatise on straights lines which contained criticism of Euclid’s fifth postulate, treating the shifting, reduction or other transformation of geometrical figures, the present work is relevant to perspectival projection (picturing an image from different points of view) or for perspective operations which play or distort an image (anamorphosis, etc.). Cataldi would have covered these subjects in bis lectures at the Academies of Design in Florence and Perugia. The geometrical illustrations of this edition are highly unusual for their extremely large size. 

Pietro Antonio Cataldi (1548-1626) was Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the Universities of Florence, Perugia, and finally Bologna, and held simultaneous appointments at the Academies od Design in Florence and Perugia. He was among the first to profess mathematics as an autonomous subject and the first to lecture on it in Italian rather than Latin. He is best known for his theory of continued fractions which, like Cavalieri’s geometrical principle of indivisibles, did much to orient late Renaissance and early17th century mathematicians to infinitesimals. 

Important provenance 

This copy bears an inscription on the verso of th title-page by a contemporary Bolognese intellectual and defender of Galileo : J.A. Roffenus obsequi sui erga amicum donat ut legat et addiscat (G.A. Roffenus gives to his friend in exchange for a favor that he may read and learn”). Gianantonio Roffeni (c. 1580-1643), a friend of Galileo’s, published a defence of the latter’s Sidereus Nuntius in 1611, the year of publication of the present work, as well as numerous astrological works. He was an ally of Magini against the latter’s critics and a correspondent of Kepler’s. This copy is quite unusual for having the Latin translation (issued one year later, in 1612, und the title Transformatio geometrica) bound before this Italian edition. 

The book was not ordinarily issued this way and must have been specially assembled for an unusually thorough reader who wished to own both both texts. 

Fine copy.