BOSSE, Abraham || DESARGUES, Girard. La manière universelle de Mr. Desargues lyonnais pour poser l'essieu & placer les heures & autres choses aux cadrans au soleil. 1643.
BOSSE, Abraham || DESARGUES, Girard.
La manière universelle de Mr. Desargues lyonnais pour poser l'essieu & placer les heures & autres choses aux cadrans au soleil.
Paris, Pierre Des-Hayes, 1643.
8vo (205x137 mm), frontispiece, (6)-68 pages, one additionnal engraved title and 66 plates (some are repeated). binding : Contemporary full stiff vellum. Caps worn. Wormhole on the front cover. Waterstains, in the blank lower margin.
First edition, beautifully illustrated by Abraham Bosse (1602-76), who was Desargues's most ardent propagandist.
This is an important work in the "French perspective wars" from 1630-80.
references: Kemp [in. The Science of Art, pp. 120-123 Desargues (1591-1661) , was the "greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation... Desargues was a civil and military engineer, an architect specialising in staircase design and above all a geometer of extraordinary spatial vision. His intellectual ambition was expressed in two closely-related aspirations: the building of a geometry of position (i.e. non-metrical) based on projective techniques; and the provision of all-embracing methods of geometrical operation for practitioners in various fields ... In 1643, Bosse brought out the first of the publications in which he expounded Desargue's views. These consisted of treatises devoted to -- manières universelles -- for the cutting of stones in architectures according to the principles of projective geometry and the making of sundials, etc. These attracted new assaults, this time from an expert in stonecutting, Curabelle, who devoted three pamphlets to the criticism of Desargues's works"]. Desargues : DSB, IV, pp.46-51. Bosse : DSB, II, pp. 333-34.
Price : 1300 €
