A Generous Gift from the Friends of the Library

Thanks to a generous gift from the Friends of the Library, three rare and significant 16th- and 17th-century works have been purchased to enhance our early astronomy collection. Mauro Fiorentino (ca. 1490-1556) published a 1550 edition of Annotationi sopra la lettione della Spera del Sacro Bosco by Joannes de Sacro Bosco (John Holywood, d. 1256), a monk of English origin who was also a professor of astronomy in Paris. A diagram and four pages of contemporary Florentine astronomical manuscript, dated May 29, 1564 and entitled "Del'anno solare et altre sorte et altre sorte di anni. et del anno bisestile" ("Concerning the solar year and types of years. And concerning the leap year") follow the manuscript text. See a more detailed image of the book here.	Annotationi sopra la lettione della Spera del Sacro Bosco by Joannes de Sacro Bosco
The 1574 edition of another work by Sacro Bosco, La Sfera Di M. Giovanni Sacrobosco Tradotta Da Pier-Vincentio Dante de Rinaldi, is the second in this trio of recent acquisitions. Sacro Bosco's reputation is based largely on this brief work, a compendium of spherical astronomy that was originally published in approximately 1220 and was used as a text book, resulting in nearly one hundred scholarly editions in print before the mid-17th century. See a more detailed image of the book here.	La Sfera Di M. Giovanni Sacrobosco Tradotta Da Pier-Vincentio Dante de Rinaldi by Sacro Bosco
Originally printed in French in 1642, the 1655 edition of Gviliemi Blaev Institvtio Astronomica De usu Globorum & Sphaerarum Caelestium ac Terrestrium: Dvabvs Partibvs Adornata by Guiliemi Blaeu (1571-1638) addresses both the Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomical systems. Blaeu, a celebrated Dutch geographer and typographer, was a friend and disciple of noted Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. He worked with Brahe at Brahe's observatory on the island of Hven, Denmark, before settling in Amsterdam where he established himself as a merchant of maps and globes. Interest in navigation and cartography had greatly increased in Holland at that time because the country was actively sending its fleets to Africa, America, Asia, and the Arctic. In 1633, Blaeu became the official cartographer of the East India Company. See a more detailed image of the book here.	Gviliemi Blaev Institvtio Astronomica De usu Globorum & Sphaerarum Caelestium ac Terrestrium: Dvabvs Partibvs Adornata by Guiliemi Blaeu