BORELLI, Giovanni Alfonso (1608-1679). De motu animalium. Rome: Angeli Bernabo, 1680-81.

First edition, a copy inherited from the author’s estate, of the foundational study on the mechanics of muscular movement. Borelli was primarily a mathematician and physicist, but his colleague Marcello Malpighi, with whom (among others) he would co-found the Accademia del Cimento, inspired his first forays into the investigation of biomechanics. He was the first to systematically apply Galileo's new mechanics to physiology, and, inspired by Harvey’s discoveries, the first to insist that the heartbeat was a simple muscular contraction and that circulation resembled a simple hydraulic system.

Borelli's life ended in poverty and his magnum opus did not see print until after his death, financed by the former Queen Christina of Sweden, who had been his patron in Rome and to whom the book is dedicated. The striking and inventive engravings illustrate the similarities between machine and animal motion—and themselves have some similarities to drawings found in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, who may have also influenced Borelli's ideas. One plate shows a design for a closed circuit "rebreather" for underwater divers, one of the earliest such images in print. Carli and Favaro 344 and 350; Dibner 190; Horblit 13; Garrison and Morton 762; Norman 270. See also Mark Rosheim, Leonardo's Lost Robots (2006).

Two volumes, quarto (214 x 154mm). 18 folding engraved plates (some engravings repaired at fold; some browning, mostly in vol 2; a few wormholes). Contemporary vellum, title in ink on spines. Provenance: Ippolito de Hencini of Pistoia (inscribed on the front flyleaf in each volume "Ippoliti de Hencinis Pistoriensis ex Legato Authoris") – Lister Holte of Afton in Warwickshire (armorial bookplate)