GALILEI, Galileo (1564-1642). Sidereus nuncius. Venice: Tommaso Baglioni, [March] 1610. [Bound with:] SIZZI, Francesco (d. 1618). DIANOIA [in Greek] astronomica, optica, physica. Venice: Pietro Maria Bertano, 1611 [and:] DE DOMINIS, Marcus Antonius (1560-1624). De radiis visus et lucis in vetris perspectivis et iride. Venice: Tommaso Baglioni, 1611 [and:] MAGINI, Giovanni Antonio (1555-1617). Breve instruttione sopra l'apparenze et mirabili effetti della specchio concauo sferico. Bologna: Giovanni Battista Bellagamba, 1611.

First edition of Galileo's famous Starry Messenger, announcing the first astronomical discoveries made with the telescope. Included in a contemporary Sammelband with three further first editions on astronomy and optics, all directly relevant to Galileo's book. This copy is without the printed correction slip, suggesting that it was destined for the transalpine market. "The publication of the Sidereus nuncius in March 1610 marked a major turning point in both the life of its author, Galileo Galilei, and in the history of astronomy. The book contains an account of the astronomical discoveries that the author had made with the recently invented telescope, discoveries that signaled the start of a major revolution in astronomy. Galileo was not the only astronomer to make those discoveries at the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century, or even the first [see lot 18], but he was the first to publish. This publication catapulted him from being a relatively obscure professor of mathematics in Padua to becoming the most famous astronomer in the whole of Europe" (Christie). In it, he reveals the mountainous surface of the moon, that the Milky Way is actually composed of many separate stars not visible to the naked eye, and—most significantly—the existence of four moons orbiting Jupiter. Although evidence of bodies orbiting planets other than Earth met with disbelief in some camps, Galileo's remarkable telescopic observations won immediate renown. And while nowhere in the Sidereus nuncius did Galileo explicitly express support of heliocentrism, the work re-ignited the debate on Copernicanism and served as the opening salvo of the assault of modern astronomy on the Aristotelian view of the cosmos.

The second work bound in here is by Galileo's friend and intellectual opponent Francisco Sizzi. Sizzi did not directly challenge the Copernicanism of the Sidereus nuncius, but instead denied the discovery of Jupiter’s planets, which violated the canonical order of the Aristotelian cosmos. He argued that they were optical effects produced by the telescope itself, using as an example the effects of refraction produced on the surface of a glass globe filled with water which was given by Kepler in his 1609 Astronomia pars optica (Kepler, for his part, was not a fan, calling Sizzi’s die-hard Aristotelianism a speculation over "a world on paper" rather than reality). Despite their disagreements, Sizzi was at pains to point out that it was the Sidereus, and not Galileo himself, that he was criticizing; in turn Galileo, uncharacteristically, refused to refute Sizzi, saying he would rather preserve their friendship.

The two additional works on optics are both quite rare at auction and both also in dialogue with Sidereus nuncius. Marco Antonio de Dominis was a mathematics professor in Padua and this tract is based on his teaching notes on vision, lenses, and the rainbow. "Though de Dominis had not been active in natural philosophy for 20 years [he retired from teaching in 1593], sometime before the text was printed, he added material on the telescope, having been prompted by his friend Giovanni Bartoli and the general intellectual ferment created by Galileo's Sidereus nuncius of 1610" (DiLaura). The text is known primarily for this new material on the telescope in chapters 8-9 (of which de Dominis claimed: "I am the first to break the ice") and also for its explanation of the rainbow. Isaac Newton and many others credited this work for being the first such explanation (being unaware of one from the 14th century). Giovanni Magini's work is his important one on spherical concave mirrors. Magini was not only also a professor of mathematics (at Bologna, where he rivaled Galileo for the chair) but also a maker of mirrors and this work is based on his practical craft. "Spherical mirrors were of keen interest to Galileo as well. Indeed, Magini's text was written at Galileo's request in order to facilitate the Grand Duke's purchase of Magini's curved mirrors through the mediation of Galileo" (DiLaura). I) Cinti 26; Dibner Heralds of Science 7; Grolier/Horblit 35; Norman 855; PMM 113; Paul Needham, Galileo Makes a Book, 73 (this copy). See Thony Christie, "The starry messenger," in Thinking 3-D, edited by Daryl Green and Laura Moretti (2019). II) Cinti 32; Carli and Favaro 44. III) DiLaura 55. IV) Riccardi I(ii) 69; See DiLaura 69 note (1st French edition). Exhibited: "The Heavens Revealed," Chapin Library, Williams College, 2003.

Quarto (210 x 140mm). I) Baglioni's woodcut device on title, 5 half-page etchings in the text, 3 woodcut star maps, one extending to 1 1/2 pages, woodcut diagrams. Without the cancellation slip on B1r (f. 7 folded over to preserve diagram from the binder's knife, title-page clipped at top edge without loss to letterpress and with an abrasion affecting woodcut device, D5 containing part of star map supplied from a fine paper copy and trimmed with loss of a few stars). II) Woodcut printer's device on title (faint dampstain in gutter). III) Woodcut devices on title and colophon, diagrams (faint dampstain in gutter). IV) Woodcut on title, diagrams (faint dampstain). Contemporary stiff vellum boards with manuscript bottom-edge title, title in manuscript on spine, front pastedown a reused waste sheet from Jacobus Rubeus's 1474 edition of Valla's translation of Herodotus [book 9] (upper joint and part of the spine panel both perished, lower joint started, boards bowed). Custom box. Provenance: sold Sotheby's, 19 July 1984, lot 253.