Johannes de Sacro Bosco and others, 6 July 1482

JOHANNES DE SACRO BOSCO (fl. c.1230). Sphaera mundi. – GEORG PEUERBACH (1423–1461). Theoricae novae planetarum. – REGIOMONTANUS (1436–1476). Disputationes contra Cremonensia deliramenta. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 6 July 1482.

Rare first printing of the most influential pre-Copernican work on astronomy published in Europe, with hand-colored woodcut diagrams. Ratdolt’s tripartite collection of pre-Copernican cornerstones begins with Sacro Bosco’s magnum opus Sphaera mundi, 'a small work based on Ptolemy and his Arabic commentators […] generally adopted as the fundamental astronomy text’ which in 1472 became the first printed astronomical book (DSB). The accompanying woodcut diagrams, likely designed by Johann Lucilius Santritter, appear for the first time in this edition, and would be used for many subsequent editions due to how essential they are for visually explaining Sacro Bosco's concepts. Several diagrams are hand-colored in green and ochre. HC *14110 = H 14102; BMC V 286; BSB-Ink I-502; Bod-inc J-181; CIBN J-270; Essling 258; GW M14652; Goff J-405; Klebs 874.9; ISTC ij00405000.

Chancery quarto (205 × 145mm). 60 leaves. First text leaf printed in red and black, woodcut frontispiece of armillary sphere and woodcut diagrams throughout, some hand-colored in ochre or green (inner margins renewed, other marginal repairs occasionally intruding into text without loss, stains). 19th-century blindtooled goatskin (some restorations, leather flaking).

An earlier version of this description erroneously referred to the woodcuts as color-printed.