Giovanni Battista Della Porta, 1608

Physiognomaniacal treatise on distillation
Giovanni Battista Della Porta, 1608
DELLA PORTA, Giovanni Battista (c.1538-1615). De distillatione lib. IX. Rome: Camera Apostolica, 1608.

The first edition of Della Porta's physiognomaniacal treatise on distillation. This work, an expansion of the distillation section from the enlarged edition of his Magia naturalis, offers a comprehensive view of the applications of distillation. The polymathic founder of the one of the first scientific societies, the Accademia dei Segreti, and a pioneer of experimental investigation, Della Porta wrote authoritatively on a wide range of subjects from cryptography to astronomy. This treatise continues his obsession with visual affinities and physiognomy—a lens he applied not just to humans but to plants, celestial bodies, and here laboratory apparatus. “Among the many fine woodcuts contained in the book, the most curious are those depicting pieces of apparatus likened to different animals” (Duveen). Duveen, p. 481; Ferguson II, 216 (Strasbourg edition of 1609, "The Roman edition is a much finer book"); Norman 1725; Riccardi I(ii), 312.

Quarto (203 x 143mm). Woodcut portrait of the author; laudatory epigrams in Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean, Arabic, Slavonic, and Armenian; 35 woodcut illustrations in text; woodcut initials and printer’s device (some stains to the title, fore-edge of portrait just trimmed, lightly browned, some leaves spotted). Contemporary vellum, spine lettered in ink (a little stained, a few chips to extremities). Provenance: Vincentius Sergius (contemporary inscription to front endleaf) – Collection of Peter and Margarethe Braune (bookplate).