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A MASTER TREATISE ON OPTICS ILLUSTRATED BY RUBENS. First edition, and a fine copy, of this great Jesuit treatise on optics, with engraved allegorical frontispiece and exquisite headpieces designed by Peter Paul Rubens. "A master treatise on optics that synthesized the works of Euclid, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Vitellio, Roger Bacon, Pena, Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée), Risner, and Kepler" (DSB). "A landmark of baroque book illustration, this is one of seven works known to have been illustrated by Rubens" (Becker). "Aguilón was one of the first of a long line of distinguished Jesuit writers on optics. His treatise has acquired a great deal of attention because of its seven engravings after drawings by Rubens. It is not so well known that Aguilón s color theory and his prescriptions for the mixing of colors were actually used by Rubens in his paintings" (Ashworth, in Jesuit science in the age of Galileo). "The color system of François d Aguilón in 1613 is believed to be the oldest system to use red, yellow, and blue" (Burchett, A Bibliographic History of the study and use of color from Aristotle to Kandinsky, p. 19). "A remarkable collaboration between the scientific, printing and visual arts. Intended for use in Jesuit schools, Aguilón s work was primarily a synthesis of classical and modern writings on optics; however, it also contained the first discussion of the stereographic process (which Aguilón named), one of the earliest presentations of the red-yellow-blue color system, an original theory of binocular vision and the first published description of Aguilón s horopter" (Norman). "Amidst geometrical theorems stands out the discovery of the horopter as the area where objects are seen as single with both eyes. During the nineteenth century this concept developed into the contemporary science of vision" (Ziggelaar). "The sixth book, on orthographic, stereographic, and scenographic projections, remains important in the history of science. It accounts for a third of the treatise and was meant for the use of astronomers, cosmographers, architects, military leaders, navigators, painters, and engravers. It places particular emphasis on stereographic projection a type of projection, used by Ptolemy, in which the portion of the sphere to.be represented is projected from the pole onto the plane of the equatorial circle. The balance of the treatise is of interest for the history of optics: description of the eye; controversies on the nature of light and its action; the application of mathematics to optics; the analysis of the concepts of distance, quantity, shape, place, position, continuity, discontinuity, movement, rest, transparency, opacity, shadow, light, resemblance, beauty, and deformity; and explanation of the various errors of perception. Book 5, in spite of an Aristotelian concept of light, studies the propagation of light, the limit of its action, the phenomena produced by the combinations of light sources, and the production of shadows. Aguilón proposes an experimental apparatus, drawn by Rubens, that made it possible to study the variations of intensity according to variations in distance and to compare lights of different intensities. This attempt … resulted in Bouguer s photometer" (DSB). Fine copies such as ours in untouched contemporary bindings are rare on the market. Born in Brussels, the son of a secretary to Philip II, Aguilón (1567-1617) became a Jesuit in 1586. In 1598 he moved to Antwerp, where in 1611 he started a Jesuit school of mathematics, fulfilling a dream of Christopher Clavius; in 1616, he was joined there by Grégoire de Saint-Vincent. The notable geometers educated at this school included Jean-Charles de la Faille, André Tacquet, and Theodorus Moretus. Regarded by the Society of Jesus as their greatest authority in the science of optics, Aguilón was associated with several members of Galileo s earliest audience. He was in particularly close touch with Christoph Scheiner, a Jesuit professor of mathemati.
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