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THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE EUROPEAN TREATISE ON OPTICS. First edition, rare, a copy with numerous early annotations, of the first comprehensive European treatise on optics, and the first work to contain descriptions of medieval laboratory instruments. Witelo (born ca. AD 1230) begins with the geometrical theorems required for the optical demonstrations of the remaining books. He details the essential features of optical systems, including the theory of the nature of light and its propagation, reflection by plain and curved mirrors, light, colour, perspective, the rainbow, etc. Witelo s principal source was the Optics of Ibn al-Haytham; the present text, Witelo s Perspectiva, is thus the first printed source for Ibn al-Haytham s work, which was not published until 1572 (when it accompanied a reprint of Witelo s text). "The most outstanding feature of Witelo s method was his combination of manual and technical skill with mathematics for quantitative experiments with instruments. An excellent example of the use of this combination in the construction of an instrument is his work on the parabolic mirror, with which Alhazen s writings as known in Latin showed no acquaintance … The problem was to construct a burning-mirror that would concentrate the sun s rays at a single focal point … Another important example of Witelo s method is his work on the measurement of the angles of refraction at the surfaces between air and water, air and glass, and glass and water, respectively … [Witelo gave a detailed account] of the construction of [an] instrument for measuring the angle between incident and emergent rays … Witelo used this instrument to show that not only white light, but also colours travelled in straight lines in a single uniform medium … Having given an account of the refraction of light at different surfaces, Witelo went on to discuss the properties of convex and concave lenses … A more successful application of his knowledge of refraction was his study of the rainbow … The only source of knowledge of the rainbow he acknowledged by name was Aristotle s Meteorology, but his chapters contain much that is not in this work … In the atmosphere he held that drops of water would condense as spheres … Rays from the sun would meet the drops on the outside of the mist; and, of the rays falling on each drop, some would be reflected and some would be refracted … as by a spherical lens … The rainbow would be seen in the rays which, after going out from the sun to the mist in one cone, were reflected back to the eye of the observer on a shorter cone with the same base and axis … [Witelo tested his theory] by means of experiments with refraction through crystals and spherical vessels filled with water … [Witelo] made some admirably original observations on the more purely psychological aspects of vision. These related chiefly to direct perception and the effects of association and reasoning on vision, and such problems as illusions, visual beauty, and the perception of distance and size and of the third dimension of space" (Crombie). This work remained an important textbook for over 300 years: it had a great impact on the works of Regiomontanus, Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus, and was the basis of Kepler s Ad Vitellionem paralipomena of 1604. ABPC/RBH record the sale of seven complete copies at auction: Pierre Berge 2019 (modern binding, last gathering washed and repaired); Christie s NY 2008 (Dunham-Green copy, 19th century binding); Sotheby s 2002 (De Vitry copy, later vellum-backed carta rustica); Sotheby s NY 2001 (binding restored, dampstaining and worming); Sotheby s NY 1993 (Dunham copy); Sotheby s 1981 (Honeyman copy, dampstained); Sotheby s 1973. Provenance: TheChurch of Santa Maria al Monte dei Cappuccini in Turin (inscription on title S[anta] Maria Conventus Montis Capuchine Fratrum Minor (conformator?) ). Numerous marginalia in a different hand by a careful and attentive reader highlighting the text (slightly cropped, indicating th.
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