Description
in quo candide lector multa quidem scitu periucunda, admiratione digna, & humano usui necessaria passim reperies. Venice: apud Domenico Nicolini da Sabbio, 1561. First edition, 8vo., large woodcut printer's device on the title page, a double-page woodcut diagram sowing the connections of the many off-shoots of architecture, contemporary limp vellum, lacking ties, signature F duplicated, foliation jumping from 52 to 57, various inscriptions on the front endpapers, slight staining of the title page and subsequent couple of leaves, with the book plate of John Bury
Footnote
Note: USTC 86161. After a preliminary discourse addressed to Gio. Battista Gremolo, the work is arranged under four main headings: cosmography, architecture, arithmetic and geometry, optics, catoptrics and astrology with sections on music and military geometry. The opening chapter contains a Boethian assertion of the moral purpose of studying arithmetic and the need for those who have just emerged from the study of grammar and from school to turn their minds to reading Euclid. As well as ancient authorities, Unicornus refers to the works of recent writers such as Pico della Mirandola, Alberti, Serlio, Dürer, and others.