Lot n° 67
Estimation :
300 - 400
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 360EUR
MERCURIALE (Girolamo). - Lot 67
MERCURIALE (Girolamo).
De arte gymnastica libri sex : In quibus exercitationum omnium vetustarum genera, loca, modi, facultates, & quidquid denique ad corporis humani exercitationes pertinet diligenter explicatur.
Amsterdam : Andreas Frisius, 1672. - In-4, stiff overlapping parchment, smooth spine (period binding).
New edition, one of the most esteemed of the first great treatise on gymnastics published since antiquity, constituting the first true scientific sum concerning physical activity.
The physician Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606), a native of Forli, wrote this work at a turning point in universal thought, rich in upheaval. Copernicus allowed us to see a sidereal space where the earth was no longer the center of the universe, Vesalius shifted the vision of the body from a fantasy to a more realistic one, and the Council of Trent, linked to the advent of Protestantism, introduced a world without intermediaries between God and Man.
What Vesalius produced for anatomy, Mercuriale realized for gymnastics in this "Arte Gysmnastica". He proposes an exhaustive synthesis of all that had been produced in the past, professes a hygienic and curative gymnastics, and thus realizes a sort of vast encyclopedia of the corporal exercises and the sciences that allow to analyze the movement.
The work was first published in 1569. It is divided into six chapters, the first of which form an exhaustive collection of exercises that follow the same approach as that of Vesalius, and chapters IV to VI evoke the exercises best suited to the maintenance or improvement of health.
This edition is illustrated with ten copper-engraved compositions, including a frontispiece attributed to Romein de Hooghe, a title vignette, a vignette in the text and seven plates, five of which are folding, as well as twenty-six other compositions, twenty-one of which are full-page and five in the text, wood-engraved by Cristofo Coriolano after Pirro Ligorio, already found in the previous editions.
Good copy in contemporary binding.
Slightly missing at the bottom cover, some soiling on the spine and on the boards. Scattered foxing.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue