[SUNDIALS] HOROGRAPHIA UNIVERSALIS SEU SCIATERICORUM OMNIUM PLANORUM 1728 BENEDETTO CASTRONE

[CASTRONE, Benedetto Maria]. Horographia Universalis, seu Sciatericorum omnium Planorum, tum Horizontalium, tum Verticalium, tum Inclinatorum, tum Portatilium, gnomonice nova methodo describendorum, pro quovis Horologio sive Astronomico, sive Italico, sive Babylonico, sive Judaico... Panormi [Palermo], Ex Typographia Joannis Baptistæ Aiccardo, 1728.

First edition. Leather-bound; softcover; folio (29.5cm x 20cm x 2.5cm); pp. [30], 352 + 19 folding plates. Latin text in Roman and Italic letter. Bound in contemporary limp vellum; initial and terminal blanks present; decorative capitals; head- and tail-pieces; tables and charts; folding plates to rear. Condition: FAIR to GOOD. Binding secure, the covers somewhat soiled and marked. Interior with light staining to the endpapers, staining extending to upper portion of the first few leaves, just a few intermittent spots, lacking four leaves (pages 249-256) but otherwise complete with all plates present and very well-preserved; a few old biblioteca stamps throughout. Scarce.

Notes: First edition of a work of great rarity, dedicated to gnomonics and horologiography. D.B.I.: "work of considerable effort and breadth of plan, made from previous writings of the same C. on various aspects of the measurement of time using sundials. The topic is dealt with generalities and rigor from the first chapter, which pushed some introductory notions of mathematical, astronomical and geodetic subject ... The book deals all the implications of the matter on the mathematical, physical and astronomical level." Honeyman: "One of the earliest works on the construction of dials by the trigonometrical method." Only three specimens in ICCU. [Riccardi, I, 301, n. 2; Mira, I, p. 203; D.B.I., XXIII, p. 249; Honeyman, n. 621].