CASTELLI Benedetto Della misura dell’acque correnti. Terza editione accresciuta del secondo libro.

Riccardi, I, 290; DSB, III, 115 ff.; Brunet, I, 1625.

First complete edition, overall the third; containing for the first time the important second part. Castelli work is considered one of the cornerstones of modern hydraulics, and its importance is such that he is often claimed to have been the founder of the Italian hydraulics school. Julie d’Angennes’ copy.

Covering pages 76 until the end the second part contains an important chapter on the measuring of the water in the Venetian gulf. This edition is dedicated to pope Urban VIII with his coat of arms in the engraved frontispiece. Benedetto Castelli (1578-1643) began his studies at the Santa Giustina monastery in 1604 under the guidance of Galileo who sent a copy of his Sidereus Nuncius in 1610 to his pupil.

“At Galileo’s recommendation Castelli (1578-1643) became professor of mathematics at the university of Pisa in 1613, a chair to which he was confirmed for life in 1624. Cavalieri’s geometry by indivisibles was an important step towards the infinitesimal calculus. Later, at Rome, Castlli was the teacher of Evangelista Torricelli and of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli… In 1628 he published the book Della misura del’acque correnti, considered to be the beginning of modern hydraulics. Its fundamental propositions related the areas of cross sections of a river to the volume of water passing in a given time. He also discussed the velocity and head in flow through an orifice. A posthumous edition included the proposition that where a stream was damned, the velocity of low over the top was in direct proportion to the depth of water so flowing. Castelli’s pionneer work in hydraulics was carried on much further and with great accuracy by his pupil Torricelli” (DSB).

“Edizione più completa e più pregiata delle altre” (Riccardi).

Prestigious female provenance

Copy from the library of Julie-Lucie d’Angennes, who married on 15 July 1645 Charles de Sainte-Maure, duc de Montausier “who had been looking for her for twelve years and who composed for her the famous Guirlande de Julie, with the collaboration of the familiars of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; appointed in October 1661 as governess of the Grand Dauphin and the Children of France, then lady-in-waiting of the Queen in 1664, she favoured the love affairs of Louis XIV with Mademoiselle de La Vallière and with Madame de Montespan. She had to leave the court in 1669, following the scandal which resulted from it” (see OHR).

Nice copy.