After nearly reaching one million euros in just the first half of the year, the Books and Manuscripts department opens the autumn season with a sale of typographic masterpieces.
On 30 September and 1 October 2025, ancient volumes, rare editions and illustrated books will come under the hammer, true time machines that, page after page, recount the wonder of discovery.
One of the most fascinating portolan charts of late sixteenth-century Flemish cartography seems to have resurfaced straight from the chest of an old galleon: the Pascaert van Europa, drawn by Adriaen Gerritsz on behalf of the legendary Cornelis Claesz – a key figure of the Dutch “Golden Age” of geographical printing – and engraved on parchment in Amsterdam around 1591. An extraordinary synthesis of Mediterranean nautical tradition and the new northern vision of the continent, it is a transitional work rich in symbols and narrative details, evoking the allure of the great sea routes and the earliest attempts at printed systematisation of maritime knowledge (€ 15,000 – 25,000).
Lot 69
GERRITSZ VAN HAARLEM, Adriaen - [PORTOLANO - Carta nautica dell’Europa stampata su pergamena (Pascaert van Europa).
Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz, ca. 1591].
Estimate € 15,000 – 25,000
Further underlining the international scope of the catalogue are two extremely rare works by Daniel Giraud Elliot, a central figure in nineteenth-century ornithology: the sumptuous Monograph of the Paradiseidae, among the most spectacular books ever produced on the subject, with plates capturing the iridescent sheen of tropical plumage; and The New and Heretofore Unfigured Species of the Birds of North America. Both works are ideal continuations of the legacy of Audubon and Wilson – a true tribute to the two founding fathers of the discipline (each estimated at € 10,000 – 15,000).
Lot 8
ELLIOT, Daniel Giraud - A Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise.
[London]: presso l'autore, 1873.
Estimate € 10,000 – 15,000
Lot 9
ELLIOT, Daniel Giraud - The New and Heretofore Unfigured Species of the Birds of North America.
New York: presso l'autore, [1866]-1869.
Estimate € 10,000 – 15,000
Also from the sixteenth century are two milestones of scientific and architectural culture, both printed in Venice: the first edition of Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, the most influential treatise in the history of Western architecture, crucial to the international spread of Renaissance classicism (€ 15,000 – 25,000); and the prestigious edition of Archimedes’ works, translated and annotated by Federico Commandino, published by Paolo Manuzio in 1558 with the support of the Farnese family – a supreme example of scientific humanism, with provenance from illustrious libraries such as the Brookeriana and the Liechtenstein Library (€ 12,000 – 18,000).
Lot 85
PALLADIO, Andrea - I quattro libri dell'architettura.
Venice: Domenico De Franceschi, 1570.
Estimate € 15,000 – 25,000
Lot 24
ARCHIMEDE - Opera non nulla a Federico Commandino Urbinate nuper in Latinum conversa, et commentariis illustrata.
Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1558.
Estimate € 12,000 – 18,000
The sale also features other remarkable bibliographical rarities, such as Johannes Hevelius’ monumental Prodromus Astronomiae (Gdansk, 1690), an impressive celestial atlas accompanied by 55 spectacular constellation plates, some introduced here for the very first time (€ 15,000 – 25,000). Also by Hevelius, the first edition of Selenographia (Gdansk, 1647) will be presented – the first complete lunar atlas, enriched with engravings executed by the author himself (€ 10,000 – 15,000).
Lot 53
HEVELIUS, Johannes - Prodromus astronomiae … catalogus stellarum fixarum … tabula motus lunae liberatorii [parte II:] Firmamentum sobiescianum, sive uranographia.
Gdansk: Johann Zacharias Stolle, 1690.
Estimate € 15,000 – 25,000
Lot 52
HEVELIUS, Johannes - Selenographia sive lunae descriptio.
Gdansk: Andreas Hünefeld, 1647.
Estimate € 10,000 – 15,000
Leading into the section devoted to livres d’artistes is Francisco Goya’s Los desastres de la guerra, the 1863 edition containing 80 engravings in excellent condition: a masterpiece of modern printmaking, where the chronicle of war becomes both universal denunciation and profound inner vision (€ 12,000 – 18,000). Very different in context and language, yet equally radical a century later, is Alighiero Boetti’s conceptual work The Thousand Longest Rivers in the World (1977), which transforms the book into system, archive and paradox, revealing with irony both the fragility of scientific criteria and the deeply human desire to impose order on the world (€ 15,000 – 18,000).
Lot 47
GOYA Y LUCIENTES, Francisco José - Los desastres de la guerra.
Madrid: Laurenciano Potenciano per la Real Academia de Nobles Artes, 1863.
Estimate € 12,000 – 18,000
Lot 14
BOETTI, ALIGHIERO - Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world.
Ascoli Piceno: Sergio D’Auria, 1977.
Estimate € 15,000 – 18,000