The Antique Books and Livres d'Artistes auction, 30 September – 1 October 2025, concludes with € 495,000 in sales, 81 % sell-through rate, and a 154% increase on starting prices.
In this early autumn sale, antiquarian books took centre stage in the most competitive bidding, confirming their enduring appeal—particularly when distinguished by exceptional quality, rarity, and collector’s value.
Highlights include Johannes Hevelius’s Prodromus Astronomiae (€ 44,800), a monumental celestial atlas comprising 55 plates. Also by Hevelius, the first edition of Selenographia (€ 20,480), the first complete lunar atlas, illustrated with engravings executed by the author himself.
Lot 53
HEVELIUS, Johannes - Prodromus astronomiae … catalogus stellarum fixarum … tabula motus lunae liberatorii [parte II:] Firmamentum sobiescianum, sive uranographia.
Gdansk: Johann Zacharias Stolle, 1690.
Sold € 44,800
Lot 52
HEVELIUS, Johannes - Selenographia sive lunae descriptio.
Gdansk: Andreas Hünefeld, 1647.
Sold € 20,480
Outstanding results were also achieved by Francisco Goya’s Los desastres de la guerra (€ 38,400), the first edition of the 80 etchings produced between 1810 and 1820, and by Alighiero Boetti’s conceptual work Classifying the Thousand Longest Rivers in the World (1977, € 20,480).
Lot 47
GOYA Y LUCIENTES, Francisco José - Los desastres de la guerra.
Madrid: Laurenciano Potenciano per la Real Academia de Nobles Artes, 1863.
Sold € 38,400
Lot 14
BOETTI, ALIGHIERO - Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world.
Ascoli Piceno: Sergio D’Auria, 1977.
Sold € 20,480
Other notable sales include L’Art Arabe by Achille Constant T. Emile Prisse d’Avennes (€ 19,200); the sixteenth-century Flemish portolan Pascaert van Europa by Adriaen Gerritsz (€ 19,200); and the prestigious edition of Archimedes’ writings, translated and annotated by Federico Commandino, from the Bibliotheca Brookeriana (€ 15,360).
Lot 40
Achille Constant T. Emile, PRISSE D'AVENNES, L'Art Arabe d'apres les monuments du Kaire. Paris: J. Savoy, [1869-]1877..
Sold € 19,200
Lot 69
GERRITSZ VAN HAARLEM, Adriaen - [PORTOLANO - Carta nautica dell’Europa stampata su pergamena (Pascaert van Europa).
Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz, ca. 1591].
Sold € 19,200
Lot 24
ARCHIMEDE - Opera non nulla a Federico Commandino Urbinate nuper in Latinum conversa, et commentariis illustrata.
Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1558.
Sold € 15,360
Among the natural history works, a highlight was Daniel Giraud Elliot’s sumptuous Monograph of the Paradiseidae (1873), featuring dramatic plates depicting the “birds of paradise” (€ 12,800).
Lot 8
ELLIOT, Daniel Giraud - A Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise.
[London]: presso l'autore, 1873.
Sold € 12,800