Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. lat. 632

Piero della Francesca: Libellus de quinque corporibus regolaribus Facsimile Edition

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The Libellus de quinque corporibus regolaribus, written by Piero della Francesca after the Trattato d'Abaco and De Prospectiva pingendi, was the first treatise on geometry of the Renaissance in which problems relating to the construction and calculation of polyhedrons, which had never before been drawn in stereometric form, were developed. 

The treatise, which has survived as a single manuscript, the Vaticano Urbinate Latino 632 codex, compiled by an unknown author but accompanied by drawings, corrections and additions made by Piero himself, was dedicated to Guidubaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. 

This work was known from the beginning of the sixteenth century, not as belonging to Piero, and not even in Latin but as part of the Divina Proportione by Fra Luca Pacioli, who published it in Italian as his own work. The plagiarism was denounced by Giorgio Vasari and has been the object of heated dispute ever since.

We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Piero della Francesca: Libellus de quinque corporibus regolaribus": Piero della Francesca: Libellus de quinque corporibus regolaribus facsimile edition, published by Giunti Editore, 1995

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Manuscript book description compiled by the publisher.
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Piero della Francesca: Libellus de quinque corporibus regolaribus

Florence: Giunti Editore, 1995

  • Commentary (Italian) by Grayson, Cecil; Dalai Emiliani, Marisa; Maccagni, Carlo
  • Limited Edition: 998 copies
  • Full-size color reproduction of the entire original document, Piero della Francesca: Libellus de quinque corporibus regolaribus: the facsimile attempts to replicate the look-and-feel and physical features of the original document; pages are trimmed according to the original format; the binding might not be consistent with the current document binding.

This extraordinary publication was produced with the aid of sophisticated scientific and philological instruments and edited by a prestigious scientific commission composed of Cecil Grayson, Marisa Dalai Emiliani and Carlo Maccagni. It goes beyond a mere reconstruction of Piero della Francesca's original text examining particularly the comparison between Piero della Francesca's text and that of some sections of the Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli (from the codex preserved in the National Library in Florence).

Binding

Half-leather box.

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