Beschreibung:

GUIDUCCI, Mario (1585-1646) [but Galileo GALILEI (1564-1642)]. Discorso delle comete . Florence: Pietro Cecconcelli, 1619.
GUIDUCCI, Mario (1585-1646) [but Galileo GALILEI (1564-1642)]. Discorso delle comete . Florence: Pietro Cecconcelli, 1619. 4 o (191 x 142 mm). (C4 with small repair in upper margin, some scattered pale spotting.) Modern calf gilt antique. FIRST EDITION of this famous work contributing to the "controversy of the comets" which was of great importance in Galileo's scientific career. Guiducci, who became Galileo's assistant in 1618, allowed Galileo to publish under his name the Discorso delle comete of 1619 which attacked Orazio Grassi's De tribus cometis (1619), a work which expressed an absurd theory of cometary motion and several other invalid scientific theories. Galileo used Guiducci's name partly due to his own ill health, and partly on account of the admonition he had received from the Inquisition in February 1616. Grassi replied later in the same year with yet another work entitled Libra astronomica (see lot 235) which contained personal attacks on both Galileo and Guiducci and deliberately misrepresented Galileo's opinions on comets as expressed in the Discorso delle comete . In turn, Galileo published his Il Saggiatore and Guiducci his Lettera al M.R.P. Tarquinio Galluzzi (see next lot). VERY RARE: according to American Book Prices Current , the last copy to appear at auction was the Riccardi copy, sold Sotheby's New York, 24 September 1986, lot 163. Cinti 63; Riccardi I:511.