PACIOLI, LUCA LUCAS DE BURGO S SEPULCHRI (1 Ergebnisse)

"THE FIRST GREAT GENERAL WORK ON MATHEMATICS PRINTED" (SMITH) "THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WORK IN THE HISTORY OF CAPITALISM" THE BARON-LANDAU - HANS FÜRSTENBERG COPY . Second edition, very rare, a close reprint of the first edition (Venice, 1494), and a copy with distinguished provanence. The Summa is a work of enormous importance on several levels. It is the first mathematical encyclopaedia of the Renaissance, "the first great general work on mathematics printed" (Smith, Rara arithmetica, p. 56), and the first printing of any of the works of the great thirteenth-century mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, called Fibonacci (c. 1175-c. 1250), and of Pacioli's friend, the brilliant mathematician and artist Piero della Francesca (1416-92). The first part of the Summa is the first printed comprehensive treatment of algebra and arithmetic, based largely on Fibonacci's 1202 Liber Abaci which famously introduced Arabic numbers to the West, and which was itself in part a translation of the treatises on algebra and arithmetic of the Persian mathematician and astronomer Muhammad ibn MÅ«sÄ al-KhwÄ rizmÄ« (c. 780-c. 850) (the word algorithm derives from his name). The second part, on geometry, is based on Fibonacci's Practica Geometriae, but includes at the end a section on stereometric geometry and regular solids taken from the Trattato d'abaco of Piero della Francesca. The first part of the Summa also contains sections illustrating the applications of arithmetic and algebra to problems in business, notably including Pacioli's original treatise Particularis de Computis et Scripturis ('Details of Accounting and Recording') (ff. 197v-210v). This is the first printed text to set out the method of double-entry bookkeeping, the single most influential work in European accounting history, which earned Pacioli the title 'Father of Accounting'; it has been called "the most influential work in the history of capitalism". De Computis introduces the 'rule of 72' for predicting an investment's future value, anticipating the development of the logarithm by more than a century. The business section of the Summa also contains the earliest discussion of mathematical probability in print (this was not in Liber abaci). "The oldest known printed source for the treatment of the problem of points is Luca Pacioli's Summa" (Schneider, p. 230) - modern probability theory is generally regarded as having begun with the exchange of letters discussing the 'problem of points' between Fermat and Pascal in the mid-1650s. In its iconic full-page woodcut of finger counting (f. 36v), from which our modern 'digital computing' took its name, the Summa contains the earliest printed representation of computation. Sangster et al. argue that the Summa was, in fact, mainly intended as a reference text for merchants - it synthesised the three major mathematical traditions - medieval European, Arab and ancient Greek - but its use of the vernacular opened it up to businessmen, students, artists, technicians and scholars alike. Olschki (Geschichte der Neusprachlichen Wissenschaftlichen Literatur, 1918) wrote that, for fifty years after its publication, the Summa was the most widely read mathematics work in Italy, and Favier [Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, 1998], then president of the French Bibliothèque Nationale and author of many books on the Middle Ages, averred that the Summa was "an instant success and [was] for many years used by the business world" and that "merchants from every country rushed to buy this guide to accountancy" (Sangster et al., p. 142). The Summa is also a work central to the development of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Pacioli came to Milan where he held the chair of mathematics from 1496 to 1499, during which years he lodged with Leonardo, and taught him mathematics. Leonardo owned a copy of the first edition of the Summa and refers to it in his notebooks (see below for more on Leonardo and Pacioli). ABPC/RBH list only four complete copies of this second edition in the last 50 years: Christie's Rome 2001 (tears with loss of text); Sotheby's 2002 (modern binding); Kiefer 2008 (19th century binding with library stamps); Sotheby's 2018 (19th century binding with removed library stamps, possibly the same as the Kiefer copy). Ours is a genuine, complete copy with no library stamps, removed or otherwise. A copy of the first edition sold at Sotheby's in 2019 for $1,215,000. Provenance: Giulio Lorenzo de Ceci, of Pescia (in Tuscany) (inscription dated 13 July 1546 on front free endpaper); Baron Horace de Landau (1824-1903), banker and bibliophile (bookplate on front paste-down). De Landau was a Hungarian citizen who represented the Rothschild bank in Turin and negotiated large loans to the newly created Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s. In 1872, he decided to retire so as to devote his energies to the formation of a great library and collection of works of art. To that end he purchased a large villa in the hills outside Florence, which had belonged to Lord Normanby, British Minister to the Court of Tuscany, 1864-8. During the 30 years that he lived there he worked indefatigably at extending his collections. The library eventually held some 60,000 volumes; Hans (later, Jean) Fürstenberg (1890-1982), banker, scholar and bibliophile (bookplate on front paste-down). Being Jewish, Fürstenberg left Nazi Germany for France taking his book collection with him after paying exit taxes; he donated many of his German books to the Bibliothèque Nationale that year. Thereafter he was known as Jean rather than Hans. After the Second World War he was based mainly in Geneva, working at the family bank. In 1964, he set up the Fondation Fürstenberg-Beaumesnil, to which he gave a collection of books, some of which were sold in 1983 (Paris, 16-17 November). In May 1966 an exhibition of Fürstenberg's books, including this one, was held at the Geneva Art Museum (label on front paste-down, 'Exposé au Musée d'Art 1966'); sold Binoche.