Essai Sur Les Ouvrages Physico-Mathematiques de Leonard de Vinci, Avec Des Fragmens Tires de Ses Manuscrits, Apportes de L'Italie; Lu a la Premiere Classe de l'Institut National des Sciences et Arts by [Da Vinci, Leonardo; Lalande, J.J.]; Venturi J.-B. (Giovanni Battista) - 1797

Paris: Chez Duprat, Libraire Pour ies Mathematiques, 1797. Rare First Edition. A COPY WITH ESPECIALLY FINE PROVENANCE. AN EXCELLENT ASSOCIATION COPY., J. JEROME LALANDE'S COPY with his autograph and various emendations throughout. Lalande, as director of the Paris Observatory, commended Venturi to General Napoleon Bonaparte as "one of the men most competent to bring renown to Italy and to build there useful waterworks and do good work in mathematics and physics," and praised his ability in the art of civil engineering and military architecture. Lalande's AUTOGRAPH and a brief MANUSRIPT notation in ink on the front pastedown, four additional ink marginal notations in his distinctive hand and a marginal pencil notation with small sketch likely in a different hand. With a folding leaf displaying 16 engraved illustrative plates. 4to, bound in the original, blue mottled paper-covered boards. 56 pp. The text is very fine and wonderfully preserved, the binding is solid and firm but the paper of the boards is expectedly worn and rubbed, the spine more so RARE FIRST EDITION OF THIS HIGHLY IMPORTANT WORK, WE KNOW OF NO OTHER COPY AVAILABLE IN COMMERCE AND THERE ARE NO RECORDS OF PUBLIC SALES IN THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES. AN EXTRAORDINARY ASSOCIATION COPY, THE COPY HERE OFFERED BEING THAT OF THE IMPORTANT FRENCH SCIENTIST JOSEPH JEROME LALANDE WITH HIS AUTOGRAPH OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE AND AUTOGRAPH EMENDATIONS .
Giovanni Battista Venturi's "Essais de Léonard de Vinci" is considered the beginning of modern Leonardo studies.  Venturi, who lived in Paris for much of his life, had access to the Leonardo Da Vinci manuscripts which had been moved by order of Napoleon, after his conquests in the Italian peninsula. Venturi was the first to call attention to the importance of Leonardo Da Vinci as a scientist, rather than simply as an artist. An important physicist himself, he was the discoverer of the Venturi effect, which was described in another paper of 1797. That paper is considered a foundational work of modern fluid mechanics.
Monsieur Lalande's career began in earnest when Lemonnier obtained permission to send him to Berlin, to make observations on the lunar parallax in concert with those of Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope.
The successful execution of this task obtained for him, before he was twenty-one, admission to the Academy of Berlin, as well as his election as an adjunct astronomer to the French Academy of Sciences. He devoted himself to the improvement of the planetary theory, publishing in 1759 the corrected edition of Edmond Halley's tables, with a history of Halley's Comet whose return in that year he had helped Alexis Clairaut to calculate.] In 1762 Delisle resigned the chair of astronomy in the Collčge de France in Lalande's favour. The duties were discharged by Lalande for forty-six years. His house became an astronomical seminary, and amongst his pupils were Delambre, Giuseppe Piazzi, Pierre Méchain, and his own nephew Michel Lalande. By his publications in connection with the transit of Venus of 1769 he won great fame.
In 1766, Lalande, with Helvetius, founded the "Les Sciences" lodge in Paris, and received its recognition from Grand Orient de France in 1772. In 1776, he changed its name to Les Neuf Soeurs, and arranged for Benjamin Franklin to be chosen as the first worshipful master.
His investigations were conducted with diligence and Lalande's career was an eminent one. As a lecturer and writer he helped popularise astronomy. His planetary tables, into which he introduced corrections for mutual perturbations, were the best available up to the end of the 18th century. In 1801, he endowed the Lalande Prize, administered by the French Academy of Sciences, for advances in astronomy. Pierre-Antoine Véron, the young astronomer who for the first time in history determined the size of the Pacific Ocean from east to west, was Lalande's disciple.