Search Results: Authors starting with M from Musinsky Rare Books, Inc.

Paris: chez Chaignieau aîné, 1797. 18mo (150 x 85 mm).  205, [1 blank], [2] pp. Half-titles, two engraved titles, after Charles Eisen (Narcisse) and Moreau (Jugement), and 8 engraved plates, four in part 1 after Gabriel Jacques de St. Aubin, and four in part 2 after Moreau, most engraved by L. Duval. 2-page publisher's catalogue at end. Printed on wove paper. Contemporary straight-grained dark green morocco gilt, sides with double fillet panel and leafy vine border built up from repeated tools, quatrefoil tools at corners, spine in six faux compartments each stamped with a block of ivy leaves on a dense pointillé ground, gilt edges, board edges and turn-ins gilt, fuchsia endleaves, by Doll, with his gold-tooled signature at foot of spine (slight scuffing to spine extremities). Provenance: Amédée Rigaud (1819-1874), circular bookplate, black paper gilt with leafy initial R, motto "bona fide sine fraude," paper shelfmark label headed "Paris";  Sir David Lionel Salomons (1851-1925), bookplate. … Read More

Venice: Antonio Curto son of Jacopo, 1805. 4to (222 x 157 mm). [8], xvi, 76 pp. Engraved arms of the dedicatee Josefa Juaña Nepomucena Alvarez de Faria, flanked by personifications of hope and charity, on first dedication page (*2r), flanked by allegorical figures of pity and charity. A fine, wide-margined copy. Contemporary Italian mottled sheep-backed grey pastepaper boards (rubbed with some paper loss), edges blue-speckled.  Only edition of a whistle-blowing philanthropic plea to save the lives of orphans, the destitute, and prisoners, who were dying in their respective hell-holes at a rate of 50,000 per year, according to the author, consul for Spain in Venice. Presented as a plan to avoid population decrease and to improve the economy, Megino's proposal reflects Enlightenment values and distills genuine compassion.  Part I treats "los espositos," or foundlings, a huge problem in pre-modern Catholic Europe. Megino praises the King (Charles IV) for his decree of 5 January 1794,  which gave… Read More

Nuremberg: Christian Sigmund Froberg for Wolfgang Michahelles, 1710. 12mo (127 x 77 mm). [16], 145, [7] pp. Gothic types. Woodcut illustration of a pantograph (p. 8). Overall discoloration, some soiling and fraying to first and last few leaves. Contemporary speckled parchment over pasteboards (worn, covers bowed and darkened).*** A popular and now commensurately rare German translation of Claude Boutet's guide to miniature painting, the Traité de Miniature pour apprendre aisément à peindre sans maître (first published [as Escole de la Mignature] in Lyon, 1666). The translator was Gregor Andreas Schmidt, whose initials appear at the end of the dedication. A bestseller in France, Boutet's work was translated successively into German (first 1688), Italian (1703) and English (1729). Boutet's goal in writing the work, he explains in the foreword, was to provide a guide for those lacking the opportunity for personal instruction in technical matters, such as nuns, or "persons of standing" who seek a… Read More

Paris: the Associated Booksellers to the Church, 1600. Folio (362 x 245 mm). Collation: ã6 ê6 î4 (i4 blank) õ6 ũ6 ãã6 êê4; A-Z Aa-Yy6. [38], 228, 42 leaves. Double column, printed in red and black, double rule page-borders throughout. 57 pages with printed music (staves red-printed). Woodcut title illustration of Saints Peter and Paul, seven full-page woodcuts (the first in two blocks: a woodcut border and small Annunciation cut), five small woodcut vignettes including two repeats, and approximately 368 historiated initials in various sizes and from various series. Small tear to corner of title-leaf, occasional foxing, very occasional offsetting of red ink, small stains in gutters in quire O, finger-soiling in Canon (quire X), small rust-hole in f. 212 (NN2) affecting 3 letters, last few leaves with narrow marginal dampstain and slight creasing to upper fore-corners. Bound in contemporary French gold-tooled and -stamped light brown goatskin, covers paneled with double fillets, inner panel… Read More