Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo Tolemaico, e Copernicano

Florence: Giovanni Battista Landini, 1632. FIRST EDITION. Engraved frontispiece by Stefano della Bella depicting Aristotle, Ptolemy and Copernicus in discussion surmounted by the Medici arms, woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut initials, headpieces and diagrams; frontispiece repaired, possibly with a portion from another copy, lacking final blank. Bound in an early antiphonal leaf. A fine wide-margined copy with only a few leaves browned. First edition of Galileo’s statement and defence of the Copernican system of heliocentrism, which directly led to his trial for heresy in Rome in 1633. The Dialogo was designed both as an appeal to the great public and as an escape from silence. In the form of an open discussion between three friends – intellectually speaking, a radical, a conservative, and an agnostic – it is a masterly polemic for the new science.

Cinti, 89; Dibner, 8; Riccardi I, 511.