“Stupendous and Marvelous Secrets”: Secret No More (Part II)

October 3, 2018

We continue our exploration of so-called books of secrets (secreti italiani) in the Duveen Collection, recently digitized as part of the subcollection “Secrets Reveal’d: Early Modern Printed Books of Alchemy and ‘Chymistry'” in the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.

Volume 2 [i.e., box 2] contains 22 titles, most with a colorful paper wrapper, as the samples below illustrate. We believe they were owned by Horace De Landau, barone (1824-1903).

From the Duveen Collection. Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Here the author (Francesco Ricci, said to hail  from Padua) was clearly taking ownership of his rare secrets.
This pamphlet has only a plain white paper wrapper, but the title page image has much going on.
Note the astronomical instruments on the title page, appropriate for a work on the influence of the heavens on life (and health) on earth.

For more on this set in the Duveen Collection, click here.