AGRIPPA (Henry-Corneille). Declamation on the uncertainty, v - Lot 1

AGRIPPA (Henry-Corneille). Declamation on the uncertainty, vanity and abuse of the sciences. S.l. [Genève], Jean Durand, 1582. In-8, jans. red morocco, gilt inner lace, gilt edges (Trautz-Bauzonnet). First edition of the rare and most complete French translation by Louis Turquet de Mayerne. Composed in Latin as early as 1526, the encyclopedic treatise De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum is the masterpiece of the celebrated scholar, physician, philosopher, occultist and adventurer Henri-Corneille Agrippa de Nettesheim (1486-1535), a leading Renaissance figure whose wandering life and heterodox views brought him persecution and disgrace. The work is an excellent manual of esoteric counter-culture, with one hundred and three chapters on grammar, rhetoric, geomancy, music, dance, painting, architecture, agriculture, fishing, hunting, military art, cooking, palmistry, natural magic, poison magic, cabala, moral philosophy, alchemy, the inquisition, etc. A very fine copy, to which a curious 16th-century woodcut portrait of the author has been added. Provenance: - Bibliothèque du Comte de Lignerolles (sale 1894, 1st part, no. 407) - Maurice Méric library (bookplate). Caillet, no. 87 (Latin ed. 1537) - Brunet I, 113 GLN-2915.