An important and coherent collection of manuscript notes and lunar tables, devoted to Cassini’s study of the motions of the moon - photo 1
An important and coherent collection of manuscript notes and lunar tables, devoted to Cassini’s study of the motions of the moon - photo 2
An important and coherent collection of manuscript notes and lunar tables, devoted to Cassini’s study of the motions of the moon - photo 3

An important and coherent collection of manuscript notes and lunar tables, devoted to Cassini’s study of the motions of the moon

Lot 10
02.02.2024 10:00UTC -05:00
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$ 21 420
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 1129628
Lot 10 | An important and coherent collection of manuscript notes and lunar tables, devoted to Cassini’s study of the motions of the moon
Estimate value
$ 8 000 – 12 000
CASSINI, Giovanni Domenico (1625-1712). An important and coherent collection of manuscript notes and lunar tables, devoted to Cassini’s study of the motions of the moon. Bologna and Paris, c.1651-1710.

Three separate but related manuscripts, the first folded (288 x 208mm) with manuscript diagrams in text, unsewn and loosely inserted with the second two (338 x 240mm), sewn, together in seventeenth-century Italian carta rustica, vellum spine with large shelf label ‘Q’ on spine.

A remarkable assembly of manuscripts related to Cassini’s investigations of the motions of the moon, in particular lunar libration and nutation. Giovanni Domenico Cassini began his education in Bologna, and in 1648 accepted a position at the observatory at Panzano not far from that city, enabling him to continue his studies under Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi. In 1650 he was awarded the chair of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Bologna. He so distinguished himself through his discoveries—including the first experimental verification of Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, important observations about the moons of Jupiter, and the 1668 publication of his Ephemerides Bononienses mediceorem siderum—that Colbert recruited him in 1669 to establish and head the Royal Observatory. This was part of Louis XIV’s grand cultural project embodied in the Académie Royale des Sciences.

The first manuscript here is in three sections, individually headed De quatuor Lunae orbibus, De Lunae motibus, and De Solis motibus. Written in Latin, it was composed in Bologna, almost certainly for Cassini’s lectures there in 1651-1652. It probably dates to shortly after 1651, being based partially on his teacher Riccioli’s 1651 Almagestum novum (a later diagram in the margin also refers to Riccioli’s 1665 Astronomia renovate). Cassini’s focus here is lunar orbits and eclipses, and the reliability of previously published tables. The text is comprises of excerpts and summaries of passages taken from specific sections of the Almagest related to lunar motion, supplemented with Cassini’s own observations and comparisons. He also references Kepler and other astronomers. Although Cassini was a Copernican who had supported Kepler’s heliocentric model, his position prevented him from publishing this openly. This manuscript predates Cassini’s first publication on lunar motion in 1693, which contains the first statement of his eponymous laws addressing the axial rotation of the moon (but which can be generalized to other bodies in the solar system).

The second and third manuscripts are products of Cassini’s 1669 move to Paris. The first of these, a short text entitled Trouver le vray lieu de la Lune, was composed sometime before he went blind in 1710. It introduces the series of tables which follow in the third document, written in Latin and addressing the movement and description of lunar trajectories. These tables along with their introduction were adapted and published in 1740 in Paris by Cassini’s son Jacques (sometimes referred to as Cassini II) in his Tables astronomiques du Soleil, et de la Lune.

Although the tables were written between 1669 and 1710; it is probable that some of the observations are from Cassini’s time in Bologna. They were the product of Cassini’s final set of lunar observations and calculations on positions and eclipses at the Royal Observatory. This manuscript is the source for the lunar tables in Jacques’s French publication of 1740—although significant content in our manuscript was deleted, modified, compressed, and otherwise altered in the course of translation (and with errors introduced into the published text). Cassini is also known to have shared his unpublished astronomical tables with his friend Eustachio Manfredi, head of the Bologna observatory; Manfredi’s own published tables, Ephemerides Motuum Coelestium in 1715, are in some cases are close copies of the tables in our present manuscript. This connection can also be seen in Manfredi’s manuscript tables in the Archivio Historico at the University of Bologna, which date from before 1715.

Christie's thanks Dr Dalia Deias for her invaluable assistance in researching these documents.
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