Libro Dabaco che insegnia a fare ogni raxone marcadantile & apertegare le terre con l'arte di la giometria.
8vo. (80) ff., including 23 woodcut illustrations, several signed LA (=Luca Antonio Uberti, identified in colophon), 15 diagrams and numerous mathematical examples and tables in ornamental borders. Bound in later vellum. Some hand- and fingersoiling and light waterstain to scattered leaves. Otherwise good.
Rare and early (c. 1520) counterfeit edition of the most frequently printed abbaco book of the 16th century (Grendler, p. 327), and one of the most imaginatively illustrated 16th-century textbooks. The cuts include an interior of a schoolroom (verso of title), a master pupil scene and even numerical tables are embellished with playful decorative borders, etc.
The book opens with a brief treatment of notation and finger symbols. Then follow in order multiplication tables, the proof of sevens, various methods of multiplication, division by the galley method, addition chiefly of denominate numbers, subtraction, the operations with fractions in the same order, exchange, rule of three and applied problems. There are numerous interesting woodcuts, and such familiar problems as those of the couriers, the testament, and the sale of eggs are given with illustrations. In spite of the arrangement of topics, there were few textbooks as influential as this in shaping the subsequent teaching of arithmetic (Smith, Rara, p. 115).
The first edition was published in 1515. Essling takes this to be a counterfeit on the basis of the deletion of Tagliente's name, the absence of mention that his relation Giovanni Antonio was involved in the composition, as well as the absence of any publisher proper. He assigns the date c. 1520 by comparison to the state of the woodcuts in preceding and later editions.
The NUC lists a single copy of this edition, Columbia (Essling copy), noting it as one of two known examples. All early editions are rare.
* Sander 1872; Riccardi I.487; Mortimer 489 (another undated edition c. 1520); Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, p. 327.
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