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64 results
The Art of Making Mechanical Timepieces for Church Towers, Rooms, and Pockets
Manuel del Río was a Spanish Franciscan, said to have been a skilled watchmaker, who probably learned the trade in Oporto, Portugal, with Tomás Luis de Sáa. Del Río belonged to the Franciscan community in Santiago, where in 1759 he published Arte de los reloxes de ruedas (The art of making mechanical timepieces). The work was reissued in 1789 in Madrid by del Río’s disciple Ramón Durán. That edition is presented here. The prologue states that one of the reasons for writing the book was the lack of manuals ...
Contributed by
National Library of Spain
Theatrical Design
Francisco Rizi was a painter of Italian descent who trained in the workshop of Vicente Carducho. In 1637 he began to work for King Philip IV of Spain, who appointed him the royal painter in 1656. His most productive period coincided with the reign of Philip, for whom he worked both on decorations of a mythological character for the Alcázar de Toledo and on the design and construction of theater sets from 1657 on. This drawing probably was made for a theatrical presentation at the Buen Retiro Palace, Madrid. It ...
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National Library of Spain
An Examination of the Talents Required for the Sciences
Examen de ingenios para las sciencias (An examination of the talents required for the sciences), first printed in 1575, is the only known work by Juan Huarte de San Juan, who was born in Navarre, Spain, in around 1529. The work seeks to clarify various questions regarding human knowledge and the capacities and abilities found in some persons but not in others, and such questions as what makes a person skilled in one science but not in another and how to recognize which art and science are best suited to ...
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National Library of Spain
Account of the Composition of the Human Body
Juan Valverde was a Spanish medical anatomist who was born in Amusco, in the present-day province of Palencia, around 1525. He left for Italy around 1542, and later practiced medicine and taught in Rome. He was the great Spanish follower of the new anatomy established by Andreas Vesalius in 1543 with his work De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body). Vesalius was responsible for a new vision of the human body in the modern world. Valverde helped to spread this vision through the 16 editions in ...
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National Library of Spain
El melopeo y maestro: Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Music
Pedro (Pietro) Cerone (1566–1625) was born in Bergamo, Italy. After training as a musician, singer, and priest in Italy, he travelled to Spain as a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela in about 1593. A year later, mired in poverty and living in Madrid, he came under the protection of Santiago Gratii (Caballero de Gracia), in whose music academy he was able to work. Thanks probably to Caballero de Gracia, he was able to serve in the Royal Chapel of Phillip II and later that of Philip III. Around 1603 ...
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National Library of Spain
The Book of Calixto and Melibea and of the Old Whore Celestina
La Celestina is undoubtedly one of the greatest bestsellers in Spanish literature. It is said to have been printed in more than 200 early editions, although fewer than half of these have survived. The work, by Fernando de Rojas (died 1541), began as a comedy in 16 acts, which was extended to 21 acts in the tragicomedy, which became the popular version. In addition to being published throughout Spain, the Spanish text was printed in Lisbon, Rome, Venice, Milan and Antwerp. Early translations into Italian, French, German, English, and Dutch ...
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National Library of Spain
Codicil of Queen Isabel the Catholic, Executed at Medina del Campo, on November 23, 1504
On November 23, 1504, three days before her death, Queen Isabella of Spain signed, in Medina del Campo, a codicil before the same notary, Gaspar de Gricio, and five of the seven witnesses who had been present on October 12 for the signing of her last will and testament. In the testament, the queen addressed the fundamental aspects of government by the Catholic monarchs. In the codicil, besides reaffirming what she had stipulated in the testament, she addressed questions directly affecting peninsular government and showed her concern for Spanish policy ...
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National Library of Spain
The Seville Bible
Biblia hispalense (The Seville Bible), also known as the Toletanus Codex, is a manuscript from the first half of the tenth century, in Latin written in lower-case Visigothic script by at least four copyists. The titles also appear in Hebrew, and there are notes in Arabic in the margins. The manuscript consists of booklets of eight sheets each, on parchment, with the text in three columns of 63–65 lines. Included are the texts of the Old and New Testaments, with a preface, prologues, and commentaries by Saint Jerome, Saint ...
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National Library of Spain
Beato of Liébana: The Codex of Fernando I and Doña Sancha
Around the year 776, a monk by the name of Beato or Beatus, possibly the abbot of the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, wrote a work entitled Comentarios al Apocalipsis (Commentary on the apocalypse), which had an extraordinary success in the following five centuries. Thanks to his great erudition, Beato combined in this text, as a summa, many commentaries on the topic of the apocalypse by such authors as Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Isidore of Seville, and the 4th-century scholar Ticonius. The genre of ...
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National Library of Spain
Playing with Fire: Operetta in Three Acts
Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (1823–94) is one of the best known figures in the history of Spanish music. He was a composer, musicologist, director, and bibliophile. The core music holdings of the National Library of Spain consist of Barbieri’s own library, which he bequeathed to the institution in his will. Barbieri’s bequest is one of the most important sources for the history of Spanish music. The national library also acquired, in 1999, Barbieri’s personal archive, which includes autographed scores. The relationship between Barbieri and the national library ...
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National Library of Spain
Seven-Part Code
This illuminated manuscript of the Siete partidas (Seven-part code), on parchment in Gothic script, dates from the 13th–15th centuries. The codex is important for several reasons. It was written in one scriptorium (except for Partida I, which was added in the 15th century) and it includes the complete Partidas with their ornamentation, and bibliographic clues that shed light on their origins. This body of law, commissioned and begun by Alfonso X and supplemented by later reforms, constitutes the most widely known legal system that governed Spain from the Middle ...
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National Library of Spain
Hebrew Bible
This manuscript Hebrew Bible with full vocalization, accentuation, and Masorah annotation was created in Spain in around 1300. The Bible is illustrated and decorated in color, silver, and gold. The books of the Bible are arranged in the conventional order later adopted in Hebrew printed editions, with the exception that Ecclesiastes precedes Lamentations. Written on parchment in Sephardi square script, the manuscript has three columns per page, with 35 lines per column. The Masorah Magna notes are written in micrography. Masorah refers to the collection of critical notes, compiled in ...
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National Library of Israel
Map of Spain and Portugal, Corrected and Augmented from the Map Published by D. Tomas Lopez
Tomás López (1730-1802) was a Spanish cartographer who was sent by the Spanish government to Paris for a number of years to learn cartography and engraving from the great French mapmaker Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782). In 1804, López published his Atlas Geográfico de España (Geographical atlas of Spain), the first atlas of Spain produced by a Spaniard. López’s children republished this work in a new edition in 1810, and again in 1830.
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National Library of Brazil
Coruña Bay, Ferrol Bay, Spain
This English manuscript double chart, in pen and water colors, on vellum, shows the harbors of La Coruña and El Ferrol in Spain. The date, localities depicted, and provenance of the charts indicate that they were prepared for use in the Drake-Norris expedition of 1589. After the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588 by the English fleet and failed in its attempt to invade England and overthrow Queen Elizabeth I, the English organized a counter-expedition aimed at destroying the remaining ships of the Armada. These ships had taken refuge in ...
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Library of Congress
“Shipwrecked” by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, and the Description of the Journey Which he Made Through Florida with Panfilo de Narvaez
Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490-1560) was second in command of an expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez (1478-1528) that left Spain in June 1527 with five ships and 600 men with the mission of establishing a colony in “Florida.” The expedition suffered storms, desertions, disease, and other difficulties in the Caribbean. On November 5 and 6, 1528, 80 surviving members of the expedition were shipwrecked on or near Galveston Island, Texas. After living among the local Native Americans for six years, Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors headed ...
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Library of Congress
New Map Showing the Spanish and Portuguese Explorations with Observations of the Most Ingenious Geographers of Spain and Portugal
This map, showing the southwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula, was published in Amsterdam by François Halma (1653-1722), a Dutch bookseller and publisher who started a business in Utrecht, later moved to Amsterdam, and finally settled in Leeuwarden. In addition to publishing maps, Halma produced one of the earliest Dutch-French dictionaries.
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National Library of Brazil
Geographical Description and Governmental Administration and Settlement of the Spanish Colonies in the Gulf of Guinea
This book is a detailed description of the African colony of Spanish Guinea (present-day Equatorial Guinea), by a Spanish colonial official, Luis Ramos-Izquierdo y Vivar. The Spanish territories in west Africa included the islands of Ferdinand Po, Coriseo, Elobey-Chico, Elobey-Grande, and Annobon, and the mainland African territory known as Rio Muni. The first part of the book covers the geography of the island and the mainland territories, including their climate, physical features, and populations. The second part of the book discusses the government and administration of the territories. Ramos-Izqueirdo y ...
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Library of Congress
Modern Geographic Table of Geography
Antoine du Pérac Lafréry (1512-77) was a French engraver who settled in Rome, probably in the early 1540s, where he became a celebrated publisher of maps. Lafréry assembled and bound collections of maps from various sources, which he sold under the title Tavole moderne di geografia...di diversi autori raccolte et messe secondo l’ordine di Tolemeo (Modern geographical maps...from various authors, collected and organized according to Ptolemy’s geographical order). This work dates from around 1575, a few years after Abraham Ortelius, working in Antwerp, published the first ...
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Library of Congress
The Special Features of French Antarctica, Otherwise Called America, and of Several Lands and Islands Discovered in Our Time
André Thevet (1516/17-92) was a Franciscan friar who traveled widely and, through his writings, helped to establish cosmographie--as geography was called at the time--as a science in 16th-century France. After making trips to Africa and the Middle East in the 1540s, he was appointed chaplain to the expedition of Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, which set out from Le Havre in May 1555 to establish a colony in Brazil. The expedition landed near present-day Rio de Janeiro in November of the same year. In January 1556, Thevet fell ill ...
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Library of Congress
“Pragmatica” on the Ten Days of the Year
This work is the first known South American imprint. It consists of a four-page edict, issued by King Philip II of Spain, decreeing the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. In order to bring the calendar back into line with the seasons, in February 1582 Pope Gregory XIII deleted ten days from the year 1582, so that October 4, 1582, of the Julian calendar was followed immediately by October 15, 1582, in the new Gregorian calendar. This work was produced in 1584 by Antonio Ricardo, an Italian typographer ...
Contributed by
John Carter Brown Library
Columbus Manuscript
In this manuscript, enscribed Cadiz, Spain, November 20, 1493, Christopher Columbus describes the new lands he has discovered, which he calls the East Indies. The manuscript is written on linen paper and bears a watermark. In 1978, the eminent historian Edmundo O’Gorman authenticated the document and backed its acquisition by CONDUMEX.
Contributed by
Center for the Study of the History of Mexico CARSO