Astronomy is the focus of the report on the April 26 Christie’s sale of the third portion of the Giancarlo Beltrame science library, but illustrated here are two very different lots from that auction, in which around two-thirds of the 400-plus lots find buyers.
Believed to be the first copy to come to auction in over 80 years, a 1518-19 Venetian first in modern vellum of the Ars transmutationis metallicae of Johannes Antonius Pantheus, an Italian priest and alchemist, sold at a record £8500.
Published in Paris in 1895, the Calendrier Magique, an Art Nouveau-style exercise in black magic, was the work of Manuel Orazi and Austin de Croze. Lithographed throughout, most of its 16 leaves feature gold heightened and coloured decoration incorporating large initials, pentagrams, a tarot card and other occult symbols to present “a wildly unusual subversion of a typical calendar”. Only two other copies of the mystical 777 believed to have been printed appear in auction records. They sold in the mid-1990s for a few hundred pounds each but this one, estimated at £700-1000, sold instead for £21,000.