BUONANNI (Filippo). Recreatio mentis, et oculi In Observatione Animalium Testaceorum Curiosis Naturæ Inspectoribus. Rome: Typographia Varesij, 1684. - Two parts in one volume in-4, 223 x 158: frontispiece, (8 ff.), 270 pp, (5 ff.), 7 plates; 138 plates. Stiff parchment, smooth spine, speckled edges (period binding). Filippo Buonnani (1638-1725) was an Italian Jesuit priest, who studied at the Roman College in Rome where he was taught by the scholar Athanasius Kircher . After teaching philosophy in Ancona, he became archivist of the Jesuit General Curia in Rome in 1676. In 1698 he returned to the Roman College where he was in charge of the Marian congregation and especially of the cabinet of curiosities created by Kircher. A man of science above all and a collector, he published various works including this Recreation of the mind and eyes which is the first work devoted exclusively to mollusks and shells in which he proposes a first attempt at a systematic classification of these animals. The treatise, opening with a beautiful allegorical frontispiece, is divided into two parts. The first part is purely descriptive; it is illustrated with seven plates. In spite of the errors of classification and description linked to the knowledge of the time, Buonanni was among the first to indicate the localities of certain species. The second part is purely iconographic; it includes one hundred and thirty-eight plates, including a general title and three part titles, offering more than five hundred representations of shellfish, more than one hundred more than in the original edition of 1681. The subjects of these engravings were partly taken from Kircher's curiosity cabinet. A good copy in contemporary binding. It comes from the library of Benoist Maugue (1657-1749), physician of the king's armies, in charge of the hospitals of Landau and Strasbourg and inspector of the king's hospitals in the province of Alsace. He was a friend of Pierre Chirac (1650-1732), first physician of the Regent and Louis XV, as well as of the learned botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708). Black stains on the spine and on the head edge. Number 14 written on the first board. Endpapers soiled. Frontispiece slightly cut at the head. Small but not serious spotting on the top of some leaves. Provenance : Benoist Maugue, with armorial bookplate.