A mid-17th-century Italian brass sector

AN EARLY SECTOR BY MACCARI. Maccari, of Mirandola, is noted, with Giacomo Lusverg (see following lot), for his 'well-constructed instruments enhanced by finely engraved decoration' (M. Daumas Scientific Instrument Makers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and their Makers (London: 1972), p. 66). Maccari's instruments include sectors, proportional compasses, and circumferentors, the majority dating from the latter 1660s to the 1680s and identifying this as an unusually early instrument by the maker. Apart from his work as an instrument-maker, Maccari was also commissioned by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini to build the sundial in the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna.