Who says the market on old books is in a downward spiral? Luca Pacioli wrote the definitive treatise Summa de Arithmetica, Geometrisa, Proportioni et Proportionalita and published it in Venice in 1494. On June 12, 2019, Christie’s put up one copy for auction. (The starting price was one million USD; it eventually sold for 1.2 million USD.)
Experts estimate 120 copies of this book still exist. An image of a typical page, reproduced here, shows its type font is somewhat less readable than the modern accounting textbook.
Summa de Arithmetica was widely read and used at the time. It contains real-life examples, and that made it accessible to merchants, bankers, and bookkeepers. Moreover, the book laid out the method of the double-entry system in accounting used by merchants in Venice and also had the first use of plus and minus signs for numbers. Talk about a fundamental book!
So, hats off to Luca Pacioli, a long-ago hero of accounting who had lots of folksy wisdom to impart as well, sometimes in memorable metaphors.
For example, at one point in the book, he advises the reader: “Don’t learn from ignoramuses who have more leaves than grapes.” Clearly, the results of the auction show that interest in his historic contribution to accounting and finance continues to inspire others to this day.♠️
Click here to read “The first folio of finance” in the Economist, June 8, 2019.
Click here to read the highlights of Summa Arithmetica. The website is maintained by ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales).
Click here to read more about Luca Pacioli.
The portrait of Pacioli is attributed to Jacopo de’ Barbari – Lauwers, Luc & Willekens, Marleen: Five Hundred Years of Bookkeeping: A Portrait of Luca Pacioli (Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1994, vol. XXXIX issue 3 p. 289–304)