“FIRST POCKET VITRUVIUS ILLUSTRATED” (FOWLER)
Two parts in one volume, 8vo (154x963 mm). [4], 187 leaves [i.e. 188, 144 is repeated]; 34 [i.e. 24], [24] leaves. Collation: [π]4, A-Z8, AA4; a-c8, A-C8. Title page within a woodcut grotesque border, the shield included in the lower panel of the border filled in with six stars drawn by a contemporary hand in brown ink. Woodcut Giunta's device on the verso of the last leaf. Illustrated with 140 woodcuts (one repeat), depicting ground plans, ancient buildings, columned courtyards, ornaments, instruments, machines, diagrams, including the celebrated ‘human proportion' on ll. F2r and F2v. Numerous three- to six-line woodcut decorated initials. Blank spaces for capital, with guide letter. Late 19th-century or early 20th-century Burgundy morocco gilt, inside gilt dentelles, marbled endleaves, gilt edges (joints worn and weakened). Title-page border slightly trimmed on the outer margin, some light foxing and occasional browning, outer margin cut short but affecting only in one case the border of a woodcut and the printed marginalia, all in all a very good copy with several contemporary annotations in brown ink in Latin and Greek.
The first octavo edition and the second overall illustrated edition of the De architectura decem libri (‘Ten Books on Architecture') by the Roman architect Vitruvius, edited by the Franciscan friar and philologist Giovanni Giocondo, who was active as an architect and an engineer in Naples, Paris, Venice, and Rome.
The De architectura was composed between 31 and 27 BC, and is the only complete treatise on architecture to have survived from Antiquity. The work circulated widely in manuscript (about eighty manuscripts are recorded), and appeared first in print in Rome in 1486/87. The first illustrated Vitruvius was published Venice in 1511, a large volume issued from the printing press of Giovanni Tacuino, and skillfully prepared by the aforementioned Fra Giocondo.
The Vitruvius' text was substantially reprinted by Filippo Giunta in 1513, in a volume in smaller and easily portable format: The Giuntina of 1513 is the first book on architecture in octavo size ever printed, and opens with Giocondo's dedicatory epistle to Cardinal Giuliano de' Medici, originally appended to the Tacuino edition. The Florentine Vitruvius is supplemented with the treatise on aqueducts (De aquae ductu urbis Romae) by Sextus Iulius Frontinus, which also circulated autonomously. Frontinus' work is introduced by a short address by Fra Giocondo, and here is in the issue without a separate title page. The Giuntina contains - obviously cut now in reduced size - the series of 136 woodcuts of the 1511 Venetian edition, to which are added four new subjects.
“Being an architect himself, Fra Giocondo could easily render into pictures what Vitruvius was describing. As a grammarian and architect, he did not simply copy what he found in medieval manuscripts, but Fra Giocondo even endeavored to find the appropriate terminology for architectural techniques. Published toward the end of Fra Giocondo's life, this Vitruvius edition was to become the standard Latin version. For the friar it stood at the end of a long engagement with Vitruvius, whom he approached through a variety of channels. Just as important as this textual edition was his public engagement with Vitruvius. It appears that, around 1495 in Paris, Fra Giocondo was the first person to lecture both publicly and privately on architecture, taking Vitruvius as his basis. This would probably have been one of the first lectures on art and architecture that ever took place” (A. Dressen, The Intellectual Education of the Italian Renaissance Artist, Cambridge-New York, 2021).
Pettas, pp. 255-256, no. 56; Edit 16, CNCE28727; Adams, V-603; Camerini, 45; Renouard, xxxvii.45; Cicognara, 697; Sander, 7695; Fowler, 394; Berlin Katalog, 1799; L. Ciapponi, Fra Giocondo da Verona and his edition of Vitruvius, in: “Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes”, 47, 1984, pp. 72-90; P. Gros, Fra Giocondo lecteur et interprète de Vitruve. La valeur de sa méthode et les limites de sa logique”, in: “Monuments et mémoires de la fondation Eugène Piot”, 94, 2015, pp. 201-241; P. Gros & P. N. Pagliara, eds., Giovanni Giocondo umanista, architetto e antiquario, Venice, 2015.
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