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Summary
Author: Arnaldi, Enea
Title: Delle basiliche antiche, e specialmente di quella di Vicenza del celebre Andrea Palladio discorso ... con l’aggiunta della descrizione d’una curia d’invenzione dell’autore.
Publication: Vicenza, Francesco Vendramini Mosca 1769.
Price: Sold
Reference: 09945
Full Description
4to. viii + cxxxv + (1)pp, engraved portrait frontispiece, 8 folding engraved plates (the last plate has old ink stains on two blank outer margins). Contemporary parchment wrappers, neat repairs to spine. Partly erased ink ownership inscription dated 1877 on front free endpaper. A good, fresh copy.
Arnaldi (1716-1794) had been the architect commissioned by the Vicenza city authorities in 1765 to restore Palladio’s celebrated Basilica building in the Piazza de’ Signori in the centre of the city, and in the present book he provides a full building history, based on original documents, and physical description, based on his own personal investigation, of Palladio’s building, as well as an overview of the basilica as a building type. He adds at the end a description, with three accompanying plates, of his own ambitious design for a large “Curia” building in neo-Palladian style, suitable for meetings of Vicenza’s governing council, that would occupy the side of the Piazza de’ Signori that was occupied in the 1760s by aesthetically unpleasing private houses. Arnaldi’s book was first published in 1767, and the present copy is of a 1769 reissue, using the sheets of the edition of 1767 with a new printed title leaf. BAL Cat 138 (1767 edition, but an incomplete copy), 139 (this edition) ; Berlin Cat 2718 (1767 edition) ; Fowler 30 (this edition) ; Cicognara 876 (this edition).