Bertotti Scamozzi, Ottavio
Il forestiere istruito delle cose più rare di architettura, e di alcune pitture della città di Vicenza.
Vicenza, Giovambattista Vendramini Mosca 1761.
Full Description
Small 4to. 119 + (1)pp, engraved portrait frontispiece, 36 engraved plates (mostly folding). Contemporary full panelled mottled calf, gilt, with elegant gilt tooling at borders of covers. A very good, clean, fresh copy. George Atkinson’s copy.
A really good copy of the first edition of Bertotti Scamozzi’s excellent architectural guide to the city of Vicenza. It takes the form of a dialogue between “Guglielmo”, an English traveller on the Grand Tour, and “Leandro”, a local who introduces himself as having shown the sights of the city to Matthew Brettingham, William Chambers and Robert Adam, and, very recently, “il Signor Winn” (identifiable as the British amateur architect Thomas Wynn, Lord Newborough). The remarks put into the mouths of these two individuals by Bertotti Scamozzi focus on the buildings in the city designed by Palladio and by Vincenzo Scamozzi, on which they provide a great deal of useful information, backed up by carefully executed accompanying engraved plates. Later editions were to follow between 1780 and 1804, but these abandoned the dialogue structure which gives the present edition its particular charm. BAL Cat 262 (where “il Signor Winn” is wrongly identified as Christopher Wren, junior); Millard, Italian and Spanish Books 19; Berlin Cat 2709; Fowler Cat 43.