Vitruvius
L’architettura generale … ridotta in compendio dal Sig. Perrault.
Venezia, G.B.Albrizzi 1747.
Full Description
8vo. Engraved frontispiece, (42) + 213 + (1) + (30)pp, 12 engr plates on 11 ff (plates 1-9 with text on their versos, plates 10 and 11 on different sides of one folding leaf which also carries text). Contemporary quarter calf, marbled boards (slight split at foot of rear joint of spine).
First edition of this Italian translation of Perrault’s abridged version of Vitruvius. Perrault’s abridgement, in which Vitruvius’s main teachings are picked out and arranged in a proper sequence, had originally been published in French as far back as 1674, but a fresh wave of interest in the principles of classical architecture, emanating from the circle around Joseph Smith, British Consul at Venice, led to the appearance of this very careful translation into Italian, checked both against Perrault and against the famous Barbaro edition of Vitruvius ; and it was this Italian version of Perrault that was customarily acquired by English travellers on the Grand Tour. The volume includes a dedication by the volume’s publisher to Giacomo Campelli, heir to an aristocratic family in Belluno in the mainland territories of the Venetian republic. The plates reproduce those done for Perrault, with the addition of a new plate showing the base and pedestal of the Ionic order of architecture. BAL Cat 3541 ; Cicognara 732 ; Fowler 423 (the Fowler copy is of a variant issue, with a shorter dedication).