Bertotti Scamozzi, Ottavio
Le fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio raccolti ed illustrati … opera divisa in quattro tomi con tavole in rame rappresentanti le piante, i prospetti, e gli spaccati ; Le terme dei Romani disegnate da Andrea Palladio a ripubblicate con la giunta di alcune osservazioni… giusta l’esemplare del Lord Conte Burlington.
Vicenza, Giovanni Rossi 1796; Vicenza, Tommaso Parise 1810.
Full Description
Small 4to. 2 works in 5 vols. (Fabbriche) : engraved portrait frontispiece, iv + 128pp, 52 engraved plates (and unnumbered engraved plate after p.34) ; iv +76 pp, 51 engraved plates ; iv+60pp, 52 engraved plates on (50)ff (nos. 32/3 and 35/6 relate to 1 plate each) ; iv+80pp, 54 engraved plates ; (Terme) : engraved portrait frontispiece, 55+(1)pp, 25 engraved plates. Uniformly bound in early nineteenth century marbled boards, with contemporary printed paper labels on spines. Ink acquisition date “Vicenza 14 Agost. 1823” on front free endpaper of vol.I of the Fabbriche and on front free endpaper of the Terme volume. Each volume carries the pictorial bookplate and ownership inscription of Gilbert R.Redgrave (see above). A little occasional browning at upper blank margins, but a good set. George Atkinson’s copy.
A good set of the small quarto edition of Bertotti Scamozzi’s four volumes on Palladio’s architectural works, providing carefully drawn measured plans, elevations, and sections of each of Palladio’s buildings, accompanied by a later printing in the same format of Bertotti Scamozzi’s supplementary publication of Palladio’s drawings of the “Terme dei Romani”, based on Lord Burlington’s Fabbriche Antiche of 1730. The first three volumes of the Fabbriche record Palladio’s designs for public buildings (including the Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza), town houses and villas, while the fourth volume is devoted mainly churches and to unexecuted projects. Bertotti Scamozzi was himself an architect, and he provides an extensive accompanying text, discussing Palladio’s architectural achievement and describing all the buildings illustrated. The volumes had originally been published in large folio format between 1776 and 1783, when this was the nearest to a catalogue raisonnée of the work of a celebrated architect of the past that had as yet been produced, and was as such a real landmark in architectural history. For the present small quarto edition, published in 1796 in response to what seems to have been genuine demand for a printing of Bertotti Scamozzi’s volumes in a handier format, a new set of plates, providing very accurate reduced copies of those used in the edition of 1776-83, was supplied by the local engraver Antonio Mugnoni, himself a friend and protegé of Bertotti Scamozzi. The present set is completed by a copy of an early nineteenth century reissue of Bertotti Scamozzi’s version of Le Terme dei Romani, originally published in large folio format in 1785 and first produced in a small quarto edition in 1797. The set is neatly bound in uniform early nineteenth century Italian marbled boards, shown by an acquisition date to predate August 1823 and most probably a binding done in the 1810s. It later passed into the possession of Gilbert Richard Redgrave (1844-1941), art historian, book collector and bibliographer. BAL Cat 260 (Fabbriche, this edition), 2382 (Terme, this edition).