Vitruvius
Marci Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura libri decem. Ex fide librorum scriptorum recensuit, emendavit, suisque et virorum doctorum annotationibus illustravit Io.Gottlob Schneider, Saxo.
Leipzig, G.J.Göschen 1807, 1808, 1808.
Full Description
4to. 3 vols. lxxvi + 312pp ; (2) + 501 + (1)pp ; (2) + 394 + (4)pp. Contemporary quarter calf, marbled boards, gilt spines. A good set.
A very good scholarly edition of Vitruvius by the German academic Johann Gottlob Schneider (1750-1822). The first volume prints Schneider’s text of Books I-X of Vitruvius, and the two other volumes his very extensive commentary on disputed readings and on other matters arising from a critical study of every line of Vitruvius’s text. Rather pleasingly, he dedicates his book to six named contemporaries “qui de Vitruvio bene meriti sunt” (who have deserved well of Vitruvius), including the academics C.G.Heyne, C.A.Boetticher and Alois Hirt, and the architect Hans Christian Genelli. Since the volumes contain no illustrations and their text is in Latin throughout, they are very much an item for the specialist collector of editions of Vitruvius or for an institutional library, but the merits of Schneider’s edition have consistently been recognised by subsequent scholars, and the present copy, in a pleasing contemporary binding, is probably as good a copy as is likely to appear in the book trade. BAL Cat 3504.