Le due regole della prospettiva practica (The Two Rules of Practical Perspective)
Rome: Stamperia Camerale, 1611. Second edition. Contemporary vellum. Folio (35.5 by 27.9 cm). Collation: A4, [second series:] A-T4 (= 80 leaves; blank T4); [8], 145, [4, tavola], [1, register and colophon], [2, blank] pp. Engraved title page; 29 engraved plates in text (8 full-page); 120 woodcut diagrams; woodcut initials and ornaments; woodcut printer's device at colophon. Contemporary limp vellum, lettered in ink at spine. Occasional mild touches of soiling (mostly marginal); expert repair to tears along the gutter at leaf R3, resulting in 4 by 4 cm fill in blank section of plate, and very slight loss of text at verso. A very good, amply margined copy, complete with the final blank leaf.
Second edition, first published at Rome by Francesco Zanetti in 1583. Together with Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio, and Vincenzo Scamozzi, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1573) was "one of the four most successful architectural theorists of the Renaissance" (Millard), and "was as influencial in France, as Palladio was in England" (Fowler). Beginning as a painter, Vignola took up drawing, then architectural delineation and perspective; using these skills he drew many of the antiquities of Rome for the members of the Accademia dell'architettura. Among the many important commissions Vignola enjoyed, his selection to complete St. Peter's Basilica in Rome after the death of Michelangelo stands preëminent.
Vignola composed two architectural treatises, 39 editions of which appear in the Fowler Collection. The first, Regola delli Cinque Ordini d'Architettura (Rule of the Five Orders of Architecture) was published at Rome, around 1563. The present work on perspective, though not published until 1583, "was almost certainly conceived and composed before Serlio's, in the 1530s, and completed between 1542 and 1545... when the author was still a young man employed in preparing designs for perspectives carried out in wood intarsia... Vignola's concern in this work of perspective was to demonstrate both the Albertian method of "intersection" and the distance point or "bifocal," technique, showing the basic harmony between them... When the Due regole appeared, it was 'the first specialized treatise on perspective by a professional artist to appear in Italy' and 'the most intelligent, useful and thoroughly informative book on perspective' ever published... The Due regole has been considered a bridge between the quattrocento studies of artistic perspective carried out by painters and the scientific perspective of seventeenth-century geometers" (Millard).
Notes on the edition: As in the Library of Congress copy, the dedication to Marcantonio Borghese is signed "Geremia" Guelifi, rather than "Hieremia," as in the Fowler copy. The illustrations are all from the 1583 first edition. Careful inspection of our copy reveals that apart from the engraved title, there are in fact 29 engraved plates in the text, 8 of which are full-page format (rather than 28 plates, of which 7 are full-page, as noted in Millard).
Provenance: Old entry a top margin dedication (A2 recto): "Ex libris Vecanaleis? Parodiensis," perhaps referring to the Jesuit Residentia Parodiensis in Lyons. Very good. Item #55449
References: Digital Cicognara Library 810 (along with ed. 1583); Fowler 387; Millard, Italian and Spanish, 149.
Price: $3,250.00