Regola delli cinque ordini d'architettura.

HANDSOME EARLY EDITION OF VIGNOLA'S PRACTICAL GUIDE

Folio (403 x 255mm). 37 leaves, numbered II-XXXII [XXXIII-XXXVII unnumbered], engraved throughout. Eighteenth-century speckled calf, with double gilt fillet, spine gilt in compartments, edges gilt (sympathetically rebacked with original spine laid down). 

N.p., n.d., but [Rome?, 

An early edition of influential mannerist architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola's (1507-1573) handsome and distinctive study of the mathematical bases for each of the five orders of architecture, entirely engraved, including title page and text. Extremely popular, the work was issued in numerous editions, and establishing issue points for precedence of the early printings in particular is not straightforward. The first issue of plates I-XXXII was in 1562 or 1563; in this copy, the qualities of the first XXXII numbered plates, the presence of the five subsequent, additional plates of four doorways and one mantelpiece, and the absence of the later plate of the five orders, align it with those of Fowler type A, no.351a. Fowler writes: 'the work described here may therefore be the third issue with the addition of five engraved plates of doorways and one mantelpiece'; in the five lines added at the bottom of plate III Vignola himself explains additions and edits that he has made to the plates, suggesting that this is an early, but not the first, incarnation of the work.

 

'Vignola, another of the great protagonists of the Italian Renaissance, was as influential in France, as Palladio was in England' (Fowler, 351). As the address and inscriptions on three of the final five plates indicate, Vignola enjoyed the patronage of the Farnese family, in particular Cardinals Alessandro and Ranuccio, and was responsible for the extravagant Villa Farnese near Viterbo, and for modifications to Palazzo Farnese in Rome, for Cardinal Ranuccio. Along with many other commissions, including the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome, Vignola completed two of the smaller domes of St Peter's basilica, working from Michelangelo's plans after the artist's death. With his Regola delle cinque ordini Vignola's 'goal is to develop a set of rules form proportions that can be understood by "average minds". His predecessors' theories of proportion were flawed, he suggested, by the fact that they were extremely difficult to put into practice...he called for a universal method of calculation that can be applied to individual working measurements' (Evers & Biermann, p.88). Vignola's focus, therefore, was less on establishing a theory of architecture and more on creating a practical set of instructions for building. 

 

Provenance: 1. Armorial bookplate of Arthur William FitzRoy Somerset (1855-1937) on front paste-down, English first-class cricketer.  2. Blindstamped exlibris, pencilled name and date of Derek Gibson (1936-2021), from his collection. 

 

Outer blank margins of final plates strengthened/extended, stain to outer portion of final eight leaves, strongest on versos. 

B. Evers & V. Biermann, Architectural Theory: from the Renaissance to the Present (Taschen, 2003).

Fowler 351. Berlin Kat. 2578. Brunet V, 1219. Cicognara, 416.

Stock Code: 246910