MARCUS. P. VITRUVIUS
I Dieci Libri dell’Architettura … tradotti e commentati da Monsig. Daniel Barbaro ...

MARCUS. P. VITRUVIUS
I Dieci Libri dell’Architettura … tradotti e commentati da Monsig. Daniel Barbaro eletto Patriarca d’Aquileia, da lui riveduti & ampliati; & ora in più commoda forma ridotti. Venice, Francesco de Franceschi, 1584.

4to (230x170 mm), 18th century vellum with yapp edges, red sprinkled edges, flyleaves and pastedowns of boards covered with 18th cent. decorated paper; light browning here and there, upper margin quite narrow (headline of some leaves shaved towards the end), a tiny wormhole crossing the outer blank margin for almost half of the volume (never affecting text) and at gutter, bottom of pp. 220/340 (not affecting text), generally still a good copy. Beautiful architectural-allegorical title-page, text printed in Roman and cursive type, with many woodcut initials; pp. [8], 505, 1 blank, completely illustrated with many woodcut illustrations (also full-page and double-page) and two added folding woodcut plates (bound after p. 248 and p. 258).
Third edition (here in the reduced format) of Daniele Barbaro’s very famous translation of Vitruvius (first edited in Venice by Marcolini in 1556, then in 1567, still in Venice by Francesco de Franceschi, in folio and 4to). This is the best modern commentary published in Italy after the edition published in Como in 1521. The woodcut border used for the title-page is the same as that used for the 1565 Venice edition of Alberti’s Architettura, and the woodcut illustrations are those used in the 1567 4to edition, in turn reduced copies from those used in the folio edition of the same year (and cut by Johann, or Giovanni Kruger, the same author of the woodcuts used in Palladio’s 1570 1st edition of the “I Quattro Libri di Architettura”). Fowler 413; Riccardi I/2° p., col. 615; Cicognara 720.