Beschreibung
Bassano: Remondini, [ca. 1648]. Folio in 8s (17 1/2" x 11 3/4", 445mm x 296mm). [Full collation available.]42 leaves; engraved title and 41 engraved plates (numbered [1] IIII-XXXII [11]), all blank verso. Bound in early (XVIIIc?) stab-bound paste-paper wraps. Presented in a beige cloth clam-shell box with a chemise. Scattered soiling, with some rubbing and wear to the spine. Quire A laid in. Extensive graphite bookseller's notes to the verso of the front cover. Binder's waste paste-down to the rear cover (worming to the upper edge), enclosing quire E. Some soiling and thumb-marks, but altogether a splendidly unsophisticated copy with large margins. Giacomo (Jacopo) Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1573) was, along with his contemporary Andrea Palladio, the defining architect of Mannerism, deeply conversant with Classical architecture and yet flaunting it to affect the viewer. Vignola worked for the Farnese clan, including Pope Paul III (born Alessandro Farnese), building for his grandson of the same name the famed pentagonal Villa Farnese at Caprarola. In Rome, he took over the work at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican from Michelangelo, and designed the pioneering baroque façade for the Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuits. Vignola's only lifetime publication was the 1562 Regole delli cinque ordini d'architettura, which like the present item had no letterpress. The five orders -- Tuscan (sometimes called Italic; essentially a simplified and stout Doric), Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite (Ionic volutes plus the Corinthian acanthus) in increasing elongation -- represent canons of proportions; they are better known by their capitals (column-tops). The middle three are Greek in origin but Vignola used Italian examples. The plates from the 1562 edition numbered 32, with the first representational plate being the third leaf -- after the title, privilege and dedication (also numbered III) -- thus explaining the numeration of the present work (although the plates were in fact recut). There are nine further Vignolean plates, including the doorway of the Villa Caprarola, which was still under construction at Vignola's death in 1573. The final two plates depict projects of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in St. Peter's Basilica: the ciborium (sometimes called the baldachin or baldacchino) of St. Peter at the crossing of the church, and the Throne of St. Peter (cathedra Petri, an altar-cum-reliquary). The bibliography of the work is nebulous. Because it is without letterpress, the usual indications of editions and issues are inapplicable. Examples with the Bassano imprint (about 35 miles northwest of Venice) are fairly uncommon (including variants without the "1259" on the stylobate); there is also a Venice imprint from the Remondini, which has a shorter plate and so surely comes later. The date is generally given as "ca. 1648," likely on the authority of Fowler. Bibliographers note, helpfully, that the two works mentioned in the title -- by Ottaviano Ridolfi and Michelangelo -- likely never existed. Acquired at Bonham's New York 9 December 2010, lot 6085. Cf. Fowler 363; not in the Berlin Katalog, Cicognara or RIBA. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers JLR0487
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