The didactic treatise On Architecture is the only text on architectural theory and practice to have survived from classical antiquity and the single most important work of architectural history in the Western world, having shaped humanist architecture and the image of the architect from the Renaissance to the present. The present, fourth edition, represents a turning point in Vitruvian studies. It delivers an ingeniously reconstructed and emended text integrated with diagrams and illustrations and complemented by a lexicon of Vitruvius’ technical terminology and by a table of the mathematical symbols that he used. Nearly all the Greek words are reinstated and the Greek text of the epigrams is published for the first time. The title proudly announces the editor’s achievement: “An exceptionally good text of M. Vitruvius prepared by Giocondo with figures and index so that it can now be read and understood”. Indeed, for the first time, the work was presented in a form which enabled Renaissance architects and engineers and their patrons to comprehend what Vitruvius really wrote.

Bound with Pélerin, Jean, called Viator. De artificiali p[er]spectiva. Toul, Pierre Jacobi, 9 July (i.e. 23 June) 1505
Bound with Dürer, Albrecht. Underweysung der messung, mit dem zirckel und richtscheyt, in Linien ebnen unnd gantzen corporen, durch Albrecht Dürer zu samen getzogen, und zu nutz allen kunstlieb habenden mit zu gehörigen figuren, in truck gebracht, im jar. M.D.XXV. Nuremberg, [Hieronymus Andreae, called Hieronymus Formschneider?], 1525