Francini, Alessandro
Florence? after 1571 – 1648 Fontainebleau?

Livre d’architecture contenant plusieurs portiques de differentes inventions, sur les cinq ordres de colomnes.

Paris, Melchior Tavernier, 1631

folio (387 × 275 mm), (4) ff. letterpress (title, descriptive list of plates, author’s dedication to Henri iv, address ‘Aux Amateurs d’Architecture’), plus forty numbered engraved plates (circa 360 × 250 mm, platemarks).

provenance early inscription on title-page obliterated — E.P. Goldschmidt & Co. Ltd., ‘Catalogue 167: Rare books xv to xviii centuries’, London 1987, item 64 — Private collection, Dublin

A few insignificant stains, on the whole, an excellent copy.

binding contemporary French mottled calf.

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First issue of a series of forty designs for monu­mental doorways and entrances in a Mannerist style, by a Florentine who had been invited to the French court about 1598 to create grottoes and fountains in the grounds of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and later in Marie de Médicis’ garden of the Luxembourg. Of all the Orders, Alessandro Francini found the mas­sive Doric most suited to these kinds of monuments, and he uses its form and propor­tions in nineteen designs, while six designs develop the Tuscan column, six the Ionic, five the Corinthian, and three feature the Composite Order.

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Thirty-one plates are inscribed A. Francini Inventor | Tavernier excudit and six merely A. Francini inventor. In the present copy and most others, the portrait of Francini (plate no. 1, described in list of plates as ‘laquelle peut seruir à vn Avtel’) is signed Bosse fecit above Tavernier’s imprint, and plates 2 and 4 are inscribed respectively Melchior Tavernier fecit and Melchior Tavernier sculpsit. Some cata­loguers suppose that the unsigned plates are by Abraham Bosse;¹ others consider them the work of Tavernier and his atelier.²

A second edition employing the same plates was published in 1640³ and an English version (illus­trated by reversed copies) was pub­lished at London by Robert Pricke in 1669.⁴

references Désiré Guilmard, Les Maîtres Ornemanistes (Paris 1880), pp.311–312; Katalog der Ornamentstich­sammlung der Staatlichen Kunstbibliothek Berlin (1939), no. 3852; Laurence Hall Fowler and Elizabeth Baer, The Fowler Architectural Collection of Johns Hopkins Univer­sity. Cata­logue (Baltimore 1961), no. 126; Theodore Besterman, Old art books (London 1975), p.42; Architec­tural theory and practice from Alberti to Ledoux, cata­logue of an exhibition, edited by Dora Wiebenson (Chicago & London 1982), no. III–A/12; Avery’s choice: Five centuries of great architec­tural books, edited by Adolf Placzek (New York 1997), p.58 no. 76; Yves Pauwels, ‘Francine, Collot, Barbet: recueils de modèles ou exercices de style?’ in Le livre et l’architecte: actes du colloque organ­isé par l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art et l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville, Paris, 31 janvier–2 février 2008, edited by Jean-Philippe Garric, Émilie d’Orgeix and Estelle Thibault (Wavre 2011), pp.167–171