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Architecture & designThere are 245 items

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  • Pélerin (Jean, called Viator), c. 1433/1440-1524

    Toul, Pierre Jacobi, 1505 (9 July [i.e. 23 June])

    First edition of the first printed treatise on artists’ perspective, a practical book of instruction with a text in Latin and French illustrated by an astonishing series of full-page woodcuts demonstrating the perspectival representation of landscapes and of architectural exteriors and interiors, both with and without human figures, in a way which seems to belong to two centuries later, if not to our own time. It is the first book printed at Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle), one of twenty-two known copies, the first copy to be publicly offered for sale since 1935, and apparently one of only two copies remaining in private hands.

    Bound with Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus. [De architectura libri decem] M. Vitruvius per Iocundum solito castigatior factus cum figuris et tabula ut iam legi et intelligi possit. Venice, Joannes Tacuinus, 22 May 1511
    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

  • Vitruvius Pollio (Marcus), c. 80/70 BC-c. 20 BC

    Venice, Joannes Tacuinus, 1511 (22 May)

    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

  • Dürer (Albrecht), 1471-1528

    Nuremberg, [Hieronymus Andreae, called Hieronymus Formschneider?], 1525

    First edition (first state) of “Instruction in measurement with compass and ruler”, the first of the three theoretical treatises published by Dürer towards the end of his life, one of the earliest mathematical works published in the German vernacular, and among the most beautiful printed books of the German Renaissance.

    Bound with Pélerin, Jean, called Viator. De artificiali p[er]spectiva. Toul, Pierre Jacobi, 9 July (i.e. 23 June) 1505
    Bound with Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus. [De architectura libri decem] M. Vitruvius per Iocundum solito castigatior factus cum figuris et tabula ut iam legi et intelligi possit. Venice, Joannes Tacuinus, 22 May 1511

  • Androuet du Cerceau (Jacques), c. 1511-1585/1586

    [Orléans], c. 1547-1548
    An engraved architectural pattern book presenting eighteen different projects for temples, tombs, churches, and residences for the country and city, in a series of fifty plans, elevations, and sections. It is among the earliest pattern books featuring designs for domestic architecture to be printed anywhere in Europe and also one of the first publications of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, a pioneer in the production of the architectural model book. Five complete copies are preserved in Parisian libraries and two incomplete copies elsewhere. Our copy retains its original binding and is in quite exceptional state of preservation.
  • Androuet du Cerceau (Jacques), c. 1511-1585/1586

    Orléans, [published by the author], 1549
    This series of engravings of Roman triumphal arches composed in the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian Orders, and selon l'ordre salomonique, is among the earliest dated publications of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, a pioneer in the production of the architectural model book. A complete set comprises a title and twenty-five plates. Six plates are missing from our group: the title, Larc dAncone, Larc de Benevente, Larc de Veronne par Vitruve larchitecteur, Larc de Suse, and Arc selon lordre ionique. The nine antique arches (the arches of Titus, of Septimius Severus, and of Constantine, in Rome; and the arches of Ancona, Verona, Benevento, Pola, Susa, and Ravenna) are mostly plagiarised from illustrations in Serlio's Terzo Libro and Quarto Libro, with Androuet du Cerceau integrating details and inscriptions that Serlio described separately. Androuet's sources for the other designs have yet to be identified.
  • Androuet du Cerceau (Jacques), c. 1511-1585/1586

    Paris, Benoît Prévost, 1559

    This is the first of three extensive books on house-building published by Androuet du Cerceau. It was issued by the same printer in the same year under the title Livre d’Architecture contenant les plans et desseings de cinquante bastiments tous différens. As often, it is found here with the author’s Second Livre d’Architecture, in which designs for chimneys, window surrounds, doors, fountains, wells, garden pavilions, and funerary monuments, are provided. The once-fine binding of our copy is characteristic French work of about 1570 decorated in gilt with centre- and corner-pieces, and a complex monogram on both covers, which we dismember into the letters A B C E M N O R S T. It could be standing either for a motto or for a name.

    Bound with Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques. Le second livre d’architecture, par Iacques Androuet du Cerceau. Contenant plusieurs & diverses ordonnances de Cheminees, Lucarnes, Portes, Fonteines, Puis & Pavillons, pour enrichir tant le dedans que le dehors de tous edifices. Avec les desseins de dix Sepultures toutes differentes. Paris, André Wechel, 1561

  • Houwaert (Johan Baptista), 1533-1599

    Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1579

    A lavishly illustrated description of the triumphal entry into Brussels on 18 January 1578, of Archduke Matthias of Austria (1557-1616), brother of the Emperor Rudolph, to take his oaths as Governor-General of The Netherlands, and of festivities during the days following. Our copy was bound for Ferdinand Hoffmann, baron of Grünpühel and Strechau (1540-1607), whose library comprised at his death more than ten thousand volumes, the modern acquisitions ordinarily bound in green-stained vellum, as here.

    Bound with Houwaert, Johan Baptista. Oratie der Ambassadeuren vanden doorluchtighen Prince Matthias Aertshertoge van Oostenrijcke… Verhaelt inden Rijckxdach gehouden tot Wormes, voor die Raetsheeren ghedeputeert by die Princen Electeurs, ende ander Ambassadeurs ende Ghecommitteerde van t'heylich Roomsche Rijcke… Rhetorijckelicke in ons Nederlantsche tale ouerghestelt, door Jean Baptista Houwaert. Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1578

    Also in the volume is a verse translation by Houwaert of the famous speech delivered (in Latin) on 7 May 1578, by Philippe de Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde (1540-1598), before a delegation of the Diet (Reichstag) of Worms, a fruitless appeal to gain the German princes to the cause of the States-General against the Spanish. Of this work, only five other copies are known.

  • Vredeman de Vries (Jan), c. 1527-1606?

    Antwerp, Gérard de Jode, 1581

    Four “column books”, a type of pattern book intended for the man of practice – building masters, stonemasons, sculptors, cabinet makers, stained glass artists, painters of architectural backgrounds, and all “ingenious lovers of architecture”, reducing Vitruvius’s architectural theory to a more narrow description of column orders, and showing those craftsmen interested the new foreign (Italian) fashion how to choose the right columnar elements and combine them appropriately on real buildings or in decoration. Their author, the productive and multi-talented artist Jan Vredeman de Vries, has only lately been recognised as one of the most successful disseminators in countries north of the Alps of the ideas and forms of the Italian Renaissance, as the “chief motor behind the spread of the so-called Antwerp Mannerist architecture” (Krista de Jonghe), whose “paper architecture” had an impact on a variety of media not just in Europe but also in the New World.

    Bound with Architectura 3e stuck. De oorden tuschana, in tvveen ghedeylt in XII. Stucken. Antwerp, Widow of Hieronymus Cock [Volcxken Diericx], 1578
    Bound with Das ander Buech, Gemacht auff die zvvay Colonnen, Corinthia und Composita sampt jren podien, basen, cornicen, capitellen, architraben, phrisen und coronamenten. Antwerp, [Widow of Hieronymus Cock (Volcxken Diericx)], 1581
    Bound with [Das Erst Buch, Gemacht Auff de Zvvey Colommen Dorica und Ionica, sampt iren podien, bases, cornicen, capitelen, architraben, phrisen und coronamenten]. [Antwerp, Widow of Hieronymus Cock (Volcxken Diericx), 1581]

  • Alberti (Cherubino), 1553-1615

    Rome, c. 1596-1600

    Drawing, executed in pen and brown ink with grey wash, 240 × 394 mm.
    A drawing from Cassiano dal Pozzo’s “Museo Cartaceo”, recording alternative schemes for the decoration of a room approximately 61 feet in length with four, irregularly spaced rectangular windows, precisely matching the Salone di Costantino in the Lateran Palace built by Sixtus V in 1585-1589. The project shown was not executed and the room was decorated later by others. The sheet was exhibited in Rome in 2000 and in Biella in 2001-2002 with an attribution to Cherubino Alberti. The editors of the volumes devoted to architectural and topographical drawings from the Paper Museum commissioned and collected by Cassiano dal Pozzo, have catalogued it as “Late Sixteenth-century Italian” (The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: a catalogue raisonné. Series A, Antiquities and architecture; pt. 10: Renaissance and later architecture and ornament, by Paul Davies and David Hemsoll, [London] 2013, II, pp.410-411 no. 153, reproduced).

    It is now apparent that Cassiano collected avidly both “artistic” and “documentary” drawings made before the birth of the Paper Museum. The sources of these drawings are unknown; it is supposed that some were purchased; some received as gifts from Cassiano’s numerous correspondents, and that others entered the Paper Museum by bequest. These drawings extended the encyclopaedic range of the Paper Museum and it is speculated that they were acquired to assist the education of the “giovani ben intendenti del disegno” whom Cassiano employed.

    The Tuscan origin of the Alberti family and their use of quadratura perspective were major recommendations to Cassiano dal Pozzo and he owned many works by them, including at least four drawings by Cherubino and two paintings by his younger brother Giovanni (1558-1601). During the 1630s, Cassiano commissioned for his “Museo Cartaceo” a set of copies of drawings of architectural fragments by their father, Alberto Alberti (1526-1598). He employed a relation, Pierfrancesco Alberti (1584-1638), to make line drawings and diagrams for his projected publication of Leonardo’s Trattato della Pittura.

  • Maquette for a Temple

    [Italy], c. 1600
    Provenance: Lodewijk Houthakker (1926-2008), Amsterdam – Private collection, London

    Exhibited: Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Nice, 3 July-4 October 1982

    Literature: Le Temple: représentations de l'architecture sacrée, exhibition catalogue, Musée national Message biblique Marc Chagall, Nice, 3 juillet-4 octobre 1982 (Paris: Ministère de la culture, Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1982), p.82 no. 59 (entry by Pierre and Catherine Provoyeur)

  • Pattern Book of Ornament (1605)

    [Bern], c. 1562-1605

    This highly interesting and well-preserved volume was compiled at Bern about 1605 to provide an architect or artisan with a convenient repertory of exempla for the ornamentation of architecture, sculpture, and metalwork. In it the owner assembled contemporary printed ornament and safe-guarded some drawings – probably his own – to ensure they were easily accessible whenever need for them arose.

    At the time our volume was assembled, Daniel Heintz the Younger (1574-1633) was establishing himself as the pre-eminent architect of Bern. Heintz gave his library to his nephew, the architect, painter, and cartographer Joseph Plepp, and some books eventually passed into the Burgerbibliothek Bern. Mostly architectural treatises and compendia of ornament, those “Heintz-Plepp” volumes contain no marks of ownership, and are identifiable only through entries in the Library’s “Donationenbuch”. Several books are in Bernese bindings and for one (a Sammelband of models of Schweifwerk ornament) the binder employed a paper stock found in our volume. There is additional, circumstantial evidence that suggests Daniel II Heintz was the compiler-owner of our volume.

  • Leonardi (Vincenzo), 1589/1590-after 1646

    Rome, c. 1625

    Drawing, executed in pencil, pen and brown ink with wash, 293 × 225 mm.

    This drawing of an unusually elaborate early Imperial altar or statue base was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his celebrated “Museo Cartaceo”. Although better-known as a specialist in natural history, the draughtsman Vincenzo Leonardi also supplied Cassiano with drawings after the antique. In 1625, he was the only artist to accompany Cassiano on a legation led by Cardinal Francesco Barberini to France, where he documented for Cassiano objects of botanical, ornithological, geological, and archaeological interest. The altar recorded on our sheet is identified with one now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lyon; it is speculated that it was already in France in 1625, and was drawn by Leonardi on this trip. Two other aspects of the altar by the same hand and also from the “Museo Cartaceo” are in the so-called “Franks volumes” at the British Museum (volume I, folios 150-151). Our drawing was exhibited in Rome together with other drawings and paintings from the Dal Pozzo collections (Galleria nazionale d’arte antica, Palazzo Barberini, 29 September-26 November 2000) and also in Biella (Museo del territorio Biellese, 16 December 2001-16 March 2002).

  • Anonymous Roman draughtsman

    Rome, c. 1630

    Drawing, executed in pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, laid to Stirling-Maxwell album sheet of wove paper, 128 × 288 mm.

    This drawing of a panel relief showing maidens draping a candelabrum (‘Nuptiale Festum’) was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his ‘Museo Cartaceo’, and later passed through the collections of Pope Clement XI, his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani, King George III, and the antiquary Sir William Stirling-Maxwell. In the early sixteenth century, the marble relief was located in the atrium of Old St. Peter’s in Rome; after 1617, it was installed with its pendant relief of five female figures dancing (‘Nuptiales Choreae’) above opposite doors in the Salone of the Casino of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, on the Pincian hill. Its fame grew steadily and was assured by its inclusion (again with its pendant) in Perrier’s Icones (1645) and in Bartoli and Bellori’s Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum (1693). In 1807, the relief and its pendant were sold to Napoleon Bonaparte and sent to Paris; since 1817, both have been displayed in the Louvre.

    The sheet was exhibited in 2001 (I segreti di un collezionista: le straordinarie raccolte di Cassiano dal Pozzo 1588-1657, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museo del territorio Biellese, Biella, from 16 December 2001-16 March 2002, edited by Francesco Solinas, Roma: Edizioni De Luca, 2001, p.230 no. 140, with reproduction).

  • Francini (Alessandro), after 1571-1648

    Paris, Melchior Tavernier, 1631
    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.
  • Radi (Bernardino), 1581-1643

    Florence, 1636
    A rare suite of etched designs of escutcheons and cartouches destined for coats of arms, intended to provide sculptors, painters, and engravers, with models and ideas, dedicated to Cardinal Gian Carlo de' Medici, second son of Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany. Inserted at the end of the volume by a recent owner are two drawings associated with a series of twenty-four etchings of decorative cartouches and ornaments, designed and probably also etched by Agostino Mitelli, and published at Bologna by Agostino Parisini with a dedication to Francesco Maria Zambeccari, in 1636.
  • Obizzi (Pio Enea degli), 1592-1674

    Padua, Paolo Frambotto, 1638
    The illustrated libretto of an opera performed in Padua on 11 April 1636 by a travelling company of “mercenarii musici”, as the prelude to a tournament in the Cavallerizza di Prato della Valle of which Obizzi was the promoter. A prose description of the horse ballet and tournament by Nicolò Enea Bartolini is interspersed throughout Obizzi’s verse libretto; the music, by the Roman composer Giovanni Felice Sances, was not printed. Unlike previous operas, L’Ermiona was not commissioned to celebrate a special occasion, nor was it performed before an audience exclusively made-up of the nobility. The architect and stage designer Alfonso Rivarola (called “Il Chenda”) set up a temporary wooden theatre with five vertical tiers of separated boxes accessed from the rear by corridors and common staircases. It is the first major Italian box theatre on record and had immediate influence, guiding the design of the new Teatro San Cassiano, the first public opera stage in Venice, where a year later the modern tradition of commercial opera was inaugurated. Fifteen folding engraved plates reproduce Rivarola’s settings and stage machinery.
  • Lesche (Zacharias), active 1640

    Bohemia?, c. 1642
    A group of extremely rare prints depicting the gardens at Schlackenwerth, in north-western Bohemia (now Ostrov, Czech Republic), a property belonging Julius Heinrich von Sachsen-Lauenburg (1581-1665). Lesche, a “Gartenarchitekt und Wassertechniker”, apparently produced the matrices at the behest of Julius Heinrich, not with commercial intentions.
  • Doegen (Matthias), 1605-1672

    Amsterdam, Louis Elzevier, 1647
    First edition of a manual of military architecture treating both permanent fortifications and field defence, in which occurs the first historical account of the genesis of bastions.
  • Fréart de Chantelou (Roland), sieur de Chambray, 1606-1676

    Paris, Edmé Martin, 1650
    First edition of this important text on the rules and proportions of the Orders of Columns, an epitome of the standard works on the subject by Palladio, Scamozzi, Serlio, Vignola, and other Italian and French authorities. It comprises a series of explanatory texts and visual comparisons showing how the Orders were employed by ancient and Renaissance architects and roundly condemns their incorrect usage and attempts at reform on the part of many architects. The book inaugurated the architectural part of the celebrated “Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns”.
  • Sbarra (Francesco), 1611-1668

    Vienna, Matthäus Cosmerovius, 1667
    A description (with libretto interspersed) of one of the most magnificent of Hapsburg court entertainments, a balletto à cavallo performed on 24 and 31 January 1667 in the inner court square (Innerer Burghof) in Vienna, to celebrate the marriage of the Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705) to the Spanish Infanta Margarita Teresa (1651-1673). The spectacle, involving around a thousand luxuriously dressed actors and two hundred musicians, was created and produced by the Florentine impresario Alessandro Carducci, aided by Carlo Pasetti of Ferrara, who designed theatrical machinery and scenes. “For centuries… [it] has been considered the greatest horse ballet in history” (International Encyclopedia of the Dance).

    Bound with Schmelzer, Johann Heinrich (circa 1620/1623-1680). Arie per il balletto à cavallo, nella festa rappresentata per le gloriosissime nozze delle SS. CC. MM.tà di Leopoldo Primo, Imperatore Augustissimo, et di Margherita Infanta di Spagna. Vienna, Matthäus Cosmerovin, 1667

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