SERLIO, Sebastiano

Il primo libro d'Architettura... Il Secondo Libro

      [Jehan Barbe] Folio [37 x 24 cm], (4) ff., 74 (i.e. 75) ff., including 1 blank and 1 unnumbered leaf (betw. 67 & 68). Bound in 18th-century half vellum and speckled boards, covers a little soiled, title and date gilt-stamped on morocco labels on spine, head of spine cracked.; light finger soiling in corners of some leaves; some general toning and occasional foxing in margin, small blue ink mark in blank margin of l. 70; overall a large, genuine, copy. Very good. A large-margined example of the first edition of the first two books of Serlio's general treatise, devoted to geometry, perspective and theatrical scenery, and as such considered "the first published account of modern theatrical practice." (Hewitt, The Renaissance Stage, p. 21.) As with the whole of the treatise, the outstanding feature of these two books lies in their overwhelmingly practical orientation, a welcome departure from the highly theoretical, not to say abstruse presentation found in earlier architectural works (mainly translations of Vitruvius). Serlio's intention was to offer architects "a pattern book in which the architect could find solutions for all sorts of problems." -- Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, p. 73. The work gives two methods for determining perspective, the second a form of the distance point method exemplified by its many woodcut diagrams and exercises. Book II also contains a detailed historical account of the theater Serlio built in Vicenza in 1539. The magnificent woodcuts of tragic, comic and rustic stage scenes "are the first regularly published scene designs" (Hewitt, op.cit.) and with their "Raphaelesque draughtsmanship" (so Kemp), they very likely owe something to the hand of Serlio's teacher, Baldassare Peruzzi. The work received numerous subsequent editions in many languages, though the woodcut illustrations were issued only in this edition. In the 19th century, Brunet and others speculated that an undated Venice edition (Fowler 304) may have been published prior, but this edition is now securely dated to c. 1551 and the work offered here is now unambiguously first. * Fowler 303; Berlin Kat. 2563; Dinsmoor, Art Bulletin 24 (l942) pp. 73-4; Schlosser p. 374; Mortimer (French) 492; Vagnetti EIIb12; Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 66; Hewitt, The Renaissance Stage, 21; Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, p. 181.