VIGNOLA

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Handsome copy, with plates in good clear impression, of this major, much reprinted work in the history of architecture. Jacobo Barozzi da Vignola (1507-73) was at the centre of the Renaissance European architectural world. As influential as Serlio and Palladio, he was employed by royalty (at Fontainebleau by Francis I), the nobility (at the Farnese s Roman villa) and the most influential religious (at the Jesuits Chiesa del Ges√π). Intended as a collection of plates rather than a book, Regola focused on the practical rendition of the five classical orders. As examples Vignola chose ornaments which can be seen in the antiquities of Rome , especially those which according to the common opinion appear most handsome and gracious to the eye; those which bear a plain correspondence and proportion to numbers . Despite the printing privilege imposed by Pius IV through a motu proprio one of the earliest instances of copyright including fines on transgressors (Casotti, Giacomo Barozzi , 512) the first edition was pirated. Plate III with the five orders drawn from Serlio s Libri first appeared in an early unauthorised copy. It remained in subsequent editions, albeit paradoxically going counter to Vignola s regola which saw illustrations not as models to be copied but as exemplary representations of geometric and proportional principles to be adjusted proportionally. (Thoenes, La Regola , 270, 272). The original copperplates of Regola were purchased c.1617 from Vaccario, the printer of the 1607 edition, by the Roman printer Francesco Villamena. The latter s Opere , conceived as a companion to Regola , featured façades, plans and portals of buildings by Vignola and a few attributed to Michelangelo. After Villamena s death, these copperplates were bought by Giovanni Battista de Rossi, whose name appears in the t-p of this copy. His workshop continued to issue the two works together. The bibliographic features of this copy suggest it was probably a later reissue of BAL 3447 n.21. BAL mentions the existence of several variant imprints of this edition (3447 n.21), like the present, and extends its dating from 1625 to probably 1680, whilst attributing to Villamena the 1617 edition usually assigned to de Rossi. In this copy, the continuous numeration of the plates in Opere , unrecorded in major bibliographies and absent in Villamena s originals, points to a consolidated practice of publication (Casotti states that this edition always included both Regola and Opere , Giacomo Vignola , 544 n.12). But it was not printed so late as to lose the freshness of the plates. In this copy, Regola features XXXVI numbered plates: XXXII drawn from the originals of the first edition of c.1562 (see Type A, Fowler 351a), and four comprising three portals and the Farnese mantelpiece. The original plate XXXVII (the Farnese portal) appears in Opere as plate 41, as in other cases (Fowler 356). Opere features 18 plates, numbered 37 to 52 here (plus 2 unnumbered folding). Plates 50-51, the latter dated 1619, illustrate Michelangelo s Ionic capital for the Capitol, engraved by Villamena. James Nasmith (1740-1808) was an English clergyman, antiquary and Cambridge scholar. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, he devoted his spare time to cataloguing Archbishop Matthew Parker s mss housed in Christ Church college. The resulting Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum was published in 1777. He also published pamphlets on Poor Laws (1799). Show more