VITRUVIUS POLLIO. Edited by Walter Hermann RYFF (d...

De architectura libri decem ad Augustum Caesarem acuratiss. conscripti: nunc primum in Germania qua potuit diligentia excuis, atq[ue] hinc inde schema tibus non iniucundis exornati. * Adiecimus etiam propter argumenti conformatatem, sexti Iulii Frontini de aquaeductibus urbis Romae, libellum . Item ex libro Nicolai Cusani Card. De staticis experimentis, fragmentum. Cum indice copiosissimo, & dispositione longe meliori, qamantea. Argentorati in officina Knoblochiana per Georgium Machaeropioeum. Anno M. D. XLIII

Strasbourg: Johann Knoblouch the younger for Georg Messerschmidt, 1543.
4to: *4 *a--*d4 *e6 A--2H4 2I6 [alpha]--[epsilon]4 [zeta]6, 182 leaves, pp. [52] 262 (i.e. 260, 97--98 omitted) [52]. Italic letter with Roman headings. Woodcut initials and numerous woodcut illustrations. Leaf size and condition: 192 x 126mm. Titlepage and first few leaves soiled and with short marginal tears; marginal waterstains in the first quarter of the book and the last few leaves, quite heavy in the early pages but then unimportant. Otherwise a good clean and fresh copy. Binding: Seventeenth-century blind ruled English calf, red page edges. Spine rubbed and headcap torn. Provenance and annotation: Two inscriptions on second free endleaf, the first largely obliterated but dated 1636, the other 'Guliellm. hythall' [16?]68; another inscription on the first free endleaf torn away; Hopetoun House bookplate: the great Hopetoun library was sold at Sotheby's 25-28 February, 1889 by John Adrian Louis Hope, 7th earl of Hopetoun (1860-1908), the books having been collected by successive generations of the Hope family starting with Sir James Hope (d. 1661), Governor of the Scottish Mint (Bernard Quaritch, Contributions towards a Dictionary of English Book-Collectors, reprint 1969, p. 158). Walter Pagel (1896-1983); B. E. J. Pagel (1930-2007). References: VD16 V1763; Adams V906; Berlin 1806; Cicognara 707; Fowler 401; Ritter 2424; Muller p. 440 Messerschmidt 10.
First edition printed in Germany, second issue without Ryff's name on the title and the address to the reader (first edition, Rome 1486 or 7). Knoblouch published another edition with the same contents in 1550.
§ The fundamental handbook of classical architecture and engineering. It is the only Roman work inspired by Greek architecture and the main source for the many lost Greek texts on architecture. This edition was edited by the physician Walther Hermann Ryff who went on to produce the first German translation, published at Nuremberg in 1548. In the latter he 'skillfully won himself a readership scarcely familiar even with such terms as 'architect' and 'architecture' (Kruft p. 71). The Latin text is based on that prepared by Fra Giocondo for the Venice 1511 and later editions and the illustrations are reduced copies of the woodcuts in Italian translation (folio, Como 1521). Included in this edition are two other works: Sextus Julius Frontinus, De aquaeductibus urbis Romae which had been included in editions of Vitruvius since the Venice edition of 1495--6; and Nicolaus of Cusa, De staticis experimentis, not included in earlier editions, which refers to Vitruvius (it is printed in Nicolaus's Opera of 1514, see no. 76 above, ff xcivv--xcviiiv but not separately). It is not clear why Ryff's name was suppressed in this issue in which the words 'per Gualtherum H. Ryff argentinum, medicum' on the titlepage are replaced by an asterisk. The address to the reader is by the publisher, Georg Messerschmidt, and does not mention Ryff's name. There is a copy of the first issue at the Getty Research Institute, but most copies seem to be of the second issue. Literature: Hanno-Walter Kruft, A history of Architectural theory from Vitruvius to the present (1994).

• GBP 4,250.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: 19804

• bookseller: Roger Gaskell (GREAT BRITAIN)