LOMAZZO, Giovanni Paolo (1538-1600)

Trattato dell' arte della pittura, scoltura, et architettura ... diviso in sette libri . Ne' quali si discorre De la proportione. De' moti. De' colori. De' lumi. De la prospettiva. De la prattica de la pittura. Et finalmente de le Istorie d'essa pittura

Milan: per Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1585.
4to: [dagger]8 [dagger][dagger]12 A--X8 Y--2V8 2X6, 372leaves, pp. [40] 1--264 267--355 [1] 356 [1] 357--692 695--700 [2]. Roman letter, woodcut device on title and portrait of the author on B1. Two additional leaves laid in. Leaf size and condition: 155 x 221mm. First and last pages a little dustsoiled, a few light pencilled annotations and underlinings. Binding: Contemporary limp vellum. A little cockled, short tears in foredges. In a morocco backed box. Provenance and annotation: Arnaud de Vitry, sold at Sotheby's, London, 10 April 2002, lot 554 (no marks of provenance). References: Adams L1420; Brunet III, 1148; Cicognara 160; Fowler 186; Vagnetti EIIb34.
First edition, second issue with reset prelims. The first isssue has the title Trattato dell'arte della pittura diviso in sette libri, that is without the words 'scoltura, et architetura', and is dated 1584. The two additional leaves with a supplementary chapter 'Dell'arte di allongare la vista quanto si vuole, & parimenti del far gl'apparati delle scene co'l quadro sopra detto geometrico. Cap. XVII' are found in some copies of both issues, often bound at the end. In this copy they appear to have been supplied from another copy.
§ The largest and most comprehensive treatise on the theory of art published in the sixteenth-century. Though Lomazzo's mannerist aesthetic - the Trattato has been dubbed 'the bible of mannerism' - was soon to be overshadowed by the baroque, the influence of his treatise was far-reaching. Lomazzo's assumption that the practice and appreciation of art can be subjected to philosophical investigation, reduced to precepts, taught and studied, is fundamental to the foundation of the later art academies, providing the basis of 'academic' painting. It was the first treatise on art translated into English, by the Oxford physician Richard Haydocke, as A tracte concerning the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and buildinge (1598). The Trattato is divided into seven books dealing with proportion, motion, colour, light, perspective, practice of perspective and history. The last book contains a complete prescriptive guide to Christian and classical iconography that was widely influential. Lomazzo aspired to create a great unified theory for the philosophy and practice of art, strongly influenced by Neo-Platonism, but drawing also on Aristotelian scholastic sources. 'His fusion of astrological metaphysics with late medieval science owed much to Henricus Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia (pubd. 1533)' (Kemp, Grove 19, p. 546). Literature: Martin Kemp, 'Lomazzo', in Grove Dictionary or Art (1996) 19, 545-547; ibid, The Science of Art (Yale, 1990) pp. 72-3, 83-4, 269-73; G. Ackerman, 'Lomazzo's Treatise on painting', Art Bulletin, 49 (1967) 317-26.

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