VITRUVIUS and AGRICOLA, Georgius, ed. PHILANDRIER, Guillaume.
De architectura libri decem.
Lyon, apud Joan[nem]. Tornaesium, 1552£9,500.00
4to. pp. (xvi) 447 (xli [index]). Italic letter. T-p with woodcut printer’s device, different woodcut printer’s device to last verso. Hand-coloured woodcut portrait of Philandrier to A4v. Folding woodcut and letterpress plate of ancient Roman inscription, numerous half-page woodcut illustrations to text by Bernard Salomon, a few with hand-colouring. Woodcut initials and headpieces. Small ink burn to gutter margin of h2, a few ll. with very light marginal browning, the odd small spot. A very good, clean, well margined copy in contemp. blue-green gilt panelled morocco, central rosette within borders of blind and gilt fillets, fleur-de-lys and sunburst cornerpieces, spine in blind compartments with single ‘O’ stamp. C. 1800 ms. label, edges gilt and gauffered, lightly rubbed, small loss to lower board. Contemp. inscription to lower margin of t-p, erased, of Oswald von Eck (d. 1573), possibly his price note erased from upper margin, his ms. coat of arms to lower margin of a2v, quartered with those of his wife, Anna Pienzenau. Small ‘EK’ ink stamp to upper corner of t-p of binding historian Ernst Kyriss (1881-1974), bookplate removed from front pastedown, booksellers’ pencil notes to front and rear pastedowns.
First de Tournes edition of Vitruvius’s De architectura using the commentary of Guillaume Philandrier (1505-63), and the first Philandrier edition to be printed in France, first published Rome 1544, with Philandrier’s epitome of the German mineralogist Georgius Agricola’s work on ancient Roman weights and measures, beautifully printed. In contemporary morocco with contemporary provenance, from the library of Oswald von Eck, a German humanist.
Vitruvius’s treatise on architecture was extremely popular with Renaissance architects, prompting many to emulate ancient Roman buildings, as well as humanists and antiquarians for the wealth of detailed information it provided on ancient Roman life. The commentary of the French architect Guillaume Philandrier on Vitruvius was one of the most influential, and is accompanied in this edition by his epitome of Georgius Agricola’s De mensuris et ponderibus, first published 1533, which was intended to be used alongside that work, allowing readers to navigate it according to categories of measurement including liquid and dry, medical and veterinary, Greek and Roman, etc. It was also useful without recourse to Agricola’s work, however, since it clearly lays out the divisions of larger measurements into smaller. There follow two indexes to Vitruvius of Roman and Greek words.
Oswald von Eck, who most likely commissioned the binding, was the son of the German humanist Leonard von Eck (1480-1550), tutor of Duke William IV and chancellor of Bavaria. Oswald studied at the universities of Ingoldstadt, of which he became rector in 1539, and Bologna. He was involved in the Ortenburg Nobles’ Conspiracy to introduce Protestantism to Bavaria, after which he fell into serious debt and at his death in 1573 his goods, including his library, were auctioned off. The majority of his books were purchased by Erasmus Neustetter (d. 1594) and several are now in the Württemberg State Library.
‘Édition belle et correcte’ (Brunet); ‘Beautiful de Tournes’ initials’ (Fowler).Mortimer II, 550. Fowler, p. 318. Berlin Kat. 1813. Cicognara 712. Brunet V.1327. BM STC Fr., p. 445. Adams V908. USTC 151050.
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