L'ARCHITETTURA

ALBERTI, Leon Batista.  L'ARCHITETTURA.

Monte Regale (Mondovi): Lionardo Torrentino, 1565. Folio. Later, handsome, speckled calf binding with raised bands and gold tooling on the spine. 1-246, (4), 247-331, (21) pages. Second folio edition of Bartoli's translation. [Fowler, 8; Cicognara, 375].

This second folio edition of Bartoli's translation of Alberti appears fifteen years after the first.  It is illustrated with the same woodblocks as the first and in addition contains the first printing of Domenichi's translation of La Pittura, a survey of paintings considered by contemporaries to be more important than Alberti's writing on architecture.  This is a very crisp copy, containing both the unnumbered plans for the Baths of Diocletian (inserted after page 246) and the folding extentions on the two towers (on pages 216 and 217) both or either of which are lacking in many copies.  Fowler's two copies, for instance, are both incomplete.  The second folio edition is much rarer than the quarto edition also printed in 1565.  Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the 1565 quarto edition but not the folio.  We could find only two copies of the folio edition sold at auction during the past thirty years during which eight copies of the quarto edition were sold.  A spendid copy of one of the landmarks in western architectural history.

 

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