first edition Hardcover
1583 · Rome
by Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi da (1507-1573)
Rome: per Francesco Zannetti, 1583. FIRST EDITION. Hardcover. Fine. Illustrated with 28 engraved plates by Cherubino Alberti (1553-1615) after Vignola, and more than 100 woodcut diagrams and architectural woodcuts by the editor, Egnazio Danti. The perspective title page with a portrait of Vignola is also the work of Alberti. Bound in contemporary limp vellum (lightly soiled, a little rumpled). Title lightly soiled and with small stains, a small piece of the margin repaired (where a tab had been), slightly affecting the engraving. A nicely preserved copy with occ. toning to some leaves, light browning to gathering D and lvs. K2-3, small tear in blank margin of leaf Q1, scattered foxing, and occasional ink spots; Some leaves with a small (approx. 1 cm.) discreet repair in blank margin, not affecting the text, where a tab has been removed. A few leaves with early corrections.
“The copperplate engravings in the book were made by Cherubino Alberti after Vignola's designs, whereas the woodblock cuts were designed by Danti. Cherubino (born 1553 in Borgo San Sepolcro, died in Rome 1615) was the most successful of the three talented sons of the distinguished artist and military architect Alberto Alberti… The detailed figurative engravings by Cherubino seem to have been based directly on Vignola's drawings (Kitao 1962).”( Millard, Italian and Spanish books, p. 460-462)
Although the great Mannerist architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola completed his book on perspective between 1542 and 1545, the book did not appear until ten years after the author’s death. Vignola’s original manuscript was edited for publication by the mathematician Egnazio Danti (1536-1586), who provided Vignola’s concise text with extensive commentaries. The book is also outfitted with a visual apparatus of over 120 practical illustrations, including the aforementioned 28 by Vignola and engraved by Cherubino Alberti, and the architectural woodcuts and diagrams by Danti.
The work as published has played a fundamental role in the history of perspective theory, combining as it does the theories and rules of the practitioner (Vignola) and the calculations of the mathematician (Danti).
“One of the most distinguished Italian architects of the Renaissance, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola is also, as the author of two far-reaching and influential treatises, one of the four most successful architectural theorists of the Renaissance, together with Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio, and Vincenzo Scamozzi.
“Vignola devoted himself early to artistic studies. Born Giacomo Barozzi in 1507 and orphaned early, he moved to Bologna to study painting. There he quickly developed a predilection for drawing and turned to the study of architecture and perspective, acquiring recognition for the ‘rules’ that he developed. Francesco Guicciardini, then governor of Bologna, sponsored Vignola’s stay in Florence where he learned intarsia, moving on to Rome where he earned his living by painting. While in Rome, Vignola measured and drew all the antiquities of the city for the members of the Accademia dell’architettura, who included Marcello Cervini (then briefly Pope as Marcellus II) and Alessandro Mazzuoli. In the early 1540s Vignola left Rome for France with the Bolognese painter Francesco Primaticcio, where they were employed by King François I. In Rome and Fontainebleau, Vignola helped Primaticcio with the casting of bronze statues copied after Roman sculptures and perspective designs for the decorations of the royal chateau at Fontainebleau. Upon his return to Bologna, Vignola provided designs for the church of San Petronio, but, despite the support of Giulio Romano and Cristofano Lombardi, his projects were rejected.
“Vignola returned to Rome for the most fruitful two decades of his career. He was commissioned by Pope Julius III to complete the eponymous villa outside the Porta del Popolo, which became a study in the use of classical details and architectural landscape. For his most important patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Vignola built the palace at Caprarola, widely and instantly admired as the most skillful in design and most accomplished in ornament and comfort of any palace in the world. This building diffused Vignola’s fame as a great talent, each visitor claiming favorite details, such as the spiral staircase so well designed that it seemed ‘poured,’ according to his biographer Egnazio Danti, or the ‘masterly’ arches of the circular loggia. Despite his fame, Vignola lost the commission for the façade of the Gèsu in Rome to Giacomo della Porta (Danti’s biography wrongly ascribes it to Vignola, perhaps because he had designed the church). After the death of Michelangelo, Vignola assumed the directorship of the construction of Saint Peter’s, then still the highest distinction for an Italian architect. Vignola’s work is characterized by compositional clarity and vigorous control of visual effects, qualities that are also fully apparent in his two publications.
“Le Due Regole”:
“Vignola's work on perspective was almost certainly conceived and composed in the 1530s, before Sebastiano Serlio's, and completed between 1542 and 1545 (Vagnetti 1979), when the author was still a young man employed in preparing designs for perspectives carried out in wood intarsia. It was during this long period of gestation that the designs eventually used for the twenty-eight copperplate engravings were prepared by Vignola. The imminent publication of the treatise on perspective was eventually announced in the preface of the treatise on columns.
“Vignola's concern in this work on perspective was to demonstrate both the Albertian method of ‘intersection’ and the distance point, or 'bifocal,’ technique, showing the basic harmony between them. But, rather than providing geometrical proof, Vignola offered visual intuitions.
“When the ‘Due regole’ appeared, it was ‘the first specialized treatise on perspective by a professional artist to appear in Italy’ and ‘the most intelligent, useful, and thoroughly informative book on perspective’ ever published (Kemp 1990). Danti's text and Vignola's theorems were ‘more original and searching than Daniele Barbaro's 1569 pleasing compendium’ (Kemp 1990). The work of Serlio and Vignola ran in parallel directions, and both were influenced by Baldassare Peruzzi' s Sala delle Prospettive in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, but Serlio committed a number of errors (as Danti points out in his edition of the ‘Due regole’). At the same time, an artist could concentrate on the illustrations of the two rules and draw practical lessons from them. The example of an illusionistic ceiling in the ‘Due regole’ (dated 1562 in the plate) -a vanished work by Tommaso Laureti that shows the use of an architectural system for the creation of apparent space- exerted a huge influence on seventeenth-century ceiling painting.
“Danti enhanced both Vignola's text and illustrations extensively, in the process outweighing them. He added lengthy discussion to each of the architect's terse points and about 120 relatively coarse but perfectly clear woodcuts. Bringing a thorough knowledge of geometry and the most advanced optics to bear on Vignola's procedures, Danti attempts to reconcile pictorial and Euclidean standards of perspective. Thus, even though his text and illustrations are distinguished typographically from Vignola's words and plates, there is tension between the succinct practice of Vignola's original and the intellectualism of Danti's complex diagrams and lengthy analyses. The resulting treatise is one of the most distinguished early publications on the subject, especially the second book, which deals with the use of distance points, previously known but not as clearly explicated before.
“The ‘Due regole’ has been considered a bridge between the quattrocento studies of artistic perspective carried out by painters and the scientific perspective of seventeenth-century geometers. In his preface, Danti offers an outline of the history of research on perspective, in the process providing also a clear view of the tenuousness of intellectual property. He cites Piero della Francesca's original discoveries, Daniele Barbaro's transcription (or plagiarism) of Piero's work, Serlio's published principles culled from Baldassare Peruzzi, the contributions of Giacomo Andreotti dal Cerchio (Jacques Androuet du Cerceau) and Jean Cousin, and the similarity between the methods of Pietro Cataneo and Pietro dal Borgo (the latter's work published by Luca Pacioli under his own name). He praises the basic principles of perspective as discussed by Leon Battista Alberti, Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo, and Wenzeljamnitzer, rhetorically dismissing JeanPelerin Viator with faint praise (‘more pictures than words’) and relegating Federico Commandino to ‘illustrated perspective’ in order to establish the scientific sovereignty of Vignola's method….
“The copperplate engravings in the book were made by Cherubino Alberti after Vignola's designs, whereas the woodblock cuts were designed by Danti. Cherubino (born 1553 in Borgo San Sepolcro, died in Rome 1615) was the most successful of the three talented sons of the distinguished artist and military architect Alberto Alberti… The detailed figurative engravings by Cherubino seem to have been based directly on Vignola's drawings (Kitao 1962).”(Millard Catalogue). (Inventory #: 5216)
“The copperplate engravings in the book were made by Cherubino Alberti after Vignola's designs, whereas the woodblock cuts were designed by Danti. Cherubino (born 1553 in Borgo San Sepolcro, died in Rome 1615) was the most successful of the three talented sons of the distinguished artist and military architect Alberto Alberti… The detailed figurative engravings by Cherubino seem to have been based directly on Vignola's drawings (Kitao 1962).”( Millard, Italian and Spanish books, p. 460-462)
Although the great Mannerist architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola completed his book on perspective between 1542 and 1545, the book did not appear until ten years after the author’s death. Vignola’s original manuscript was edited for publication by the mathematician Egnazio Danti (1536-1586), who provided Vignola’s concise text with extensive commentaries. The book is also outfitted with a visual apparatus of over 120 practical illustrations, including the aforementioned 28 by Vignola and engraved by Cherubino Alberti, and the architectural woodcuts and diagrams by Danti.
The work as published has played a fundamental role in the history of perspective theory, combining as it does the theories and rules of the practitioner (Vignola) and the calculations of the mathematician (Danti).
“One of the most distinguished Italian architects of the Renaissance, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola is also, as the author of two far-reaching and influential treatises, one of the four most successful architectural theorists of the Renaissance, together with Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio, and Vincenzo Scamozzi.
“Vignola devoted himself early to artistic studies. Born Giacomo Barozzi in 1507 and orphaned early, he moved to Bologna to study painting. There he quickly developed a predilection for drawing and turned to the study of architecture and perspective, acquiring recognition for the ‘rules’ that he developed. Francesco Guicciardini, then governor of Bologna, sponsored Vignola’s stay in Florence where he learned intarsia, moving on to Rome where he earned his living by painting. While in Rome, Vignola measured and drew all the antiquities of the city for the members of the Accademia dell’architettura, who included Marcello Cervini (then briefly Pope as Marcellus II) and Alessandro Mazzuoli. In the early 1540s Vignola left Rome for France with the Bolognese painter Francesco Primaticcio, where they were employed by King François I. In Rome and Fontainebleau, Vignola helped Primaticcio with the casting of bronze statues copied after Roman sculptures and perspective designs for the decorations of the royal chateau at Fontainebleau. Upon his return to Bologna, Vignola provided designs for the church of San Petronio, but, despite the support of Giulio Romano and Cristofano Lombardi, his projects were rejected.
“Vignola returned to Rome for the most fruitful two decades of his career. He was commissioned by Pope Julius III to complete the eponymous villa outside the Porta del Popolo, which became a study in the use of classical details and architectural landscape. For his most important patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Vignola built the palace at Caprarola, widely and instantly admired as the most skillful in design and most accomplished in ornament and comfort of any palace in the world. This building diffused Vignola’s fame as a great talent, each visitor claiming favorite details, such as the spiral staircase so well designed that it seemed ‘poured,’ according to his biographer Egnazio Danti, or the ‘masterly’ arches of the circular loggia. Despite his fame, Vignola lost the commission for the façade of the Gèsu in Rome to Giacomo della Porta (Danti’s biography wrongly ascribes it to Vignola, perhaps because he had designed the church). After the death of Michelangelo, Vignola assumed the directorship of the construction of Saint Peter’s, then still the highest distinction for an Italian architect. Vignola’s work is characterized by compositional clarity and vigorous control of visual effects, qualities that are also fully apparent in his two publications.
“Le Due Regole”:
“Vignola's work on perspective was almost certainly conceived and composed in the 1530s, before Sebastiano Serlio's, and completed between 1542 and 1545 (Vagnetti 1979), when the author was still a young man employed in preparing designs for perspectives carried out in wood intarsia. It was during this long period of gestation that the designs eventually used for the twenty-eight copperplate engravings were prepared by Vignola. The imminent publication of the treatise on perspective was eventually announced in the preface of the treatise on columns.
“Vignola's concern in this work on perspective was to demonstrate both the Albertian method of ‘intersection’ and the distance point, or 'bifocal,’ technique, showing the basic harmony between them. But, rather than providing geometrical proof, Vignola offered visual intuitions.
“When the ‘Due regole’ appeared, it was ‘the first specialized treatise on perspective by a professional artist to appear in Italy’ and ‘the most intelligent, useful, and thoroughly informative book on perspective’ ever published (Kemp 1990). Danti's text and Vignola's theorems were ‘more original and searching than Daniele Barbaro's 1569 pleasing compendium’ (Kemp 1990). The work of Serlio and Vignola ran in parallel directions, and both were influenced by Baldassare Peruzzi' s Sala delle Prospettive in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, but Serlio committed a number of errors (as Danti points out in his edition of the ‘Due regole’). At the same time, an artist could concentrate on the illustrations of the two rules and draw practical lessons from them. The example of an illusionistic ceiling in the ‘Due regole’ (dated 1562 in the plate) -a vanished work by Tommaso Laureti that shows the use of an architectural system for the creation of apparent space- exerted a huge influence on seventeenth-century ceiling painting.
“Danti enhanced both Vignola's text and illustrations extensively, in the process outweighing them. He added lengthy discussion to each of the architect's terse points and about 120 relatively coarse but perfectly clear woodcuts. Bringing a thorough knowledge of geometry and the most advanced optics to bear on Vignola's procedures, Danti attempts to reconcile pictorial and Euclidean standards of perspective. Thus, even though his text and illustrations are distinguished typographically from Vignola's words and plates, there is tension between the succinct practice of Vignola's original and the intellectualism of Danti's complex diagrams and lengthy analyses. The resulting treatise is one of the most distinguished early publications on the subject, especially the second book, which deals with the use of distance points, previously known but not as clearly explicated before.
“The ‘Due regole’ has been considered a bridge between the quattrocento studies of artistic perspective carried out by painters and the scientific perspective of seventeenth-century geometers. In his preface, Danti offers an outline of the history of research on perspective, in the process providing also a clear view of the tenuousness of intellectual property. He cites Piero della Francesca's original discoveries, Daniele Barbaro's transcription (or plagiarism) of Piero's work, Serlio's published principles culled from Baldassare Peruzzi, the contributions of Giacomo Andreotti dal Cerchio (Jacques Androuet du Cerceau) and Jean Cousin, and the similarity between the methods of Pietro Cataneo and Pietro dal Borgo (the latter's work published by Luca Pacioli under his own name). He praises the basic principles of perspective as discussed by Leon Battista Alberti, Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo, and Wenzeljamnitzer, rhetorically dismissing JeanPelerin Viator with faint praise (‘more pictures than words’) and relegating Federico Commandino to ‘illustrated perspective’ in order to establish the scientific sovereignty of Vignola's method….
“The copperplate engravings in the book were made by Cherubino Alberti after Vignola's designs, whereas the woodblock cuts were designed by Danti. Cherubino (born 1553 in Borgo San Sepolcro, died in Rome 1615) was the most successful of the three talented sons of the distinguished artist and military architect Alberto Alberti… The detailed figurative engravings by Cherubino seem to have been based directly on Vignola's drawings (Kitao 1962).”(Millard Catalogue). (Inventory #: 5216)
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