VITRUVIUS, Marcus Pollio; Jean MARTIN (translator). Architecture ou Art de bien bastir, … mis de latin en francoys … Pour le roy treschrestien Henry II. Paris: Chez Jacques Gazeau. 1547.
Folio. Contemporary French vellum over boards, gilt medallions to covers, spine with raised bands, small gilt heraldic device (three fleurs-de-lis, crowned) to compartments, gilt edges; ff. [5], 2-155, [1 (blank)], [23], [1 (blank)]; woodcut portrait of bearded man on title page and repeated on penultimate verso, 160 woodcut illustrations, including 31 full-page or nearly full-page blocks, F4 with an additional printed sheet pasted to foredge to produce a folding leaf, woodcut initials; front hinge and tail of spine expertly repaired, slight wear to extremities and edges of text block, boards a little stained and soiled; variable damp staining to lower margin throughout and occasionally outer margin (far from printed surface), outer lower corner of first two quires frayed, F4 repaired at fold, outer lower corner of front endpapers repaired, light dust-staining and the odd mark; generally a good, large unwashed copy; occasional marginal annotations in an 18th-century hand; presentation inscription “donné par Monsieur Le Marquis de Manneville en 1685 a Guill. Gondrée pour Lors Chanoine de Sauqueville Et du depuis Doiens presenté par Mons.r Le Comte de Manneville en 1689. Gouverneur de Dieppe”, and later ownership inscription “Se livre apartien a Madame la Marquise de Bacqueville” in ink to pastedown (see below).
First edition, profusely illustrated, of the first complete French translation of Vitruvius, one of the most important architectural publications of sixteenth-century France; a wide-margined copy in an unsophisticated contemporary binding.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (fl. 1st century BC) was a Roman architect and military engineer, best remembered as the author of the ten-volume treatise De architectura, which address subjects ranging from architectural design and building techniques to acoustics and water supply. The work was first published in Rome in 1486-87 by Eucharius Silber, with the first illustrated edition issued in 1511. The present French translation is the work of Jean Martin (d. 1553), a distinguished humanist and secretary to the powerful Cardinal Robert de Lenoncourt. Martin had established his reputation through French translations of major Italian Renaissance authors, including Pietro Bembo and Francesco Colonna. Prior to Martin’s work, Vitruvius was accessible only in Latin and Italian (the first Italian translation was published in 1521), and therefore largely confined to a scholarly readership; with few notable exceptions, French architects remained unfamiliar with classical architectural theory and correct terminology.
Martin’s rendering of Vitruvius, titled Architecture ou art de bien bastir (Architecture, or Art of Building Well), was expressly intended for “workers and other people who do not understand Latin”. Supplemented by a detailed forty-page lexicon of architectural terms, the book may justly be celebrated as a remarkable linguistic achievement that fully realised its popularising ambition. Within the translator’s broader intellectual programme, it forms the second part of an ambitious architectural trilogy, following his translation of Sebastiano Serlio’s I sette libri dell’architettura (1545-47) and preceding that of Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria (1553).
Dedicated to King Henry II in the year of his accession to the French throne, the book is magnificently illustrated with 160 woodcuts, in part engraved by the sculptor Jean Goujon (c. 1510-c. 1565), who was then engaged on the decoration of the Louvre Palace. In addition to schematic architectural diagrams, the woodcuts include elaborate architectural ornaments, narrative scenes, and forced perspective designs used in theatre settings. Goujon is also the author of a short essay on Vitruvius that concludes the volume. The large woodcut initials have been attributed to the artist and engraver Jean Cousin (c. 1500-c. 1560), who collaborated with Goujon on several projects. It is unclear whether the woodcut portrait on the title page and the verso of the penultimate leaf represents Jean Martin or the printer, Jacques Gazeau.
Provenance:
1. François-Bonaventure de Manneville, Marquis de Manneville (d. 1684), who gifted the book, apparently in inheritance, to Guillaume Gondrée, Canon of Sauqueville and later Douains, to whom it was presented in 1689 by his son Étienne Joseph de Manneville (1660-1729), Comte de Manneville and Governor of Dieppe.
2. Pulchérie de Châtillon, Marquise de Bacqueville and wife of aviation pioneer Jean-François Boyvin de Bonnetot, Marquis de Bacqueville (1688-1760).
Adams V-912; Pettegree 51344. See Frédérique Lemerle. The Vitruvian Lexicon in Sixteenth-Century France, online.
SKU: 2123679