Rare first edition of a beautifully produced treatise on architecture and perspectival design, published by the sons of Aldus Manutius at Venice, and beautifully illustrated with large woodcuts. The work is dedicated to Enea Piccolomini, and treats in four books the architecture of towns and their locations, building materials, the ground-plans and elevations for churches, palaces and houses, designing in perspective, etc. The woodcut illustrations, including many full-page and nearly full-page plans and perspectival designs, depict cruciform and centrally-planned churches, ground plans for private houses and palazzi, and plans for fortifications.
Pietro Cataneo (died 1569) was an architect in Siena, where he built the Palazzo Franceschini and other important buildings in the Republic of Siena. In importance, his architectural treatise comes directly after those of the "big five": Alberti, Serlio, Vignola, Palladio, and Scamozzi. The work is very well produced, printed in a fine Roman type with some marginal notes in small Italics, and adorned with beautiful historiated woodcut initials, coming from a richly designed woodcut alphabet with mythological subjects. The present work was republished in 1567, with use of the same woodcuts, but enlarged with four more books.
With a later ownership annotation and a hand drawn cross on the title page, several later annotations and underlinings in the margins. The vellum is somewhat stained, the spine is rubbed, with some loss of material. The leaves are occasionally (water)stained, and partly uncut, resulting in wide margins. Otherwise in good condition. Adams C-1024; BAL I, 582; Berlin Kat. 2576; Besterman, Old Art Books, p. 23; Cicognara 468; Fowler 82; Mortimer, Harvard Italian, 113; Renouard p. 159, no. 8; Riccardi I-1, 319; USTC 819671; Vagnetti EIIb20.