VITRUVIUS POLLIO, Marcus (fl. ca. 84--14 B.C.)
[De architectura. Italian and Latin. 1758]
L'architettura di M. Vitruvio Pollione colla traduzione Italiana e comento del Marchese Berardo Galiani ...
In Napoli (Place), nella stamperia Simoniana,, 1758.
[6], XXXII, 462, [52] p., etch. frontis., XXV pl. : engr. & wdcut illus. ; 39.2 cm. (2º)

Parallel texts in Latin and Italian. This is the first edition of Galiani's translation, and the first to reflect the advances in archaeological scholarship achieved during the Enlightenment. The plates are printed as full-page illustrations with a letterpress explanation on the facing conjugate leaf and are sometimes found bound as single folded leaves rather than as bifolia. BAL, Early printed books, no. 3501; Fowler 424; Millard IV, 162; C.I.S.A. Andrea Palladio, La raccolta palladiana Guglielmo Cappelletti del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio di Vicenza (Vicenza 2001), no. 216.

Copy Notes Inscribed in ink by Soane on frontispiece From the Bishop of Derry to J. Soan, Soane's name written over in darker ink with the final 'e' added. Soane met Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry and later 4th Earl of Bristol in Rome in 1778 and accompanied him on several expeditions to Naples. The bishop's gift of this book and Consul Smith's facsimile of Palladio's Quattro libri, c. 1767 (q.v.) helped to launch Soane into book collecting. The first few pages of Libro I are inscribed by Soane in pencil in the margins with translations from the Italian and there are further annotations by him in pencil on some of the plates.

Binding C18th Italian vellum, red-stained and gilt-tooled spine-title.

Reference Number 3534

Additional Names Hervey, Frederick Augustus, 4th Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry (1730--1803); Galiani, Berardo