Beschreibung:

VITRUVIUS POLLO, Marcus (c.90-c.20 B.C.). Di architettura , edited by F.L. Durantino, Venice: Niccolò Zoppino, March 1535. 2° (311 x 206mm). Title within an elaborate historiated woodcut border and printed in red and black, 136 woodcut illustrations and diagrams, figured initials. (Illustration on E3 slightly smeared, light, mainly marginal, thumb-soiling.) Bound in an early (?11th century) manuscript, preserved in a leather dust-jacket and slipcase (a few small flaws on sides, manuscript torn away around lower front corner, remnants of a paper label on spine, head and tail of spine chipped). Provenance : marginal annotations in ink (on A3v) -- purchased from Louis Bondy, London, 9 August 1960, £42 10s. Second Durantino edition. The title border shows figures in battle array, among them Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. The figures are labelled with initials. At the head of a border in a central medallion is a figure of Cicero. The 136 woodcuts 'are close copies of the full set of blocks from the Giocondo edition of 1511 printed at Venice by Giovanni Tacuino. The copies were made for the first Durantino edition [Venice, 1524] ... Zoppino secured all of the 1524 blocks except one; that on leaf N1r is a recutting with the heads of the figures strangely enlarged' (Mortimer). Adams V-916; Berlin Kat. 1804; Cicognara 705; Fowler p. 314; Mortimer, Harvard Italian , 545; Sander III, p. 1323.