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Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
RUSCONI, GIOVANNI ANTONIO; and VITRUVIUS POLLIO, MARCUS. Della Architettura . . . con centosessanta figure dissegnate . . . secondo I precetti di Vitruvio. Title with woodcut allegorical border. 169 woodcut illustrations [RIBA count], some full-page; woodcut head- and tailpieces and historiated initials. [xii], 143, [1]. Small folio, contemporary calf gilt, worn, front cover, with 3 leaves (through second title page [ii] separated; scattered foxing, faint scattered dampstaining mainly affecting preliminaries, clean tears to a few leaves; occasional contemporary marginalia. Venice: Appriesso I Gioliti, 1590
first edition, first state without the errata. Rusconi's woodcuts were begun as early as 1553 and were intended to illustrate a full translation of Vitruvius prepared by him, which was to be published by Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari. Rusconi died in 1587, before its completion. It was not until this edition in 1590 that Giolito's sons decided to publish the woodcuts ("a new and skillful rendering of many of the Vitruvian woodcut"--Fowler 280), accompanied by an Italian text loosely based upon Vitruvius. "[Della Architettura's] importance, and its appeal, lie in the illustrations, which consist of a combination of recent Vitruvian images (as seen in the earlier sixteenth-century editions) and new designs of Rusconi's invention. The quality of the cuts is high"--RIBA 2880; Fowler 280; Berlin 2602; Cicognara 640.
