"NO ARCHITECTURE BOOK HAS EVER HAD WIDER INFLUENCE": A GREAT RARITY. 1715 FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH OF PALLADIO'S FOUR BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE, SUPERBLY ILLUSTRATED WITH 230 ENGRAVED FOLIO PLATES

PALLADIO, Andrea. The Architecture of A. Palladio; In Four Books Containing A Short Treatise of the Five Orders, and the most necessary Observations concerning all Sorts of Building… Revis'd, Design'd, and Publish'd by Giacomo Leoni… Translated from the Italian Original. London: Printed by John Watts, for the Author, 1715. Four volumes. Tall folio (11-1/2 by 17-1/2 inches), period-style full crimson morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, black morocco spine labels, raised bands.

Rare first edition in English of Palladio's enormously important treatise on architecture, including essays on building materials, the classical orders and decorative ornaments, with copper-engraved allegorical frontispiece and full-page portrait of Palladio by Picart, and 218 magnificent copper-engraved plates (15 double-page) on 203 sheets, and 12 in-text engravings—all after drawings by Giacomo Leoni.

While the first part of Palladio's monumental work had been translated into English in the 1600s, it was not until Giacomo Leoni's 1715 first edition in English that the complete work was published. Leoni's edition ignited the great Palladian revival in England and its American colonies. Thomas Jefferson, for example, had many copies in his library and used Palladio as a basis for his design of Monticello. "Palladio is the Bible," he told a friend whom he urged to get a copy of the treatise, "and stick close to it" (Randall, 151). One of the few architects of the early Renaissance to be trained as a builder, Palladio was recognized by the great Italian architect and scholar Trissino and adopted as his protege. For two years Palladio studied in Rome and in 1570 published his Quattro Libri, which "deals with every aspect of architecture from proportions to town-planning, the whole imbued with the gravitas that Palladio had derived from his study of ancient Rome… No architecture book has ever had wider influence, more especially in England. It was swiftly translated into other languages and went through numerous editions. There can be no major city in Europe that does not contain a building influenced by Palladio, and there are a great many more in America… The Architecture in Four Books of Palladio was translated into English [from Freart's 1650 French translation] and provided with a fine set of plates, specially redrawn by a Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni. This, published in 1715, may be regarded as the most handsome of all editions" (Great Books and Book Collectors, 175, 186). "The career and book of Andrea Palladio summarize well the goal of the Renaissance architect— the creation of ordered and balanced architecture that might serve as an example for subsequent architects…. His Quattro Libri presented plans and elevations of his best work around Vicenza, as well as restorations of some of the major Roman ruins. Of all architectural books except that of Vitruvius, Palladio's has had the greatest continuing impact" (Elements of Architecture, 113). Includes essays on building materials, the classical orders and decorative ornaments, Palladio's own designs and his reconstructions of Greek and Roman designs, plans for ancient towns, bridges, highways, and basilicas, and plans for the reconstruction of early Roman temples. Text in English, Italian, and French. Although the title page mentions notes by Inigo Jones, due to a legal dispute these were not actually added until the edition of 1742. Harris 683. Fowler 223. Avery 160. Sowerby, The Library of Thomas Jefferson 4175.

Plates crisp and fresh, interior expertly cleaned with only traces of occasional marginal spotting not affecting plates, a few leaves with expert paper reinforcement, one leaf with small loss to corner not affecting text (IV). A beautiful copy of this splendid and influential work, handsomely bound.