BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE
Three years after the 1537 princeps edition, Serlio reissued the Regoli generali at the printing shop of Marcolini in February 1540 or 1541 (following Venitian custom). While he was preparing to travel to France, he postponed his departure date a little, very probably in order to supervise the reissue of the book. He deleted Aretino’s letter to Marcolini dated September 10, 1537 and replaced the dedication to Hercules II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, with a new one addressed to Alfonso de Avalos, governor of Milan on behalf of Charles V (ff. 2r° and v°), who had rewarded him with a “tidy sum of crowns” (f. II) the previous year. As Serlio specifies, (f. 2v°), the edition was corrected (“molte correttioni”) and revised. This explains some additions (“alcune additioni”) which he took the trouble to enumerate : they concern the Doric frieze, the Doric door after Vitruvius (f. 21v°), the Ionic base, the volute in the Ionic capital, the Corinthian base and the Corinthian capital. These additions are highlighted as such on leaves 21v° and 37v°. In fact the errata from 1537 (f. 76v°) were taken into account. And the outline of the fluting of the Pegasus capital which had been added at the end was restored to its place (f. 63). But nevertheless two illustration errors were introduced, pointed out on leaves 45v° and 63v° (fireplace inversions). Frédérique Lemerle (Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
Critical bibliographyM. Carpo, La maschera e il modello. Teoria architettonica ed evangelismo nell’Extraordinario Libro di Sebastanio Serlio, Milan, Jaca Book, 1993, pp. 85-105. F. Lemerle, Les Annotations de Guillaume Philandrier sur le De Architectura de Vitruve, Livres I à IV, Introduction, translation and commentary, Paris, Picard, 2000. M. Morresi & A. Guerra, “Les rééditions vénitiennes des livres de Serlio”, S. Deswarte-Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon, Architecture et imprimerie, Lyons, Mémoire Active, 2004, pp. 235-245. M. Vène, Bibliographia serliana. Catalogue des éditions imprimées des livres du trait d’architecture de Serlio (1537-1681), Paris, Picard, 2007, pp. 56-57.
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