BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

Consult in image mode

Transcribed version of the text

French

     In 1546 Vincenzo Valgrisi’s workshop printed Pietro Lauro’s translation, the first in Italian, of Alberti’s De re ædificatoria. There had already been two attempts which had remained in manuscript form (RIBA 51); the first one, anonymous, (the end of the 15th century- the beginning of the 16th), covered only the first three books (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Cod. 2520). The second one is an illustrated version attributed to Damiano Pieti, a native of Parma, dated 1538 (a fragment, Reggio Emilia, Biblioteca municipale, cod. mss. Vari, G.3). Lauro, born in Modena or in the area, around 1510, studied in Bologna or Padua and then settled in Venice where he worked from 1542 to 1568 for the important printers. He is well-known for his translations of classics, Greek (Artemidorus Daldianus, Flavius Josephus) and Latin (Columella), and he had already collaborated with Vincenzo Valgrisi (15??-1572) in various translations (Flavius Josephus, 1543; Charles Estienne, 1545; Erasmus, 1545).
     The octavo edition starts with Pietro Lauro’s dedication to Count Bonifazio Bevilacqua, a patrician from Bologna and Ferrara, Count of Maccastorna, an Aulic councillor of Duke Ercole II d’Este. Lauro wrote his own table of contents and the notes in the margin. Like Jakob Cammerlander in 1541, he repeated the principle of dividing his material into chapters which Geoffroy Tory had introduced in 1512. There are no illustrations, which partly explains why it was quickly forgotten, replaced by the fine illustrated edition that Cosimo Bartoli published in 1550 in Florence.

Frédérique Lemerle – 2016
(Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CESR, Tours)

Critical bibliography

L. B. Alberti, L’architettura [De re aedificatoria], Testo latino e traduzione a cura di G. Orlandi, introduzione e note di P. Portoghesi, Milan, Il Polifilo, 1966.

F. Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti. Opera completa, Milan, Electa, 1986 (1st ed.: Milan, 1973), pp. 226-229, 231-233, 237.

J. Rykwert, N. Leach & R. Tavernor (eds.), Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, Cambridge Mass. & London, MIT, 1988, p. xix.

M. Carpo, L’architettura dell’età della stampa: oralità, scrittura, libro stampato e riproduzione meccanica dell’immagine nella storia delle teorie architettoniche, Milan, Jaca Book, 1998.

F. Salvi, “Edizioni, versioni e illustrazioni del De re Aedificatoria. Nota sulla fortuna del trattato albertiano”, G. Morolli & M. Guzzon (eds.), Leon Battista Alberti: i nomi e le figure. Ordini, templi e fabbriche civili: immagini e architetture dai libri VII e VIII del De re ædificatoria, Florence, Alinea, 1994.

A. Tura, “Saggio su alcuni selezionati problemi di bibliografia fiorentina”, A. Tura (ed.), Edizioni fiorentine del Quattrocento e del primo Cinquecento in Trivulziana, Milan, Comune di Milano, 2001, p. 9-65.