BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

French

     Wendel Dietterlin, whose real name was Wendling Grapp, was born around 1550 at Pullendorf, near Lake Constance. We know almost nothing about his training; he established himself as a painter in Strasbourg where he was married in 1570 and died in 1599. He carried out several painted decorations in the city and participated in the ornamentation of the Neues Lusthaus in Stuttgart, a building used for accomodating festivities and balls at the ducal court of Wurtemberg. His major book is the Architectura, a collection of etchings taking several forms, increased regularly from 1593 to 1598, of which several preparatory sketches have been kept.
The first version of the Architectura came out in Stuttgart, without the editor’s name, in 1593. Its title, Das erste Buch [The First Book] could have caused one to believe that it was the first part, devoted only to the Tuscan order, of the complete work in five books. In fact, outside of the pages of text, it comprises approximately forty engravings on the five orders of architecture (the number varies according to the copies; the one in the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire of Strasbourg has thirty-eight). This first version also came out in 1593 in Latin in Strasbourg at the presses of Bernhardt Jobin’s heirs who were to publish the following year a second enriched version, before Balthazar and Hubert Caimox came out with the completed version in 1598. That one included more than two hundred etchings.

Yves Pauwels (Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours) – 2012

Critical bibliography

E. Forssman, Säule und Ornament Studien zum Problem des Manierismus in den nordischen Säulenbüchern und Vorlageblättern des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Stockholm/Uppsala, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956.

E. Forssman, "Wendel Dietterlin, Maler und Architekturtheoretiker", N. Riegel & D. Dombrowski (ed.), Architektur und Figur. Das Zusammenspiel der Künste; Festschrift für Stefan Kummer zum 60. Geburtstag, Munich, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2007, pp. 202-215.

G. U. Großmann, "Die verschiedenen Ausgaben der Architectura des Wendel Dietterlin", Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 1997, pp. 157-173.

M. Pirr, Die Architectura des Wendel Dietterlin, Gräfenhainichen, Schulze, s.d. [1940].

S. Vieten-Kreuels, "Wendel Dietterlin", H. Günther (ed.), Deutsche Architekturtheorie zwischen Gothik und Renaissance, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988, pp. 156-163.

A. von Zahn, "Wendel Dietterlins Säulenbuch", Archiv für die zeichnenden Künste, 9, 1863, pp. 97-108.