BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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Transcribed version of the text

French

     The De artificiali perspectiva by Jean Pélerin Viator was read all through the 16^th century and during the first third of the 17^th, as its numerous editions bear witness, from the first rather confidential one (Toul, 1505) to that of Mathurin Jousse (La Flèche, 1635), not to mention the pirated editions which came out in Strasbourg, inserted in the famous encyclopedia Margarita philosophica by Gregor Reich entitled Introductio architecturæ et perspectivæ, (1508, 1512, 1515). Those editions published in Nuremberg by Georg Glockendon (Von der Kunst Perspectiva, 1509, 1540), are also proof of the good fortune the work met in the lands of Germanic culture.
The second authorized edition appeared in March, 1510 (1509, old style), in Toul, from the presses of Pierre Jacques, like the first one. The volume is made up of seventeen fewer leaves than the princeps edition. The text, slightly different, was augmented and laid out in another way: each paragraph in Latin is followed by its French translation. The plates were engraved anew. Some engravings from the first edition have disappeared, on the other hand others are new; each “figure exemplaire” is accompanied by a distich in French which makes identifying certain illustrations much easier.

Frédérique Lemerle (Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
Centre d'études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours) – 2007

Critical bibliography

J. Pélerin, De Artificiali Perspectiva (1505, 1509), New York, Da Capo Press, 1973.

L. Brion-Guerry, Jean Pélerin Viator, sa place dans l’histoire de la Perspective, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1962, pp. 157-158, 163-253.