BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

Consult in image mode

Transcribed version of the text

French

     The edition that was printed in 1629 in Utrecht by the engraver/printer Crispijn van de Pas (1567-1637), active there since 1612, harked on the recent text published in 1620 by Johannes Janssonius in Arnhem and not the one from 1617/1619. The inverted frontispiece, above all the dedication and the notice to the readers (pp. 5-8), completely identical in content to those in the 1620 edition, tend to prove that the editor used remainders and superfluous copies. In the English version replacing the version in German, page ‘9’ (which is a right-hand page and corresponds to the end of the French translation of the notice to the readers), was reset (incidentally it was no longer paginated) and is followed by the text in English also not paginated (namely pages 10 and 11 in the 1620 version). The text on the orders is necessarily different with the insertion of the version in English. As for the illustrations, Crispijn van de Pas was content to reprint Janssen’s plates and to re-use the plates of the 1620 publication.
     This was the first translation into English of Vignola’s treatise. Joseph Moxon was the first to print it in London in 1655 (Vignola, or the compleat Architect. Shewing... the rules of the five orders of Architecture... Rendered into English... and explained by John Leek).

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

Critical bibliography

F. Lemerle, “Les versions françaises de la Regola de Vignole au XVIIe siècle”, In monte artium, 1, 2008, pp. 101-120.

F. Lemerle and Y. Pauwels, Architectures de papier. La France et l’Europe (XVIe -XVII e siècles), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013, pp. 107-109.

M. Walcher Casotti, “Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola: Regola delli cinque ordini d’architettura”, in E. Bassi (ed.), Pietro Cataneo, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola : trattati,Milan, Polifilo, 1985, pp. 499-577.