BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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Transcribed version of the text

French

The Vitruvius published by Cesariano in 1521 as well as the one by Giocondo (1511) and the editions that the Giunti produced soon after in Florence (1513, 1522) did not escape the attention of the Gabiano family from Asti. One part had settled in Lyon. When Baldassare died, his young brother Luxembourg (Lucimborgo) was sent by his uncle Giovanni Bartolomeo to take over managing the workshop in Lyon (Nuovo 2018). He was the one who edited a pocket version of Vitruvius which was inspired by the editions in 8° format published in Florence (Fowler 397, RIBA 3494). In addition to the 8° format, it repeated the dedication to Julien de’ Medici, the table of contents and the index. The text was illustrated both by the Giocondo plates and by more recent ones by Cesariano. The engravings stand out because their quality is far superior to that of the Giunti engravings, for the 136 woodcuts by Giocondo were copied from the 1511 princeps edition and reduced very carefully. The four new woodcuts which had appeared in the Florentine edition were not repeated. Thirty-four others coming from the 1521 Vitruvius were drastically reduced in order to accomodate the small format : indicated by an asterisk (*), they are presented as new on the title page (“cum nonnulis figuris sub hoc signo positis numquam antea impræssis”). We have recently learned that publication was delayed because of the plague which ran rampant in 1522 in Lyon, killing Guillaume Huyon, the Gabianos’ customary printer. Luxembourg was thus obliged to find other type. He went to Florence to get it, perhaps even from the Giunti’s shop. There was also a lot of delay for the thirty-four new illustrations ; as always in the case of a new edition, the text of the treatise was revised, but it was based on the text of Giocondo’s 1511 princeps edition (Pagliara 2004) without taking into account one quarter of the errata that Giocondo cared about so much (Tura 2011)
     The 1523 Vitruvius was in fact his first edition published in France. It was innovative at that time in the sense that it was accessible both to cultivated circles who read in Latin and to a wider public who by means of images gained access to the new language of antiquity such as the language Giocondo spread in 1511 (Doric entablature and its frieze with bucrania in particular) and the Cesariano interpretation, less humanist and more affected by the architecture of northern Italy. It is not surprising that the heirs of Balthazar, who had already distinguished himself in counterfeiting celebrated Aldine editions, would have thought of proposing an “enriched” edition of Vitruvius which could be a “must” in its composite aspect and its recent content, as in the illustrations, refined despite the reduced format, the paper of bad quality and the random formatting. Considering the number of copies still in existence, the Lyon edition was a great commercial success. Therefore one must not overlook the rôle it played in circulating Vitruvian and pseudo-Vitruvian forms in France.

Frédérique Lemerle
(Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CESR, Tours) – 2022

Critical bibliography

Giovanni Giocondo umanista, architetto e antiquario, edited by P. Gros & P. N. Pagliara, Venice, Marsilio, 2015.

W. Kemp & S. Richards, “Les contrefaçons lyonnaises de livres d’Aldo Manuce et le premier traité illustré sur l’architecture imprimé en France, le Vitruve de 1523”, unpublished paper in the framework of the Onzièmes entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier, Lyon, October l7-December 10, 1998.

F. Lemerle, “La complexité de l’entreprise éditoriale à la Renaissance : le cas du De architectura de Vitruve”, M. Furno (ed.), Qui écrit ? Figures de l’auteur et poids des co-élaborateurs du texte (XVe-XVIIe siècles), PENS, collection IHL, 2009, pp. 151-164.

F. Lemerle, “Le bucrane dans la frise dorique à la Renaissance : un motif véronais”, Annali di architettura, 8, 1996, pp. 85-92.

F. Lemerle & Y. Pauwels, Architectures de papier. La France et l’Europe (XVIe-XVIIe siècles), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013, pp. 18, 31-32.

F. Lemerle, “Philandrier et Giocondo”, Giovanni Giocondo umanista, architetto e antiquario, a cura di P. Gros & P. N. Pagliara, Venice, Marsilio, 2015, pp. 185-194.

F. Lemerle, “Le Vitruvio de 1521 dans la litterature vitruvienne”, F. Lemerle, Y. Pauwels & V. Zara (dir.), Il Vitruvio di Cesare Cesariano (Como, 1521), to be published.

A. Nuovo, “Transferring humanism : the edition of Vitruvius by Lucimborgo de Gabiano (Lyon 1523)”, G. Proot, D. McKitterick, A. Nuovo & P. F. Gehl (dir.), Lux Liborum. Essays on books and history for Chris Coppen, Mechele Flanders Book Historical Society, pp. 17-37.

P. N. Pagliara, “Le De architectura de Vitruve édité par les Gabiano, à Lyon en 1523”, S. Deswarte-Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie, Lyon, Mémoire active, 2004, pp. 359-365.

A. Tura, “Un Vitruvio a Vicenza, un Alberti a New York”, Pegasus, Berliner Beiträge zum Nachleben der Antike, 13, 2011, pp. 29-39.

F. Lemerle, « Le Vitruvio de 1521 dans la littérature vitruvienne », F. Lemerle, Y. Pauwels & V. Zara (dir.), Il Vitruvio di Cesare Cesariano (Como, 1521), à paraître.

A. Nuovo, « Transferring humanism: the edition of Vitruvius by Lucimborgo de Gabiano (Lyon 1523) »,G. Proot, D. McKitterick, A. Nuovo & P. F. Gehl (dir.), Lux Librorum. Essays on books and history for Chris Coppen, Mechele Flanders Book Historical Society, 2018, p. 17-37.