BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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Transcribed version of the text

French

     The book published in Strasbourg in 1550 by Georges Messerschmidt (Machaeropioeus) is a composite edition. As well as Vitruvius’ De architectura, it contains the Annotations that Philandrier published in Rome in 1544. Messerschmidt repeated the dedication to François I and the Vie de Vitruve and furnished the whole text of the Annotations with the illustrations, intervening for the footnoting, making changes because of the new typesetting and often shortening the excerpts by Vitruvius which preceed each side note. The Latin and Greek indices rerum by Philandrier were completed with Vitruvius’ text. Thus the notes are preceded by or interspersed with the text of the Vitruvian treatise which would be the one published in 1543 by Messerschmidt. Ninety illustrations come from this edition, completed by a few plates borrowed from previous editions by Giocondo and Cesariano, or from treatises by Serlio and Valturio. In 1550 Messerschmidt meant to offer to the Germanic world an annotated edition, more modern than Cesariano’s. Jean I de Tournes quickly understood the interest in it, for in 1552 he went back to the principle of a book bringing together the Annotationes by Philandrier in an enlarged version, and the integral text of the De architectura, cut up this time into chapters followed from then on by their annotations.

Frédérique Lemerle (Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
Centre d'études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours) – 2011

Critical bibliography

B. Ebhardt, Die Zehn Buecher der Architektur des Vitruv und ihre Herausgeber. Mit einem Verzeichnis der vorhandenen Ausgaben und Erlaeutderungen, Berlin, Burgverlag, 1918 (eng. transl.: Ossining, N. Y., Salloch, 1962).

F. Lemerle, "Genèse de la théorie des ordres: Philandrier et Serlio", Revue de l’art, 103, 1994, pp. 33-41.

F. Lemerle, "Philandrier et le texte de Vitruve", Mélanges de l’École française de Rome–Italie et Méditerranée, 106, 1994-2, pp. 517-529.

F. Lemerle, Les Annotations de Guillaume Philandrier sur le De Architectura de Vitruve, Livres I à IV, Introduction, translation and commentary, Paris, Picard, 2000.

F. Lemerle, Guillaume Philandrier, Les Annotations sur l’Architecture de Vitruve, Livres V à VII, Introduction, translation and commentary, Paris, Garnier, 2011.