BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE



Author(s)

Van Schille, Hans
Title Form und weis zu bauwen... / Maniere, de bien bastir...
Imprint Antwerp, G. de Jode, 1580
Localisation Zurich, Zentralbibliothk, ZV 110,2 (e-rara.ch)
Subject Military architecture
Transcribed version of the text

French

     The title page of the 1580 edition is significantly different from the previous editions: the decorative frame is still the same, but the old letterpress title in either French or German has now been replaced with an engraved title in both languages. The original German and French titles have been slightly abridged in order to be combined on a single page. The bilingual title (FORM und weis zu bauwen, zimmern, machen.../MANIERE, de bien bastir, edifier, fortifier...) ends with the updated publisher’s imprint (“Antverpiae apud Gerardum de Jode. 1580”). The inscription with the author’s name in the cartouche underneath has remained the same. At the bottom edge of the title page now appears the engraved number “15”; this seems to suggest that the fourteen plates were also numbered, but, oddly enough, this was not the case in this edition but only in the next.
     The edition of 1580 is fairly common. While all the other editions of Van Schille’s volume survive in no more than two or three copies each, there are perhaps as much as twenty copies of the 1580 edition in public collections. There are copies, among others, in Brussels (Royal Library, II 60.739 C), Leuven (University Library, BRES C2057), The Hague (National Library, 1701 A 15), Amsterdam (University Library, OF 86-7²), London (British Library, 1264.g.26), and Zürich (Zentralbibliothek, ZV 110,2).

Pieter Martens (KU Leuven – Université catholique de Louvain) – 2015

Critical bibliography

P. Bragard, Dictionnaire biographique des ingénieurs des fortifications. Pays-Bas espagnols, principauté de Liège, Franche-Comté, 1504-1713, Namur, 2011, pp. 187-188.

P. Breman, One hundred books on military architecture and artillery, plus related prints, games, drawings and a selection of reference works, Oxford, P. Breman ed., 1999, cat. n° 74.

F. Donnet, “Schille (Jean ou Hans van)”, Biographie Nationale, vol. XXI, Brussels, 1913, col. 716-718.

P. Lombaerde, “New techniques for representing the object: Hans Vredeman de Vries and Hans van Schille”, Heiner Borggrefe, Vera Lüpkes (eds), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Folgen, Marburg, 2005, pp. 101-108.

H. Nalis et al., The Van Doetecum Family (The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700), 4 vols, Rotterdam, 1998, vol. 3, pp. 137-143 (n° 642-656).

H.E. Wauwermans, “Etude bibliographique sur la fortification de Jean van Schille (d’Anvers) ingénieur et géographe 1573”, Bulletin van de Maatschappij der Antwerpsche Bibliophielen, 1882, dl. 1, pp. 41-56.

F. Westra, Nederlandse ingenieurs en de fortificatiewerken in het eerste tijdperk van de Tachtigjarige Oorlog, 1573-1604, Alphen aan den Rijn, Canaletto, 1992, p. 24.

P.S. Zimmermann, Die Architectura von Hans Vredeman de Vries, Entwicklung der Renaissancearchitektur in Mitteleuropa, Munich/Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002, pp. 183-185.