PALLADIO, Andrea.  The first book of architecture, by Andrea Palladio. Translated out of Italian: with an appendix touching doors and windows, by Pr Le Muet. Translated out of French, by G.R...   London: by J. M[oxon?]. and sold by G. Richards, at the Peacock in Cornhill near the Old Exchange: and by Simon Miller, at the Star in St Pauls Church-yard, 1663.  

Small 4to (180 × 140 mm), pp. [x], 198, [2], 101-115, [2], 210-222, [3], p. 228, [4], complete with additional engraved title (depicting the figure of Architecture in an elaborate archway) by John Chantry, 63 full-page engraved plates, and final blank leaf, plus 3 folding engraved plates, woodcut illustrations to text. A few minor stains to front free endpaper. Contemporary blind-ruled sheep, spine quite elaborately gilt in 3 panels, red morocco label lettered vertically, red sprinkled edges. Joints lightly rubbed, the lower joint cracked with minor portions of loss towards head and foot. Early armorial bookplate of Francis Fulford of  Fulford, Devon and early manuscript shelf-marks to initial blank. A lovely copy: large, well-margined and exceptionally fresh.   

First edition. “The first edition of any text deriving from Palladio to be published in English” (RIBA). It is Godfrey Richards’s translation of Pierre Le Muet’s French translation of Book 1 of Quattro libri dell’architettura by Andrea Palladio and a translation of excerpts from Le Muet’s Divers traictez d’architecture pour l’art de bien bastir. It is perhaps surprising that despite the introduction of Palladian architectural styles to England in the early seventeenth century (by Inigo Jones), no English translation of Palladio’s works existed before Richards and it was not until the the eighteenth-century flowering of Palladianism (Campbell, Kent and Adam) that we find more extensive translations of Palladio.

Richards himself notes the lack of suitable manuals for architects: “The scarcity of Books of Architecture in English, and the zeal which I find our Ingenious Artists have to entertaine any thing of that Subject, incouraged me to this Essay; wherein, I hope, I have rendred the Authors sence, without disadvantage; and for the Designes, they will speak for themselves” (Preface).

The “Designes” are fine interpretations of the Palladian orders with the familiar details of columns, capitals, mouldings, doorways and windows, rendered in an attractive and (presumably) portable small format. The first part of Palladio’s first book is a practical discourse on building, so we also find here several chapters and plates describing building materials (timber, stone, sand, lime, metals) and on the construction of foundations and walls. Therefore, like Muet’s French translation, Godfrey Richard’s version is as much a builder’s manual as a theoretical treatise. The only substantial alterations made by Richards to the texts of Palladio and Le Muet is to the section on the framing of buildings. Here, Richards, substitutes timber frames characteristic of English builders, and the edition is notable as one of the earliest (perhaps the earliest) to include diagrams of such details as roof-trusses. There is also a fine plate with two details of the geometric floor then recently laid at Somerset House and condsidered a model of continental good taste.

This is a work of considerable scarcity (see below), especially so in the unsophisticated contemporary state of our copy.

Wing 204A; Harris 670; Fowler 219; RIBA 2401 (note). ESTC lists the following locations: British Library, Birmingham, Oxford (Christ Church), Ushaw College, Huntington Library (2 copies, 1 defective), Library Company of Philadelphia, University of Arkansas, UCLA (Clark), Yale (2 copies).

Price: SOLD