Descripción

8vo (155x99 mm). [16], 369, [39] pp. Collation: a8 A-Z8 &8 AA8 BB4. Large printer's device on the title page and 65 woodcut illustrations in text. Colophon on last leaf verso. Woodcut initials. Italic, Greek, and Roman type. Contemporary flexible vellum with overlapping edges and inked title on spine (traces of ties). Ownership entry on the title page “Joan. Bap.ta Gabii”. Small hole on l. H1 with some loss of text, quire T slightly browned, otherwise a very good, extremely genuine copy in its first binding.
Scarce first edition, dedicated to the King of France Francis I, of Philandrier commentary on Vitruvius, that was reprinted in Paris in 1545 and later issued accompanying Vitruvius's actual text in Strasbourg in 1550 in 16mo and in De Tournes' enlarged 4to format in Lyons in 1552.
The edition opens with a note to the scholars (“studiosis”), a six-page long list of quoted authors, and a short life of Vitruvius based on the autobiographical references that can be found in his own work.
As secretary to Cardinal Georges D'Armagnac, Philandrier lived in Rome for a few years, becoming a member of the famous Accademia della Virtù, which, founded by Claudio Tolomei in 1538 under the protection of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, had been established for the main purpose of studying and commenting on the work of Vitruvius (see M. Maylender, Storia delle accademie d'Italia, Bologna, 1926-‘30, V, pp. 478-480). The academy, whose members included Marcello Cervini (the future Pope Marcellus II), Jacopo Barozzi called Il Vignola, Alessandro Manzuoli, Luca Contile, Annibal Caro, Marco Antonio Flaminio, and Francesco Maria Molza, to name but a few, met twice a week at the residence of Archbishop Francesco Colonna; during the meetings Vitrivius' De Architectura was read and discussed in order to publish a comprehensive annotated edition of the work. The activity and goals of the Accademia della Virtù are outlined by Tolomei in a very interesting letter to Count Agostino Landi, dated 14 November 1542 (cf. D. Wiebenson, ed., Architectural Theory and Practice from Alberti to Ledoux, Chicago, IL, 1982, pp. 1-13).
It was precisely during his stay in Rome that Philander (known in Italian as Filandro and in Latin as Philander) produced his Annotationes, which remained the only published outcome of the ambitious project of the Accademia della Virtù (cf. F. Lemerle, Philandrier et le texte de Vitruve, in: “Mélanges de l'École française de Rome, Italie et Méditerranée”, 106, no. 2, 1994, pp. 517-529).
“Philander's commentary is composed of sections of the text followed by practical explanations and definitions, each passage heavily reinforced with scholarly and classical examples […] Philander's work is at once a learned study and a practical manual of architecture, incorporating the methods of both the humanists and architects […] It is the first synthesis of academic and practical interpretations of Vitruvius' treatise to appear in published form. The contribution of Philander and of the Accademia delle Virtù to mid-sixteenth-century architectural theory is of the greatest importance […] Philander's notes would be cited almost without exception by every Vitruvius commentator and translator, from the date of its first appearance until the nineteenth century” (D. Wiebenson, ed., The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection, I: French books, New York, 1993, no. 165 for the 1552 edition).
Guillaume Philandrier, a native of Châtillon-sur-Seine, was a pupil of Jean Perelle. As secretary to Georges d'Armagnac, French ambassador first to Venice, then to Rome, he visited Italy and got to know influential artists of the time, most notably Sebastiano Serlio, who taught him architecture. At an unspecified date between 1544 and 1549 he returned to France, to Rodez, where, having taken the ecclesiastical habit, he was appointed canon of the cathedral and archdeacon. He died in Toulouse in February 1563, while visiting Georges d'Armagnac, who had meanwhile beco