Modelli di cannoni ed altro per uso e studio di Pietro Bardet di Villanova 175[?]. Manuscript on paper

Folio (256x185 mm). 108 unnumbered leaves, of which 50 are blank. Allegorical title page and 57 illustrations in pencil and ink within a douple inked frame and with inked caption titles, measurement units and explanations. The plates show cannon, mortars, gun carriages, gun wheels, ammunition carts, various tools and ramrod devices. Some of the illustrations are applied. Contemporary mottled calf, righly gilt spine, sprinkled edges (worn and rubbed). On the front pastedown bookplate Mark Dineley; on the title page and first plate stamp “Ten. Genera.le Bardet”. The fourth digit in the date on the title page is not clearly readable. Some minor foxing, overall well preserved.
Pietro Bardet di Villanova is probably to be identified with P.P.A. Bardet de Villeneuve, a military engineer and author of a Cours de la science militaire in eleven parts printed between 1740 and 1757, and a “General Plan of the Excavations of Herculaneum” (1742). He began his military career fighting for Spain under the orders of the Marquis of Santa Cruz. When Charles III was made King of the Two Sicilies, Bardet de Villeneuve passed into his service with the title of ordinary engineer and innovated the king's military corps of engineers. From 1741 to 1745 he was director of works in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum together with Rorro, replacing D'Alcubierre. His son Luigi Bardet di Villanova, also a military engineer at the service of the Bourbons between the 18th and the 19th centuries, worked primarily in the topographic field rising to the highest ranks of the military career (cf. M.G. Pezone, Un ingegnere del Genio borbonico tra Sette e Ottocento. Luigi Bardet di Villanova, in: “History of Engineering, Proceedings of the 3nd International Conference”, F.R. D'Ambrosio & S. D'Agostino, eds., Naples, 2018, pp. 235-247). The manscript may have belonged to him.