Cavalieri, Dosio, Scamozzi, three antiquarian works in one volume, 1569-1584, contemporary limp vellum

Giovanni Battista Cavalieri, Dosio and Vincenzo Scamozzi

A volume containing three antiquarian works on Rome, comprising:

Giovanni Battista Cavalieri. Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae primus et secundus liber... Io. Baptista de Cavaleriis authore. [Rome, before 1584], engraved title-page with engraved armorial on verso, 3 unnumbered engraved plates, 100 engraved plates (numbered 1-100)

Giovanni Antonio Dosio and Giovanni Battista Cavalieri. Urbis Romae aedificiorum illustrium quae supersunt reliquiae. [Rome, 1569], 50 engraved plates (including title-page) numbered 1-50 (printed as an oblong quarto, but bound along the foot of each plate)

Vincenzo Scamozzi. Discorsi sopra l'antichità di Roma... Con XL tavole in rame. Venice: Francesco Ziletti [for Girolamo Porro], 1582, engraved title-page, 40 double-page engraved plates by Giovanni Battista Pittoni with letterpress text on versos, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces, final errata leaf

together 3 works in one volume, folio (275 x 201mm.), contemporary limp vellum, later ties (one missing), occasional light staining, a few small marginal wormholes, binding slightly soiled, spine slightly defective, hinges split

Cavalieri's collections of plates depicting Roman sculptures began to be printed in Rome in the 1560s; this is the first joint edition of books one and two and was probably printed before 1584 (Ashby's 2.a; Edit16 10454 has the same title-page and attributes the date to 1585), and the third and fourth books were issued in 1594. This copy contains an additional three unnumbered plates bound after the title-page.

Dosio and Cavalieri's work is "One of the most important of the sixteenth-century collections of views of Rome, being free from the fantastic reconstructions so dear to the archaeologists of the period" (Fowler). It is often found bound with Cavalieri's collection of plates of Roman statuary.

This edition of Scamozzi's treatise on Roman monuments is a reissue of the sheets from the 1581 first edition. He had worked with Palladio and on Palladio's death moved to Venice where he continued some of Palladio's projects and undertook the present work, providing a brief description to accompany some plates already in Ziletti's possession. The plates are ultimately derived from a work by Hieronymus Cock, Praecipue aliquot Romanae antiquitatis ruinarum monimenta, from 1551.

For another of Scamozzi's works, see lot 213.

LITERATURE:

Edit16 10454, 10447, 40484; Cavalieri: Thomas Ashby, "Antiquae statuae urbis Romae", Papers of the British School at Rome 9 (1920), 107-158; Scamozzi: BAL RIBA 2916