Vitruvius, Architecture ou art de bien bastir, Paris, 1547, later calf by Duchamps

Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus. Architecture ou Art de bien bastir, de Marc Vitruve Pollion Autheur Romain antique: mis de Latin en Françoys, par Jan Martin Secretaire de Monseigneur le Cardinal de Lenoncourt. Pour le Roy très chrestien Henry II. Paris: Barbe Herissault & heirs of Jean Barbé for Jacques Gazeau, 1547

First edition in French, a second copy.

Folio (349 x 248 mm). Roman type, with chapter titles in italic, 45 lines plus headline. collation: πA⁴ A-Cc⁶ [2]A-D⁶: 183 leaves (of 184, without final blank). Woodcut device on title-page, 160 woodcut illustrations (with an additional leaf in quire F designed to be pasted to the previous leaf to make a folding illustration), brief early marginal annotations to F1v and F6r. (Worming to lower margin of preliminaries, soiling to title-page, early repair to hole in final leaf with loss of two words).

binding: Nineteenth-century calf by H. Duchamps (356 x 258 mm), spine gilt, red morocco label to second compartment, red edges. (Upper cover detached, lacking first compartment of spine, extremities rubbed). 

provenance: Mathieu Accarion, inscription dated 1640 on flyleaf, and his son André Accarion, both architects, inscriptions on endleaves and title-page — "Ex lib. Hect. Dum." and "Petit", inscriptions on title-page — Pierre-Théophile Segretain (1798-1864, architect), bookplate and PS stamp on flyleaf. references: BAL RIBA 3509; Fowler 403; Mortimer, Harvard French 549