Lot 140: ALBERTI, LEON BATTISTA.

L'Architecture, et art de bien bastir... Traduicts de latin en françois par deffunct Ian Martin. Paris: Jacques Kerver for Robert Massellin, 2 August 1553

Condition Note: folio (327 x 217mm.), ff. [8], 228, illustration : title within woodcut strapwork border, woodcut portrait of Alberti on verso of title, 2 woodcut plans (one folding), 94 woodcuts in text, woodcut device on verso of final leaf, woodcut initials and head-pieces, binding : eighteenth-century speckled calf, spine gilt in compartments, small hole (paper flaw) in blank portion of final leaf

Mortimer, Harvard French, 12; Fowler 7; BAL RIBA 50; Berlin Catalogue 2553; Cicognara 374

first edition in french. Many of the woodcuts are close copies of those made for the first edition of Cosimo Bartoli's Italian translation and printed by Torrentino at Florence in 1550. The initials are from the set designed by Kerver for his 1546 edition of the Hypnerotomachia in 1546. This edition also contains a French translation of Giovio's life of Alberti.

This edition contains several prefatory verses, including a long epitaph by Ronsard for the translator Jean Martin, who died before the work was published, and had previously made translations of both Serlio and Vitruvius.