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Folio (340 x 235mm). 77 leaves: [vi], 1-74pp. (including advertisement leaf). Signatures: aa4 (lacking aai), a-i8. Barbé s printer s device on final verso of bearded man holding a laurel wreath in oval cartouche frame with motto "Nec barbae, Nec barbato." 132 woodcuts of geometry and diagrams, 24 in full-page. Text in roman and italic in dual French and Italian. Modern marbled boards and renewed endpapers; (some browning, heavier at front and rear, repaired tear to final leaf). Two old bookseller s description (one for Kraus) laid-in at front. This copy with some interesting additions as in p. 32 where a pencil diagram study was made of the figure. Scattered seventeenth century annotations in French, on p. 67 a crude drawing of a shield with some curious French cancelled, "Mademoiselle ma cousine ie vous supplie bien humblement," and a repeating surname "Vallier" in lower margin. A most definitely utilized copy of this interesting treatise with large figures, which would have captured a student s attention. Dual French and Latin edition of Serlio s important sixteenth century treatise on Geometry and Perspective, Books I and II, published in Paris by Barbé in 1545. Books I and II covered the fields of knowledge once considered the purview of the painter. The books were intended for very few readers, mainly those who were able to draw and reproduce diagrams. For Geometry, architects and artists would have most benefited from the graphic experience and the profuse diagrams which would help them resolve problems in their work. The second book, Perspective, is divided into three short treatises organized as lessons. The first was devoted to the ground plan in perspective, the second to bodies in perspective, the third to "material" perspective in stage design (comic, tragic, and satirical) and is illustrated by the famous engravings on perspective, spatial contours, and distributions of the theater. Serlio s Books I and II appeared third in the series after the "Quarto Libro" on the orders (1537) and Book III on Antiquities (1540). They were important teaching tools that Serlio developed over time and over exposure to the work of Euclid s Elements and other master thinkers and designers of his time like Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Pélerin and Albrecht Dürer. Jean Barbé was a Parisian printer and merchant-bookseller who is remembered for partnering with typographer Claude Garamont in 1545 - notably the same year as this edition. At the height of his short two-year career, Barbé s work on this Serlio text was his most notorious and remains an important addition in French Renaissance printing. Barbé prepared just one more final edition of this Serlio text for the benefit of his widow and heirs, which appeared in 1547 - the same year of his death. Dual French and Latin edition of Serlio s important sixteenth century treatise on Geometry and Perspective, Books I and II, published in Paris by Barbé in 1545. Books I and II covered the fields of knowledge once considered the purview of the painter. The books were intended for very few readers, mainly those who were able to draw and reproduce diagrams. For Geometry, architects and artists would have most benefited from the graphic experience and the profuse diagrams which would help them resolve problems in their work. The second book, Perspective, is divided into three short treatises organized as lessons. The first was devoted to the ground plan in perspective, the second to bodies in perspective, the third to "material" perspective in stage design (comic, tragic, and satirical) and is illustrated by the famous engravings on perspective, spatial contours, and distributions of the theater. Serlio s Books I and II appeared third in the series after the "Quarto Libro" on the orders (1537) and Book III on Antiquities (1540). They were important teaching tools that Serlio developed over time and over exposure to the work of Euclid s Elements and other.
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