DURER (Albrecht). Lot n° 17

Della simmetria de i corpi humani, libri quattro. Venice, Domenico Nicolini, 1591. In-folio, fawn half-basane with corners, decorated smooth spine, smooth edges (Binding from the 18th century). First edition of the first Italian translation of the most important of Dürer's theoretical treatises, devoted to the proportions of the human body. The translator, Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, added a fifth book. The illustration, woodcut after Albrecht Dürer, consists of 110 full-page figures, 4 large diagrams printed on 3 folded non-text plates and 39 small diagrams in the text. Famous treatise on aesthetics for painters and engravers, attempting to combine instinctive data with mathematical rules. After showing how to bring the human body back to general patterns, Dürer gives possible interpretations of these patterns and sets out his ideas on art; he then examines the proportions of the limbs in movement. The work, on which Dürer had worked for many years, did not appear in German (Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion) until after his death in 1528; it was immediately translated into Latin and then into the main European languages. It was immediately translated into Latin and then into the main European languages. It is a fine copy, with large margins and very well preserved. Bound in a slightly rubbed binding; ff. 96-97 and 98 bound between ff. 108 and 109. Mortimer, n°169 - Cicognara, n°321 - Riccardi, I, 569 - Adams, D-1055 - Brunet, II, 914.