Leon Battista Alberti
On the Art of Building in Ten Books.
The MIT Press, 1988. First edition. Translation by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Vavernor of "De re aedificatoria". 0262010992 xxiii/442 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 7.5" x 10.5", is bound in light brown, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book displays light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Interior is clean and bright. Dust jacket, with price of $45.00 on front flap, displays mild shelfwear, with small, closed tear at upper inside corner of front panel. Spine panel exhibits sunning. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
""De re aedificatoria", by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was the first modern treatise on the theory and practice of architecture and in its time a model of learned Latin writing. Its importance for the subsequent history of architecture is incalculable; yet this is the first major English translation based on the original text on which Alberti's reputation as a theorist is founded.
Joseph Rykwert and his colleagues have been scrupulous in following Alberti's original intentions. Their version is based on the critical text published in 1966 by Giovanni Orlandi. It replaces the only other significant English version, that produced in 1726 by the Venetian architect James Leoni, whose source was not the original Latin but an Italian translation dating from the sixteenth century.
Rykwert's substantial introduction discusses Alberti's life and career -- as papal functionary, writer on a wide variety of topics, and architect -- and discusses the "De re aedificatoria" itself -- its relation to the "De architectura" of Vitruvius, its influence on contemporary and later architectural theory and practice, and its bibliographic history. The apparatus also includes an index and a glossary of terms. The translators were fortunate to have the help of eminent Alberti scholar Hans-Karl Lucke of the University of Toronto".