L'architettura tradotta in lingua fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli.

Venetia, Francesco Franceschi, 1565. 4to. (22,5 x 16,5 cm). Contemporary limp vellum. Author's name 'Alberti' in a contemporary hand on the spine. 404 pp, 14, ff. Numerous woodcut illustrations, 2 full page plates of that show the top parts of the illustrations on pages 284 & 285, plus one double-page plate that is comprised in the pagination. The lower edge has the written text in a contemporary hand: 'Architet. di Alberti'. (binding a bit soiled and damaged, some light foxing).

The first quarto edition of Cosimo Bartoli's translation in Italian of Alberti's work that was originally published in Latin in 1485. It was translated by Bartoli in 1550 and printed in a folio edition. The title is within a reduced copy of the architectural woodcut border of the title page of the 1550 folio edition. The illustrations are also reduced and reversed copies of the same edition. The two leaves between p. (284-285), are designs of the upper parts of towers, intended to be pasted above the lower part of and are given the page numbers 284 and 285, in this copy bound between pages 288 and 289. In the new dedication to Duke Cosime de Medici, Bartoli points out that fifteen years have passed since his translation of Alberti's 'L'Architettura' was printed by Lorenzo Torrentino and that now, it being difficult to find, he has been urged to reprint it, which he is doing in smaller and more convenient form.
It is in the writings of Léon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) that a complete Humanist doctrine is first developed and they are the source from which later ideas were derived. Since Alberti represented the fifteenth century at its best, exercising an influence over the spirit of his age only second to that of Leonardo, it is not surprising to find that his 'De Re Aedificatioria', especially in the theoretical treatment of the subject and in relating it to the ancient text of Vitruvius, played an important part in the literary output of his successors. This treatise of Alberti's, the first work on architecture to be printed, was begun about the middle of the century and added to, and revised by, the author until his death in 1472. It was only published in 1485 through the efforts of his brother. [c.f. Fowler, 9 (for this edition) & Fowler, 4 (for the first edition].