POLDO D'ALBENAS, Jean - Lot 8

POLDO D'ALBENAS, Jean Discours historial de l'antique et illustre cité de Nismes Lyon, Guillaume Rouillé, 1560 ORIGINAL EDITION In-folio (300 x 205 mm). Woodcut initials and headbands COLLATION: *6 a-c4 d2 e-m4 n2 o-z4 2a-i4 i.e. 6 ff. n. ch., 226 pp. 7 ff. n. ch. ILLUSTRATION: woodcut title attributed to Pierre Eskrich with the interlaced figures of Henri II and Diane de Poitiers, 7 double plates off-text, including 4 fold-outs describing the Maison Carrée, the Temple de la Fontaine, the Amphithéâtre and the Pont du Gard, 4 full-page figures, 1 mid-page engraving of three lictors' axes, 4 obverse and reverse medallions of a medal bearing the effigy of Marcus Aurelius and the Ace of Nîmes, 1 double astrological diagram, 3 small woodcuts depicting Roman serfs' bonnets. 17th CENTURY BINDING. Brown basane, spine ribbed, edges mottled. PROVENANCE: Fournier (18th-century handwritten note preceded by no. 87) -- Angelo Ferdinand Mazzoli (1821-1893; handwritten bookplate; cat. 1893, no. 535) Title partly detached, light wetness in lower margin, light rubbing to boards, one double plate consolidated with slight loss, restored in pen. The presence of a title frame with the emblems of Henri II and Diane de Poitiers is explained by the Nîmes Presidial's and the author's declared allegiance to royal power. The jurist and humanist Jean Poldo d'Albenas (1512-1563) was one of the first, if not the first in France, to publish architectural surveys, before Jean Bullant, Philibert de l'Orme (or Delorme) and Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. The measurements, in inches, feet and toises, although inaccurate, have no equivalent in French architectural treatises printed in the mid-sixteenth century. Poldo d'Albenas, inspired by the Italian tradition, uses oblique elevations. At the end of the Quattrocento, Giuliano da Sangallo (1445-1516) produced the very first handwritten surveys of France's main Gallo-Roman ruins: the theater and arch at Orange, the amphitheater at Arles and the pyramid at Vienne. Fra Giovanni Giocondo (c. 1433-1515), during his long stay in France, produced drawings of several antiquities, including the amphitheatre at Nîmes, the pyramid at Vienne and the mausoleum at Glanum. Giovanni Sallustio Peruzzi (circa 1511-1572) produced a drawing of the Nîmes amphitheatre, probably based on a composition by his father, Baldassarre. BIBLIOGRAPHY : USTC 24395 -- Brunet, IV, 775 -- Eugène Lapierre, "Éloge de M. A.-F. Mazzoli", in Mémoires de la Société archéologique du Midi de la France, Toulouse, 1894, pp. 99-102 -- H. Beraldi, Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle: guide de l'amateur d'estampes modernes, Paris, 1885-1892, t. IX, p. 254