From Vitruvius to Palladio an Exhibit of Architectural Treatises

Greetings, reader!  Won't you come with me to the 5th floor?  I am quite eager to show you some of the Library's treasures.

You may remember a blog post or two ago I was rhapsodizing about the realization that the SJSU Library holds in its Special Collections a copy of Andrea Palladio's Rules and Examples of Perspective Proper for Painters and Architects printed in 1707.  This discovery lead to a more serious inquiry about the other types of books on architecture in Special Collections, and I have been richly rewarded in the search.  Featured on the 5th floor in five cases are architectural treatises ranging in date from 1636 to 1769 and in languages from Latin to Italian to French and English, some of them bilingual editions.

As I worked my way through subject headings and applied my mish mash of knowledge of languages to the titles I discovered, an obvious pattern appeared:  Vitruve, Vitruuio, Vitruvio, Vitrvvio.  Vitruvius! Who was Vitruvius?  Scholars have been asking this for centuries, and for centuries, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio has been influencing architecture.  The question of "Who was Vitruvius" is thoroughly discussed in a variety of publications; I will direct you toward the fine article by Barry Baldwin titled "The Date, Identity, and Career of Vitruvius" which appears in Latomus, T. 49, Fasc. 2 (AVRIL-JUIN 1990), pp. 425-434.  If you are scholastically privileged, you can get the hook-up from JSTOR at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41535716.  To give you the upshot, Baldwin gives you a swift yet precise summary of research into Vitruvian timelines that have worked to establish when Roman architect and writer Marcus Pollio Vitruvius was working, pinning the composition of De Architectural Libri Decem (Ten Books On Architecture) between 30 and 10 BCE.

And who was Vitruvius to the Renaissance? The scope of the Vitruvian De Architectura's impact is thoroughly documented in the very interesting article titled "Vitruvian Paradigms" by Georgia Clarke which appears in Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 70, (2002), pp. 319-346, again JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/40311052. The Renaissance appreciation for antiquity and the development of the printing press coincided nicely for printing copies of the previously hand-copied Vitruvian manuscripts. But the stability of images provided by woodcuts and engravings added another dimension to the architectural treatise--illustrating the proportions of columns in a way that has caused concepts like Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian to be known into this century and this side of North America.

I hope as the semester begins, you'll find a bit of time to visit the 5th floor in King Library to see these texts that have traveled many years and miles.  You can have a virtual visit with the exhibit here:  http://libguides.sjsu.edu/treatises.

My appreciative thanks to Danelle Moon, Director of Special Collections, for her encouragement and assistance in creating this exhibit. If you can't visit in person, or if you want to preview the exhibit before you visit, please see the guide I have created as a companion:  http://libguides.sjsu.edu/treatises.

Title page of Rusconi's Dell Architecttura, Venetia 1660

Perspective

With the alarmingly imminent end of the semester looming in large and small ways, getting a grip on reality is diffused by the high levels of caffeine and stress, both of which are available in large quantities on campus just now.  In reviewing some of the less charming themes addressed in this blog this past year, I decided to throw myself back into some good old bookcharmer habits and set aside worries about technology and access, just for a little while.

If you need a good dose of biblio charm and want to set your worries aside for a little bit, please join me in a virtual visit to Special Collections.  Maybe by the end of this post you'll want to make an in person visit to enjoy the same sort of knee-buckling swoon worthy printing I'm about to describe.

I labeled this blog post Perspective to remind myself to keep on task about seeking a fresh perspective but also to try to make some kind of wonderful wordplay about Perspective as a subject heading, which it is.  However, the muse of wordplay is off doing sudoku or something, so I can't present you with something witty and intriguing.  I can, however, provide you with the catalog record for Andrea Pozzo's Rules and examples of perspective proper for painter and architects, etc.  Here it is:

How many subject headings?  Just one.  Perspective.  But what else can we know about this book, from the catalog record alone, that will lure us to Special Collections?  The date, of course, 1707, even with a question mark.  Printed in London.._for_  J. Senex.  I'm skipping ahead to tell you that is John Senex, well known printer especially for his maps, but what does it mean printed for instead of printed by? Well, those are enough interesting facts to get me upstairs.

I should say something instructive and thoughtful about how powerful catalog records are, if you understand how to decode them, and how commercial book records from purveyors such as Slamazon (who has been called out by no less than the New York Times for its ham-fisted playing of favorites in recent days) will never be able to compete with the scholarly approach and knowledge employed by Library of Congress Subject Headings for illustrating the content of books but I won't be able to do that without bringing out my grouchy side and I am determined to remain charming at this point.  Please continue reading.

The subject heading Perspective in this case promises so much when you add in the tantalizing details of date, place of publication, and engravings on the "best paper."  Have a look:

Are you sighing yet?

How about now?  Did the words Farneze and Rome catch your eye?  Do you feel a brief warmth in your lungs as if you have entered a chapel built in 1685?

Go ahead, treat yourself to a journey so completely unnecessary that it becomes the most necessary thing of all, adjust your perspective with a trip to Special Collections.  

Today's Bookcharmer magic is brought to us by this scholarly discussion on Pozzo's Rules and examples of perspective proper for painters and architects, etc. from the University of Reading's very nice write up on their copy: 

https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/special-collections/featurepozzo.pdf