Folio, (298 x 195 mm). Seventeenth century German blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, with four metal cornerpieces and one central boss on each cover, two intact clasps, spine with raised bands, blue-edged leaves; few wormholes, spine label worn, early owner's inscription to front pastedown. A magnificent copy, in all three texts, the folding leaves have been folded differently from the arrangement of the original binding, leaving visible fold marks and sewing holes at the center, together with a few minor old restorations, repair to old tear at upper margin of title and staining to lower margin, dampstain running along bottom gutter of first half of textblock, light staining and thumbing to margins, light foxing mainly to first and last leaves.

Etliche underricht zur Befestigung der Stett, Schlosz, und Flecken. October 1527. Nuremberg. [Hieronymus Andreä]. 26 ff. (10 fold outs). Collation: A-B6 C8 D-E6 F4 including foldouts at: A4 (inserted foldout), B1 (foldout), B3 (foldout), C1 (foldout), C3 (foldout), C5-6 (2 full-page woodcuts), D3 (foldout), E1 (foldout), E3 (foldout), F1 (foldout), F2 (foldout).

Second edition, published shortly after the exceedingly rare first edition, bearing the same date. Dodgson, I p. 265: “there is a very rare first edition [of the same date], briefly mentioned by Brunet, with numerous differences in the text, which contains the signed woodcut Bartsch 137 (the siege of a Fortress)”. See also Dodgson, who states that he had seen but one copy of the first edition that contained the woodcut, and had never heard of another. This work contains the principles of fortification and represents some of Durer’s most important architectural works.

VD-16, D-2853 (issue corresponding to the digitized copies held by the Austrian National Library, ÖNB 72.D.-6, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar.2156); Fairfax-Murray, German, 151. Not in Adams, who records no edition of this title.

Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien und Ebnen und gantzen Corpore. 1538. Nuremberg. Hieronymus Formschneyder. 93 ff. (2 foldouts, 2 ff. with overslips). Collation: A-P6 Q4. P3 (foldout), P4 (overslip), P5 (overslip), Q3 (foldout). 2 folding plates and 2 overslips.

One of the most beautiful books printed during the German Renaissance. Second edition in German (first edition 1525) of Albrecht Dürer’s famous treatise on perspective, dedicated by the author to his patron Pirckheimer on the verso of the title page, revised from the first, improved and completed with additional text and illustration. Dürer composed not only the entire text but also executed all the illustrations and supervised the complete layout of this landmark work.

This edition contains, for the first time, an illustration of the perspective instrument invented by Jacob de Keyser and used by Dürer for drawing with the aid of another instrument—this time invented by Dürer himself: the perspectograph. Both instruments are illustrated in this edition (respectively on leaves Q3r/v).

“This book was the first of the theoretical writings on art which Albrecht Dürer composed towards the end of his life. Its immediate object was to explain the application of practical geometry to drawing and painting and to teach the principles of perspective. These methods were to be applied architecture, painting, lettering (Dürer designed both Roman and Gothic letters) and ornamental forms in general, and his book is therefore addressed not only to artists but also to sculptors, architects, goldsmiths, stonemasons and other craftsmen… Dürer’s work first presented to northern Europe the completely new attitude to artistic creation which had crystalized in Italy during the Renaissance” (PMM).

“Le perspectographe fut inventé à la Renaissance par Dürer (1471-1528), on l’appelle aussi la «fenêtre de Dürer». En effet, cet instrument, composé d’un cadre en bois et d’une vitre quadrillée, est semblable à une fenêtre. Le peintre place ce cadre devant la scène qu’ il veut représenter. Le peintre regarde la scène à travers un «oeilleton», bâton se finissant par un cercle de bois à travers lequel le peintre regarde en clignant d’un oeil. La vision du peintre est donc monoculaire (le peintre ne voit la scène que d’un oeil), ainsi, la perspective qu’ il dessine n’est pas tout à fait exacte… Deux siècles plus tard, Christopher Wren, Architecte anglais, reprendra le perspectographe de Dürer et lui apportera de notables perfectionnements. Cette machine est plus simple car elle ne demande ni de calque ni de transfert” («Le perspectographe: machine de précision» en ligne,2009, sur laperspective.canalblog.com).

“There are numerous woodcuts throughout, including geometrical diagrams, architectural figures, designs for roman and gothic alphabets, triumphal columns (dated 1525), &c., as well as four half-page cuts of draughtsmen using apparatus for drawing in perspective, the 2nd of these with monogram and date 1525; the two latter appear in this edition for the first time. They are on Q3vo., and, with that on recto, are considerably wider (215 mm.) than the others in the book, and are in consequence folded on the fore-edge” (Fairfax-Murray).

The volume is divided into four books: the first, devoted to lines, treats the generation of curves; the second, devoted to surfaces, addresses the construction of polygons and tackles the great mathematical problems of Antiquity, namely angle trisection and the squaring of the circle; the third and fourth books are devoted to regular and semi-regular solids and teach the construction of columns and monuments. The work concludes with a brief introduction to perspective, illustrated through the perspectograph that bears Dürer’s name (the famous “Dürer window”), enabling the drawing of a perspective view using a simple optical device with a peephole.

Erasmus was among the first in his De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (1528), to publicly note the existence of “a book by Albrecht Dürer, written indeed in German, but of admirable learning.” Through this mention, and later through the Latin translation made by the humanist Joachim Camerarius in 1532, the Underweysung influenced scholars from Europe to China; among those affected were the young Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Simon Stevin, Christoph Clavius, and Geoffroy Tory, who became acquainted with Dürer’s construction of Roman letters and began his famous Champfleury, ou l’Art et Science de la proportion des lettres with a tribute to the German master.

“The Underweysung der Messung was published by Dürer himself in Nuremberg in 1525, and represented the fruits of mathematical endeavors which can be dated back to at least 1508. As a treatise on geometry in the German vernacular – which is in itself remarkable, though not unique – it was aimed at all those professions whose skills are (or should be) underpinned by techniques of precise mensuration… divided into four books, following a broadly Euclidian progression” (Kemp).

VD16, D-2858; Fairfax-Murray, German, 150. For the first edition of 1525 see Adams, D-1057; PMM, 54; Carter-Muir 153; Vagnetti, EIIb7; Vitry, 240.

Hjerin sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion. 31 October 1528. Nuremberg. Hieronymus Formschneider. 132 ff. (4 foldouts). Collation: A-M6 N4 O4 P-R6 S6 T4 V-X6 Y4 Z6. O2 (foldout), S1 (foldout), S4 (foldout), S5 (foldout), Y3 (foldout). 5 folding plates (S1 only very slightly affected).

First edition of Dürer’s treatise on the geometry of the human body. Dürer’s Four Books on Human Proportion codify his approach to figurative representation: with the aid of more than 140 full-length studies of men, women, and children, together with some 35 additional vignettes depicting heads, hands, arms, and feet, he elucidates the fundamental geometry to which the human form may be reduced. Dürer maintained that the essence of true form lay in primary mathematical figures (for example, the straight line, circle, curve, or conic section), constructed arithmetically or geometrically and rendered beautiful through the application of a canon of proportion. Yet he was equally convinced that beauty of form was a relative rather than an absolute quality; consequently, the aim of his anthropometric system was to provide the artist with the means of defining, on the basis of pure measurement, every possible type of human figure.

The entire work is richly illustrated with figurative woodcut diagrams engraved by Dürer. Choulant states that these include “the first attempts to represent shades and shadows in wood engraving by means of cross-hatching” (Norman).

“The later sections of his Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Four Books on Human Proportion), which seems to have been complete by 1523 but was only published posthumously in 1528, are devoted to the stereometry of the body as it moves in space. His starting-point is again similar to that of Piero, or perhaps in this instance even closer to Leonardo. In this relatively early scheme, the basic technique of planar transformation of a human head appears to have suggested its subsequent description in transparent sections as a kind of stereometric cage. This was later developed by Dürer into a technique in which three-dimensional portions of the human body are inscribed within geometrical solids, rather like joints of meat frozen in blocks of ice. These basic blocks can be utilised to describe the jointed motions of the human figure and can be tilted in different planes as required” (Kemp, p. 56).

VD-16, D-2859; see Fairfax-Murray, German, 152 (Latin translation of 1532 only); Choulant-Frank, pp. 141–147; Garrison-Morton 149; Meder p. 288; Norman, 666 (incomplete copy); Albrecht Durer: das druckgraphische Werk, vol. III (2001), pp. 319–473.