M.L. Vitruvio Pollione Di architettura dal vero esemplare latino nella volgar lingua tradotto: e con le figure a suoi luoghi con mirando ordine insignito. Anchora con la tavola alfabetica: nella quale facilmente si potrà trovare la moltitudine de vocaboli a suoi luoghi con gran diligenza esposti e dichiarati: mai più da alcuno altro sin al presente stampato a grande utilità di ciascun studioso. MDXXXV

Folio (308x208 mm). [12], CX leaves. Collation: AA-BB⁶ A-N⁸ O⁶. Title page printed in red and black within a woodcut border featuring a figure of Cicero in a medallion at the head and other figures in battle array, among them Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great, and trophies of war. With 136 woodcuts in text. Register and colophon on l. BB6r. Contemporary or slightly later vellum over boards, spine reinforced, panels partially covered with two manuscript fragments (worn and rubbed, worm tracks on spine). Outer margin of the title page frayed, some marginal pale staining, overall a good, genuine copy with wide margins.

Second Durantino edition of Vitruvius’ treatise, after the first published in Venice in 1524 by the Nicolini da Sabbio brothers. Comparison with the Como edition shows the text to have been fully reviewed, since much of the vocabulary differs.

“Francesco Lutio Durantino’s edition of Vitruvius (Venice, 1524) is in fact only a slightly transformed copy of Cesariano’s treatise. Durantino made spelling corrections and used Fra Giocondo’s illustrations. He published the first five books of Cesariano’s Vitruvius in smaller format with spelling changes, incorporating a few pictures based on Fra Giocondo; he also translated Cesariano’s Latin captions into Italian and added several references to central Italian places and people for his own provincial audience” (Millard, p. 499).

The woodcuts are close copies of the full set of blocks from the Giocondo edition of 1511 printed at Venice by Giovanni Tacuino. The copies were made for the first Durantino edition. Zoppino secured all of the 1524 blocks except one, that on leaf N1r, which is a recutting with the heads of the figures strangely enlarged.