Italian and Spanish Books: Fifteenth Through Nineteenth Centuries

The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection is one of the finest private collections of rare illustrated books and bound series of prints on Western European architecture, design, and topography. Comprised of about 750 volumes now housed at the National Gallery of Art, it focuses on the most beautiful and influential books and prints published between the end of the fifteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century. Each architectural volume has been carefully described and illustrated, and includes, in addition to a catalogue entry, a complete bibliography. This final volume in the extraordinary Millard Architectural Collection features architectural books that helped define the artistic achievements of the Italian Renaissance. Included are illustrations from Vitruvius' De architectura, the treatise that provided architects with their first in-depth understanding of ancient Roman architecture, and works by architects inspired by Vitruvius, such as Leon Battista Alberti's designs for Santa Maria Novella in Florence and Andrea Palladio's ideally proportioned churches and country villas. This volume also features plans for buildings in Rome by Michelangelo, by the great architect, painter, and sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, by his arch-rival Francesco Borromini, by Carlo Fontana, and by Antonio da Sangallo, and includes superb examples of various projects for arguably the pre-eminent architectural project of the period, the redesign of the building and piazza of Saint Peter's Basilica. Standard texts by Sebastiano Serlio and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola are also featured, as are several books published in Madrid in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A highlight of the catalogue is an essay covering the approximately thirty books in the Gallery's collection by the architect and masterful printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi. 300 b/w illustrations.