Our Notes & References

The superb dedication copy of Vignola’s classic treatise on architecture, beautifully bound and belonging to Prince Grigorii Ivanovich Gagarin, the Russian ambassador to Italy and father of the Russian diplomat, artist and art historian Grigorii Grigorievich Gagarin, who also brought particular attention to architecture.

Carlo Antonini (1740-1821) was a designer, copperplate engraver and architect. He worked mainly in Rome, receiving official commissions from the Pope’s printing workshop, the Calcografia della Camera Apostolica, for portraits of cardinals and maps of the Pontine marshes; he is also known for producing two great collections of copperplate engravings of ornaments.

This second edition was initiated sixty years after the first and posthumously honours Antonini as the “incisore [engraver] camerale” rather than as a humble “studenti d’archittetura” as he had previously been credited. It is also in a larger format than before but likely from the same plates, expanded and dedicated to Prince Gagarin, commending him for his high level of cultivation and desire to “intelligently preserve the admirable products of the ancient artisans”. Gagarin (1782-1837) was a prominent diplomat, having served previously in the Russian embassy in Paris during Napoleon’s reign. A major art lover and patron, Gagarin stayed about 15 years in Rome: his residence, which housed a private theatre, became an important meeting place for artists and intellectuals.

Giacomo Barozzi (1507-1573), known as Vignola, is considered the most important architect of Rome in the late Renaissance and Mannerist periods, and as having anticipated the Baroque; from 1550 onwards he was the architect to Pope Julius II (de Agostini). His most famous works include the Villa Farnese at Caprarola and the Church of the Gesù in Rome, which became the model for almost all subsequent Jesuit churches in Europe (cf. Gauvin).

The book combines several of his texts including The Five Orders of Architecture (1562), a landmark study which organised, for the first time, the five types of columns inherited from classical antiquity and was “the most widely used architectural textbook of all up to the nineteenth century” (Kruft).

Provenance

Prince Gagarin (blue ink stamp to frontispiece, title, and a few plates; later shelf-label to upper endpaper.

Bibliography

Bailey, Gauvin A. 2003. Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610. 1st ed. Heritage. Toronto, [Ontario] ; University of Toronto Press; Kruft, Hanno-Walter. 1994. History of Architectural Theory. Princeton Architectural Press; Rinascimento: Schemi Riassuntivi, Quadri Di Approfondimento. 2011. Novara: De Agostini. 200-201; Vignola. 1999. Canon of the Five Orders of Architecture. Introduction by Branco Mitrovic. New York: Acanthus Press.