Art & Architecture Collections

Notable Acquisitions: 2001-2002

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1. Vitruvius Pollio. Les dix livres d'architecture de Vitruve, corrigez et tradvits nouvellement en françois, avec des notes et des figures. Paris: J. B. Coignard, 1684. 2d ed. rev., cor., and augm.

Green Library, Special Collections, XX(4743239.1) In Process

The De architectura libri decem of Vitruvius (c90-20 B.C.) is the only architectural treatise to survive from the Greco-Roman period and is perhaps Western civilization's most important single architectural text. Monastic copyists preserved it during the Middle Ages; it was rediscovered in about 1414 in the library of the monastery of St. Gall by Poggio Bracciolini, a humanist. The first printed version appeared in the 1480s, and the work gradually became enormously influential among Renaissance architects and antiquarians, with as many as 166 editions published thereafter, according to a survey done in 1978 by Luigi Vagnetti. In this edition, Claude Perrault (1613-1688), who was both an architect and a classical scholar, provided a French translation and an encyclopedic commentary. To illustrate the text, Perrault also collected many excellent engravings, after such leading artists as Antoine Le Pautre and Sebastien Le Clerc.

2. Walter, Jeanne and Philippe Lamour, eds. Plans. Paris: [Plans], 1931-32. With contributions by Hubert Lagardelle, Le Corbusier, Francois de Pierrefeu, and Pierre Winter. 13 vols.

Art Library Stacks NX2 .B8 1931

A rare, lavishly illustrated avant-garde journal that analyzes developments in European architecture, politics, literature, and the arts of the 1930s. Plans evokes a strong international flavor, and the volumes refer frequently to trends in the United States, the Soviet Union, Germany in the last years before Nazism, and Italy under fascism. Le Corbusier, a provocative and monumental figure in the history of modern architecture, played a seminal role in the formation of this journal and contributed many of his drawings for its illustrations. Le Corbusier scholars in recent years have become increasingly interested in his political involvements in the 1930s. Plans is probably the principal documentation of this aspect of Le Corbusier's life.

3. Saint Beatus, Presbyter of Liébana. [In Apocalipsin] Beato de Liebana, codice de San Pedro de Cardena. Barcelona: Moleiro, 2001. 2 vols.

Art Library Locked Stacks BS2825 .A2 B37 2001 F

This set is a facsimile of an illuminated manuscript of the eighth-century commentaries on the Apocalypse by a Spanish monk, Beatus of Liébana (d. 798). The copy on which this facsimile is based was made between 1175 and 1185 at the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña in Spain. Its leaves--some of which have been separated from the codex over the years and have ended up in various collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York--were reunited by the publisher for this edition.

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