La pratica di prospettiva del cavaliere Lorenzo Sirigatti al Ser.mo Ferdinando Medici Granduca di Toscana

Two parts in one volume, folio (420x280 mm). [4], 1-43, [1], 44-65 leaves. Collation: A⁴ [1-15]⁴ [16]⁶. Engraved title within an architectural border with cherubs supporting the Medici arms at the top and seated female figures with drawing instruments and Sirigatti's coat of arms at the foot. The volume consists of four preliminary leaves containing the title page, the dedication to Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici, a note to the reader, the index and the errata (with a note excusing errors made by the “stampatore forestiero”), of 65 numbered engraved plates, divided into two books, and a colophon leaf with the printer's device (l. [11]4r). Another colophon a l. A4v: “Stampato in Venetia per Girolamo Franceschi sanese libraio à Firenze, adi 28. ottobrio 1596”. Plates measure 285x203 mm. to 305x220 mm. Plate 44 is a divisional title for Libro secondo, a reduced copy of the border from the general title page. In book 1, there is text on the verso of all but seven of the plates (exceptions are 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 34, 43), discussing the illustrations on the facing plate. Plates in book 2 have no explanatory text and are lettered A-Y at the foot as well as numbered in the upper right-hand corner from 44 to 65. Book 1 contains diagrams, book 2 shows architectural and geometric forms in perspective. Type ornament headpiece and two head ornaments, historiated and foliated initials. Roman type. Contemporary flexible vellum (stained and worn, traces of ties). Copy skillfully washed, large stain to upper inner corner of about the first twenty leaves, outer margin of the final leaf repaired with no loss, some light staining, all in all a good copy with very wide margins.

First edition, dedicated to Ferdinando de' Medici by Sirigatti from Florence, 20 July 1596. A second edition was printed at Venice in 1625 and an English translation appeared in London in 1756.

“Leopoldo Cicognara praises the work as the most elegant on perspective, distinguished by the suggestion of a method for the transformation of certain curves that bears a strong resemblance to that employed by Isaac Newton for the same purpose. Unlike the earlier treatises on perspective published in the sixteenth century, such as those by Albrecht Durer, Sebastiano Serlio, Daniele Barbaro, and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Lorenzo Sirigatti's perspective is not predominantly artistic or architectural, since it is not intended only for painters or architects. Nevertheless, he does make contributions to theater design. Sirigatti's Prospettiva gives precise dimensions for his inclined stage. He is the first to mention that the full effect of the perspective frame, for instance in a stage set, can be enjoyed only by those sitting along the main axis. This is a fundamental aspect of absolutist theater that no doubt had been noticed by designers of princely entertainments earlier, but is first commented on in print by Sirigatti, whose observations were taken up more extensively by Pietro Accolti (1628). Little is known about Sirigatti. He was a member of the Medici court and connected to artistic Florentine circles through his family relations with the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Sirigatti was a founding member of the Accademia del Disegno and thus doubtless well acquainted with Giorgio Vasari. Though the year of Sirigatti s birth is not known, he appears to have lived until 1596 or 1597. The coat of arms at the foot of the border of the title page is Sirigatti's own. Among his distinguished students was Giorgio Vasari the younger, who prepared a study of perspective in 1593 dedicated to his teacher (but which remained in manuscript). Sirigatti was interested in the project promoted by the members of the Florentine Accademia -Cosimo Bartoli's work provides a parallel example- to broaden the uses of the vernacular. Thus his book on perspective, like Bartoli's on surveying, does not merely provide a textbook on this scientific/artistic subject, but broadens the subjects that had been treated up to that time in the Tuscan vernacular. Through the publications of the Florentine academicians, vernacular Tuscan was shown to be an appropriate language for the dissemination of available scientific and literary knowledge. This work is among the last publications on perspective before the turn of the seventeenth century, when the core of perspective -as seen in the works of Guidobaldo del Monte, Simon Stevin, and Girard Desargues- came to rely on geometrical and optical sources. Perspective eventually evolved beyond the competence and interests of artists, as the science of artificial perspective in picture-making was seen as only a practical and limited manifestation of abstract theorems in descriptive geometry. Sirigatti refers to the work of Guidobaldo del Monte, which was known before its publication in 1600. With the professional mathematizing of perspective after the turn of the seventeenth century, the subject was no longer monopolized by artistic concerns […] This manual on perspective is enlivened by the immediacy and remarkably high quality of its plates, which nonetheless contain some conceptual errors that have been criticized. It is an album of accomplished engravings, accompanied by a brief text at the beginning of the first book. The preface is a discussion of the contrast between the theory and practice of perspective, followed by an alphabetical index of forty-three chapters, each of which consists of one page of text and one full-page illustration, so that each opening offers a chapter and its accompanying illustration. The second book contains a gallery of plates, numbered 45 to 65, which illustrate architectural details of the orders in perspective, a vaulted bay, a building facade, and the Tempietto by Bramante in plan and view. Plates 53-65 are spectacular polyhedra in perspective, faceted and shaded, and in increasing order of complexity. In the first part of the manual, Sirigatti offers what had become standard instruction on the projection of multifaceted solids, illustrated with forty-two diagrams. Proceeding from elementary to increasingly more complex problems, Sirigatti discusses distance points, the pyramid of vision, and the construction of geometrical forms: his more challenging forms include staircases, arches, crossvaults, columns, the lute, and the mazzocchio, part of the virtuosic display in perspective studies by painters earlier in the fifteenth and in the sixteenth centuries but quite commonplace in Sirigatti's time. The second part consists of twenty plates illustrating the orders of columns and the problems of representing the shadows of complex solids, including the mazzocchio (also discussed by Barbaro). Samuel Edgerton (1991) suggests that Galileo studied Sirigatti's remarkable illustrations of shaded spheres with both raised protuberances and recessed cavities, perhaps training his eye to perceive eventually the craters and mountains on the moon. Sirigatti's geometrically faceted spheres show awareness not only of Barbaro's less complex configurations, but also of the intricate plates published by the Nuremberg jeweler Wenzel Jamnitzer in Perspectiva corporum regularium (1568). Sirigatti's publication makes an estimable contribution through its numerous, handsome, and reliable illustrations and the well-written instructions. The authority, or at least the usefulness, of its mastery of perspective is demonstrated by the existence of the second edition. Qualitatively, Luigi Vagnetti (1979) places Sirigatti's contribution in an intermediary position between the works of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau and Hans Vredeman de Vries” (The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection, Volume IV: Italian and Spanish Books, Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, Washington DC-New York, 2000, pp. 150-152, pp. 405-407).

Mortimer, 479; Edit 16, CNCE29257; Cicognara, 860 (“Questa è la più elegante delle edizioni di libri prospettici per i tipi, pei caratteri, per la carta”); Adams, S-224; Fowler, 336; Comolli, III, pp. 157-158.

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