Vitruvius Pollio

This is the definitive Italian translation of Vitruvius Pollio’s De architectura, an essential text for Renaissance architects intent on emulating the buildings of classical antiquity. The patrician humanist Daniele Barbaro translated the text with the assistance of the renowned architect Andrea Palladio, who designed most of the woodcut illustrations. Together they could draw on philological erudition, archaeological expertise, and practical know-how to make sense of Vitruvius’s notoriously difficult Latin. Unlike his predecessors, Palladio sometimes provided three views of a building: a floor plan, an elevation, and a cross section. Barbaro presented this copy to the Croatian Hungarian humanist András Dudith.