Details
CAPRA, Alessandro (ca.1610-1683). La nuova architettura famigliare...diuisa in cinque libri. Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1678.
4° (203 x 145mm). Divisional titles within woodcut borders, portrait of the author on the verso of the fourth leaf, 2 folding woodcut plates and 140 woodcuts in the text including a sequence of full-page cuts numbered 1-44. (Lacks the final blank, light staining at beginning and end, a few leaves browned.) Contemporary vellum.
FIRST EDITION of a profusely illustrated architectural and practical manual by a Cremonese architect and engineer, Alessandro Capra. The first book deals with gardens and agriculture, the second with building, the third with measuring and the fourth with surveying and hydraulic engineering. But the most important and interesting book is the fifth on machinery; here he describes and illustrates with full-page woodcuts a number of his own inventions, one of which is a primitive type of air-conditioning. The second folding plate depicts a machine for irrigating fields. Fowler 79; Riccardi I, 234; Berlin Kat. 2752.
4° (203 x 145mm). Divisional titles within woodcut borders, portrait of the author on the verso of the fourth leaf, 2 folding woodcut plates and 140 woodcuts in the text including a sequence of full-page cuts numbered 1-44. (Lacks the final blank, light staining at beginning and end, a few leaves browned.) Contemporary vellum.
FIRST EDITION of a profusely illustrated architectural and practical manual by a Cremonese architect and engineer, Alessandro Capra. The first book deals with gardens and agriculture, the second with building, the third with measuring and the fourth with surveying and hydraulic engineering. But the most important and interesting book is the fifth on machinery; here he describes and illustrates with full-page woodcuts a number of his own inventions, one of which is a primitive type of air-conditioning. The second folding plate depicts a machine for irrigating fields. Fowler 79; Riccardi I, 234; Berlin Kat. 2752.