Details
DRER, Albrecht (1471-1528). Hierinn sind begriffen vier bcher von menschlicher Proportion. Edited by Willibald Pirckheimer. Nuremberg: Hieronymus Andreae Formschneider for Drer's widow, 31 October 1528.
2o (304 x 200 mm). Collation: A-M6 N4 O4 (O1 + 1 fold-out sheet signed "O2", O2-O3 signed "O3-O4") P-R6 S4 (S3 + 2 fold-out sheets signed "S4" and "S5") T4 V-X6 Y4 (Y2 + 1 fold-out sheet signed "Y3") Z6. 122 unnumbered leaves (of 128, lacking quire D), plus 4 folding sheets printed on both sides. Gothic type, mostly double column. Drer's large woodcut monogram on title, approximately 136 full-length proportional woodcuts of human figures, many disposed two to a page, and numerous smaller geometrical or proportional woodcut diagrams, some of individual body parts (heads, arms, hands and feet), fraktur initials, flourished woodcut tail-piece ornaments. (Occasional dampstaining, mostly marginal but affecting the woodcuts on the fold-out sheets, the woodcuts on V5v-V6r shaved at fore-edges.) Contemporary German blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, covers panelled with floral roll-tools, lower cover with marks and nail-holes from later corner and center-piece bosses (rebacked, lower free endpaper renewed, lacking pair of clasps and catches, rubbed with loss to leather at extremities); modern morocco-backed folding case.
Provenance: Louis H. Silver (bookplate, Sotheby's, 8 November 1965, lot 107, to John Howell).
FIRST EDITION. Drer's attempts to formulate mathematical rules for the proportions of the human form date to his return to Nuremberg in 1495 after his first visit to Venice. Heavily influenced by Euclid and Vitruvius and by the artistic and philosophical tendencies of the Italian Renaissance, he sought in this work as in his other theoretical treatises to establish a scientific, i.e., mathematical groundwork for aesthetics and to spell out practical guidelines for draftsmanship. The present treatise, completed in 1523 but not published until shortly after his death, "is the synthesis of Drer's self-imposed formal problems; in it, he sets forth his formal aesthetic. In its simplest terms, true form is the primary mathematical figure (the straight line, the circle, conic sections, curves, surfaces, solids, and so forth), constructed geometrically or arithmetically, and made beautiful by the application of some canon of proportion" (DSB). "However, he was also convinced that beauty of form was a relative and not an absolute quality; thus the purpose of his system of anthropometry was to provide the artist with the means to delineate, on the basis of sheer measurement, all possible types of human figures" (Norman). Books I-II relate to the proper proportions of fat, thin, and medium-sized adult and infant figures, Book III treats variations on these proportions according to mathematical rules, giving examples of exaggeratedly fat and thin figures, and Book IV relates to the human form in movement; it is "of the greatest mathematical interest, as it presents, for the first time, many new, intricate and difficult considerations of descriptive spatial geometry" (Norman).
Bohatta 17; Choulant-Frank, pp. 143-44; Garrison-Morton 149; NLM/Durling 1295; Stillwell Science 622; Norman 666.
2o (304 x 200 mm). Collation: A-M6 N4 O4 (O1 + 1 fold-out sheet signed "O2", O2-O3 signed "O3-O4") P-R6 S4 (S3 + 2 fold-out sheets signed "S4" and "S5") T4 V-X6 Y4 (Y2 + 1 fold-out sheet signed "Y3") Z6. 122 unnumbered leaves (of 128, lacking quire D), plus 4 folding sheets printed on both sides. Gothic type, mostly double column. Drer's large woodcut monogram on title, approximately 136 full-length proportional woodcuts of human figures, many disposed two to a page, and numerous smaller geometrical or proportional woodcut diagrams, some of individual body parts (heads, arms, hands and feet), fraktur initials, flourished woodcut tail-piece ornaments. (Occasional dampstaining, mostly marginal but affecting the woodcuts on the fold-out sheets, the woodcuts on V5v-V6r shaved at fore-edges.) Contemporary German blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, covers panelled with floral roll-tools, lower cover with marks and nail-holes from later corner and center-piece bosses (rebacked, lower free endpaper renewed, lacking pair of clasps and catches, rubbed with loss to leather at extremities); modern morocco-backed folding case.
Provenance: Louis H. Silver (bookplate, Sotheby's, 8 November 1965, lot 107, to John Howell).
FIRST EDITION. Drer's attempts to formulate mathematical rules for the proportions of the human form date to his return to Nuremberg in 1495 after his first visit to Venice. Heavily influenced by Euclid and Vitruvius and by the artistic and philosophical tendencies of the Italian Renaissance, he sought in this work as in his other theoretical treatises to establish a scientific, i.e., mathematical groundwork for aesthetics and to spell out practical guidelines for draftsmanship. The present treatise, completed in 1523 but not published until shortly after his death, "is the synthesis of Drer's self-imposed formal problems; in it, he sets forth his formal aesthetic. In its simplest terms, true form is the primary mathematical figure (the straight line, the circle, conic sections, curves, surfaces, solids, and so forth), constructed geometrically or arithmetically, and made beautiful by the application of some canon of proportion" (DSB). "However, he was also convinced that beauty of form was a relative and not an absolute quality; thus the purpose of his system of anthropometry was to provide the artist with the means to delineate, on the basis of sheer measurement, all possible types of human figures" (Norman). Books I-II relate to the proper proportions of fat, thin, and medium-sized adult and infant figures, Book III treats variations on these proportions according to mathematical rules, giving examples of exaggeratedly fat and thin figures, and Book IV relates to the human form in movement; it is "of the greatest mathematical interest, as it presents, for the first time, many new, intricate and difficult considerations of descriptive spatial geometry" (Norman).
Bohatta 17; Choulant-Frank, pp. 143-44; Garrison-Morton 149; NLM/Durling 1295; Stillwell Science 622; Norman 666.