Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia.

1764. ADAM, Robert. Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia. vi, [8], 33, [1] pp., with 61 engraved plates on 54 sheets (some double-page). Folio, 525 x 370 mm., bound in full contemporary calf. [London]: For the author, 1764. First edition. "The book incorporated the first encyclical of Britain's most popular architect of the day, who had now been in practice for several years with an immense patronage... Adam makes it quite plain that the great palace of Diocletian forms the source of his ideas upon domestic building, and he modestly claims that it is the first private dwelling-house of the Romans to have been illustrated and described." Adam's account was based on his five-week visit to Spalatro (in Croatia, now known as Split); the sixty-one superb plates were executed after Clerisseau, Zucchi and others (some of the drawings survive at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg). In his introduction, Adam expresses his conviction that Diocletian had revived a taste in Architecture superior to that of his own times. Adam's "observance on unusual detail throughout is remarkable... Nothing is too minute to escape his notice. A careful reading of the descriptions shows whence Robert Adam derived his theories for the planning of his domestic buildings on a monumental scale, like Syon and Kedleston" (James Lees-Milne, The Age of Adam, pp. 67-69). A fine copy of this landmark book. Millard, British 1. Harris, British Architectural Books 4. Fowler 2. Berlin Katalog 1893. Cicognara 3567. John Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle (1962), pp. 235-240. Georg Kowalczyk, Denkmäler der Kunst in Dalmatien (1910) reproducing 22 plates.