Le vite de' piu celebri architetti d'ogni nazione e d'ogni tempo precedute da un saggio sopra l'Architettura

THE VASARI OF ARCHITECTURE

Rome, Paolo Giunchi Komarek, 1768.

4to, viii, 492 pp., with one engraved title page and 6 folding plates. Bound in contemporary stiff vellum, morocco title label on spine, gilt rather faded. Unidentified private collector's monogram stamped on title RMS. Scattered foxing, generally in margins, heavier on a few leaves. Otherwise good.

First edition of this compendium of biographies of well-known architects, a work which, in the historiography of architecture, is equal in importance to that of Vasari, whom the author sought to emulate. After historical surveys of ancient and medieval monuments and the building programs traditionally associated with great rulers, Milizia covers the lives and works of the principal European architects from the 15th century to contemporaries, giving capsule summaries of their lives and principal works. His rationalist and neo-classical bias in evaluating their productions is thought to derive from the Venetian theorist Carlo Lodoli. His interest in architecture beyond the borders of Italy is highly unusual.

The biographical entries are preceded by a brief essay on architecture; an appendix deals with the construction of arches.

Francesco Milizia (1725-1798) is considered the first art historian who tried to compile a bio-bibliography of the life and works of the architects, covering a wide period from antiquity to his time. "An enthusiastic disciple of the critical spirit of the age, he wrote with the polemics of a utopian reformer; his comments were original, lively and frequently mordant" (E. Arntzen, apud D. Wiebenson, Architectural Theory and Practice from Alberti to Ledoux, II,40).

Milizia had encyclopedic interests and wrote on several subjects, though his architectural works, especially Le vite and the Memorie, are considered his best.

* Cicognara 2324; Schlosser-Magnino 508-09; Watkins, A History of Western Architecture, pp. 353-54.