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Editions of works by Vitruvius are inevitably an important feature of the section on Architectural Books.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman architect of the 1st century BC whose rediscovery in the Renaissance was extremely important for architecture of that period.
The exhibition includes two editions of Vitruvius’ work, one published by Cesare Cesariano, and this one by Daniele Barbaro of 1556.
In its frontispiece, Barbaro announces what would be the principal features of his edition.
The frontispiece shows an architect surrounded by books and consulting an armillary sphere.
The remarkable illustrations to this treatise, based on original drawings by Andrea Palladio,
were extremely important for Renaissance painters
when constructing the architectural backgrounds of their paintings.
For example, the exhibition presents a comparison between the design for a theatre with a perspectival recession on the left
as published in the treatise, and the architectural backgrounds to be seen in the small Annunciation painted by El Greco shortly after the publication of Barbaro’s edition.