This copy, in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, was annotated by a contemporary reader, in elegant chancery cursive.

This copy, in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, was annotated by a contemporary reader, in elegant chancery cursive.

Detail map of Roma, Lazio, Italy Overview map of Roma, Lazio, Italy

A: Roma, Lazio, Italy

Vitruvius, "De architectura", the First Printed Work on Classical Architecture

1486 to 8/16/1487
The first printed edition of Vitrivius was unillustrated except for a few diagrams.

The first printed edition of Vitrivius was unillustrated except for a few diagrams.

Printer Eucharius Silber issued the editio princeps of Vitruvius, De architectura in Rome between 1486 and August 16, 1487. The edition was edited by the Italian Renaissance humanist and rhetorician Fra Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli (Johannes Sulpitius Verulanus). 

"In 1486 Sulpizio prepared the first printed edition of Vitruvius' De Architectura for the press; the work had long circulated in manuscripts, some of them corrupt. The volume, which also includes the text of Frontinus' De aquaeductu describing the aqueducts of Rome, was dedicated to Cardinal Riario, an enthusiastic supporter of the ideals of the Pomponian sodalitas; the dedicatory epistle urges Riario to complete the recovery of classical Roman buildings with a theatre. In his preface Sulpizio urges readers to send him emendations of the notoriously crabbed and difficult text. With Vitruvius' text in hand, Sulpizio directed the erection of a reproduction open-air Roman theater in front of Palazzo Riario in Campo dei Fiori, Rome; there, in 1486 or 1488 his students mounted the first production of a Roman tragedy that had been seen since Antiquity, in the presence of Pope Innocent VIII. The play they chose was Seneca's Phaedra, which they knew as Hippolytus" (Wikipedia article on Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli, accessed 01-04-2010).

Regarding Vitruvius's text and its manuscript transmission, see the entry in this database for Vitruvius circa 800 CE. For the earliest illustrated editions see the Vitruvius entries for 1511 and 1521.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 26.  ISTC no.  iv00306000. In November 2013 a digital facsimile was available from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link.

Timeline Themes

Related Entries