Advanced search

Art & Architecture

Contact Alex Day or Andrea Mazzocchi

Art & Architecture encompasses a broad sweep of material, from early works concerning architecture and architectural history, and books and manuscripts on the fine arts and aesthetics, antiquities and archaeology, to pattern and design books, and private press books and fine bindings. The department also handles original artwork, artistic archives, posters, and propaganda material.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. BIBLIA LATINA.

    A single folio leaf (389 x 281 mm.), containing Luke XVII:23–XIX:13 (leaf 230 of volume 2), double column, 42...

    [Mainz: Printed by Johann Gutenberg & Johann Fust, c. 1450-1455, not after August 1456.]

    A fine single paper leaf from the first substantial book printed with movable type in the western world, now known simply as the Gutenberg Bible or the 42-line Bible.

    £100000

  2. VITRUVIUS Pollio, and Sextus Julius FRONTINUS. 

    M. Vitruvii de architectura libri decem nuper maxima diligentia castigati...

    Florence, heirs of Filippo Giunta, 27 October 1522. 

    Attractive pocket-sized Giunta edition of Vitruvius’s De Architectura, illustrated with numerous woodcuts, together with Frontinus’ work on the aqueducts of Rome, the latter annotated by the Trevisan bibliophile Giovanni Antonio Oliva (1515–1590). 

    £5500

  3. KUTHEN ZE SPRINSBERKA, Martin.

    Catalogus ducum regumque Bohoemorum in quo summatim gesta singulorum singulis distichis continentur....

    [Prague, s.n.,] 1540.

    First edition of a fine and rare portrait book of the Bohemian (Czech) rulers by the Czech historian Martin Kuthen ze Sprinsberka (c. 1510–1564), with brief contributions by Friedrich Nausea, Johannes Rosinus, Matouš Collinus, and Šimon Villaticus.

    £3000

  4. MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

    Urbis Romae topographia. 

    Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

    First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

    £5500

  5. [COLONNA, Francesco.] 

    Poliphili hypnerotomachia, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse ostendit, atque obiter plurima scitu...

    Venice, [heirs of Aldus], 1545. 

    Second edition, scarcer than the first (also an Aldine, published in 1499), of the most beautiful illustrated books printed in Italy in the fifteenth century.  Known for its fine woodcut illustrations, mysterious meanings, and the cryptic inclusion of Colonna’s name, the Hypnerotomachia...

    £24000

  6. CARTARI, Vincenzo.

    Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi.

    Venice, per Francesco Marcolini, 1556.

    First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients. Cartari concentrated on the iconography of the gods, explaining their guises and detailing their several attributes. His book was expressively written to aid artists, painters and sculptors, to understand...

    £1100

  7. DIODORUS Siculus. 

    Bibliothecae historicae libri XV.  Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum...

    Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559. 

    Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.  Although Diodorus’s text, published in Greek for the first time by Estienne in the same year, offers a history of the world from its inception until Caesar, it came down...

    £2500

  8. [PSALMS.] 

    Liber Psalmorum Davidis regis, et prophetae, ex Arabico idiomate in Latinum translatus, a Victorio Scialac Accurensi...

    Rome, Stephanus Paulinus ‘ex typographia Savariara’, 1614. 

    First edition of Savary de Brèves’s Arabic Psalter, and the only printing of the Psalms in Arabic since their first publication almost a century earlier (Genoa, 1516), in a handsome contemporary binding for the bibliophile Claude Molé. 

    £4750

  9. MEURSIUS, Johannes. 

    Ioannis Meursi Regnum Atticum, sive de regibus Atheniensium, eorumque rebus gestis, libri III. 

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1633. 

    First edition, a study of ancient Attic mythology and history by the Dutch classicist Meursius (Jan van Meurs, 1579–1639). 

    £300

  10. PERUCCI, Francesco.

    Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.

    Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.

    First edition of Perucci’s extensively illustrated account of funeral practices, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector. A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and later the Royal Society, Walter Bowman (1699–1782) travelled extensively over the course of five decades...

    £1350

  11. [CAILLE, Jean de la.]

    Histoire de l’imprimerie et de la librairie, où l’on voit son origine & son progrés, jusqu’en 1689,...

    Paris, Jean de la Caille, 1689.

    First edition of this history of printing and bookselling, by the bookseller Jean de la Caille, with handsome engraved ornaments including a scene of a printing press.

    £1250

  12. LA ROQUE, Jean de. 

    Voyage de Syrie et du Mont-Liban.  Contenant la description de tout le pays compris sous le nom de Liban...

    Amsterdam, Herman Uytwerf, 1723. 

    Second edition (first Paris 1722) of La Roque’s account of his first journey to the Arab world, undertaken in 1689 when he visited Syria and Lebanon.  The son of a Marseille coffee merchant, La Roque (1661–1745) was a journalist, traveller, and one of the founders of the Académie de Marseille. ...

    £1500

  13. SCHÜBLER, Johann Jakob.

    Amor, vehementer quidem flagrans; artificiose tamen celatus, de Pantalonis custodiaque triumphans, intentato...

    Augsburg, Johann Michael Probst, [c. 1770?].

    Rare series of twelve engravings inspired by the Italian commedia dell’arte, one of the most beautiful books of the German Rococo, engraved by Johann Balthasar Probst after original illustrations by the architectural painter, sculptor, and mathematician Johann Jakob Schübler.

    £7500

  14. LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.

    Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...

    Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.

    First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).

    £475

  15. WISE, Francis.

    A Letter to Dr Mead concerning some Antiquities in Berkshire, particularly shewing that the White Horse, which gives...

    Oxford, Printed for Thomas Wood … 1738

    First editions. A Letter to Dr Mead was the first serious archaeological study of the Uffington White Horse. Francis Wise, Keeper of the Archives at Oxford University and later a friend of Samuel Johnson, contends that the horse, which he eulogises as a work of art, had Saxon origins, because...

    £350

  16. [BRISTOL.] 

    The Bristol Contest, being a Collection of all the Papers published by both Parties, on the Election, 1754. 

    Bristol, ‘sold by the Printing-Office … and by J. Palmer’, [1754]. 

    Extremely rare first edition of this Bristol-printed political pamphlet, bound with the first edition of a French work on pyrotechnics used both for spectacle and for war. 

    £650

  17. CAPPONI, Alessandro Gregorio, Marchese.

    Catalogo della Libreria Capponi o sia de’ Libri Italiani del su Marchese Alessandro...

    Rome, Bernabò & Lazzarini, 1747

    First and only edition of the catalogue of this remarkable library assembled by Capponi (1683–1746) and containing over five thousand titles, mainly of early Italian literature. The catalogue was compiled by Alessandro Berti with bio-bibliographical notes by Domenico Giorgi. The collection now...

    £900

  18. MONALDINI, Venanzio.

    Risposta alle reflessioni critiche sopra le differenti scuole di Pitture del Sig. Marchese d'Argens.

    Lucca, per il Busdrago, 1755

    Not in Cicognara or Schlosser-Magnino.

    £120

  19. [POTE, Joseph].

    Les Delices de Windsore; or a Description of Windsor Castle, and the Country adjacent, treating, I. Of the Castle....

    Eton: Printed by Joseph, and Thomas Pote, 1755.

    First edition of a much-reprinted pocket companion to Windsor ‘for the use of Strangers, and other Persons, who visit this our Royal Castle’. It is ‘for the most part an Extract from a larger Work publish’d in Quarto a few Years since’ (Pote’s own work The History and Antiquities of Windsor...

    £325

  20. ROUQUET, Jean-André. 

    The present State of the Arts in England.  By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...

    London, for J. Nourse, 1755. 

    First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). 

    £19500