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.

  1. ALAI, Beatrice.

    Le miniature Italiane del Kupferstichkabinett di Berlino.

    Florence, Edizioni Polistampa, 2019.

    From the presentation leaf: ‘Bernard Quaritch Ltd is delighted to be a sponsor of this magnificent publication. We feel sure that our German founder, both as publisher of scholarly works and dealer in medieval manuscripts, would have been proud to support Beatrice Alai’s catalogue of the Italian...

    £75

  2. [ALMANAC.]

    Le Parnasse des dames.

    Paris, Janet, [1814].

    An attractive copy of Janet’s Parnasse des dames, a pocket-book alamanac on art and literature aimed at a female readership. The little volume contains a broad miscellany of verse, some by female authors, prefaced by engraved copies of works by seventeenth-century French and Dutch painters...

    £325

  3. BUSTEED, Henry Elmsley. 

    The Serampore Portrait.  Is it Madam Grand? 

    Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, & co., 1903. 

    First edition of a study probing the identity of a portrait then displayed at the Library of the Baptist Mission College at Serampore, India.  The portrait in question, attributed to the German neo-classical painter Johann Zoffany who was frequently patronised by British royalty and who had a...

    £125

  4. 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

  5. CELLINI, Benvenuto. 

    Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino da lui medesimo scritta, nella quale molte curiose...

    ‘Cologne’ [i.e. Florence], ‘Pietro Martello’ [i.e. Bartolini], [1792]. 

    The counterfeit edition of Benvenuto Cellini’s seminal autobiography, extra-illustrated with two large engravings illustrating his ‘Perseus and Medusa’ and the ‘Hercules and Cacus’ of his rival sculptor Bandinelli. 

    £675

  6. [COSTUME.]

    6 Blätter Altenburger Trachten.

    Altenburg, Schnuphase’sche Buchhandlung, [c. 1857].

    Charming Altenburg costume plates, lacking at least one plate.

    £150

  7. COX, John Roalfe.

    Horses in Accident and Disease: Notes and Sketches.

    Edinburgh, George Waterston & Sons for David Douglas, 1892.

    First edition of an elegantly illustrated veterinary work. An early advocate of the use of chloroform anaesthetic when operating on horses, J. Roalfe Cox here offers tender line drawings and brief descriptions of twenty-eight equine ailments.

    £70

  8. DASSIER, Jean and Jacques-Antoine.

    ‘An Explanation of Dassier’s Medals being a Representation of a Series of Events...

    London, c. 1795-1800.

    An exceptionally fine illustrated manuscript, with drawings after the series of sixty medals of Roman history from Romulus to the Age of Augustus produced by Jean Dassier and his son in 1740-1743. The drawings are executed with considerable finesse, adding detailed elements not clearly visible...

    £7500

  9. DIEDO, Antonio.

    Sui Soffitti memoria.

    Venice, Alvisopoli, 1838.

    New edition, dedicated to Count Antonio Trissino, as copies of the original edition were unprocurable.

    £45

  10. DODGSON, Campbell (editor).

    Woodcuts of the XV Century in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum.

    London, British Museum, 1934 [– 1935].

    First edition, scarce, of Dodgson’s authoritative and thoroughly illustrated catalogue of fifteenth-century woodcuts in the British Museum. Published after two decades as Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, the monumental Woodcuts of the XV Century is considerably scarcer...

    £750

  11. ERNST, Max.

    Une Semaine de Bonté ou les sept éléments capitaux. Roman. Premier [–Dernier] Cahier …

    Paris, Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1934.

    First edition, no. 706 of 800 copies on papier Navarre from a total edition of 816.

    £4500

  12. FIORILLO, Johann Dominicus.

    Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste, von ihrer Wiederauflebung bis auf die neusten Zeiten ...

    Göttingen, bei Johann Georg Rosenbusch, 1798 [and Johann Friederich Rower], 1801-1805.

    First edition. Fiorillo began as a painter, studying in Rome and Bologna, but turned to art history and became a professor at the University of Gottingen and colleague of Lichtenberg, in 1781. His erudite survey of the art of painting throughout Europe was among the first to make use of medieval documentary...

    £600

  13. GREEN, Benjamin.

    Figures & Heads from the Originals of Louthenbourg & Bossi …

    [London,] 1773.

    First edition, very rare, containing probably the earliest soft-ground etchings produced in England. A head of a monk after Benigno Bossi, dated 25 December 1771, is often referred to as the first dated soft-ground etching by an English artist (it is here in an early state, without lettering...

    £3250

  14. GROSSI, G. B. Gennaro.

    Le Belle Arti.

    Naples, dalla tipografia del Giornale Enciclopedico, 1820.

    First edition in book form, reprinted from the Giornale Enciclopedico di Napoli, with some additional material in an appendix to the second volume. The first volume is on the music and musicians of Naples, the second volume deals with Neapolitan painters up to the eighteenth century.

    £150

  15. GRÜNEISEN, C.

    Niclaus Manuel. Leben und Werke eines Malers und Dichters. Kriegers, Staatsmannes und Reformators im sechszehnten...

    Tubingen, Cotta, 1837.

    First edition of the first separate biography of the Bern painter and woodcutter Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch (1525-1571).

    £250

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Wyndham Lewis the Artist. From ‘Blast’ to Burlington House’ …

    London, Laidlaw & Laidlaw, [1939].

    First edition, first issue. Pound & Grover A29a; Morrow & Lafourcade A29

    £125

  19. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Art of Wyndham Lewis. Edited by C. Handley-Read with an Essay on Detail in the Artist’s Style, a chronological...

    London, Faber and Faber Limited, [1951].

    First edition, inscribed ‘To Geoffrey Bridson from W. L.’ The first monograph devoted to Lewis. The absence of some of the plates is curious – some were evidently cut out by Bridson, but there is no sign of the frontispiece ever having been in this copy, nor anything after plate 42. Was...

    £200