Perspectiva corporum regularium. Das ist, Ein fleyssige Fürweysung, wie die Fünff Regulirten Cörper, darvon Plato inn Timaeo unnd Euclides inn sein Elementis schreibt, &c. Durch einen sonderlichen, newen, behenden und gerechten weg, der vor nie im gebrauch ist gesehen worden, gar künstlich inn die Perspectiva gebracht, und darzu ein schöne Anleytung, wie auss denselbigen Fünff Cörpern one Endt, gar viel andere Cörper, mancherley Art und gestalt, gemacht, unnd gefunden werden mügen. Allen Liebhabern der freyen Kunst zu Ehrn, durch Wentzeln Jamitzer, burgern und goldtschmid in Nürmberg, mit Götlicher hülff an tag geben, &c. Mit Röm. Kayserlicher May. befreyung, inn 15. Jaren nicht nach zudrucken. Anno, M.D. LXVIII.
Folio (34.9 x 24 cm). Engraved title page, with title set within an engraved ornamental frame containing allegorical representations of arithmetic, geometry, architecture and perspective; dedication (2 pp.); foreword (3 pp.); “Tetrahedron” engraved section title and 4 leaves of plates; “Octahedron” engraved section title and 4 leaves of plates; “Hexahedron” engraved section title and 4 leaves of plates; “Icosahedron” engraved section title and 4 leaves of plates; “Dodecahedron” engraved section title and 4 leaves of plates; and “Was jetzund für stück von der löblichen Kunst Perspectiva folgen” engraved section title and 23 leaves of plates (altogether 1 engraved title page, 6 engraved section title pages and 43 leaves of plates, and a final blank leaf with a blind platemark impression). Some finger soiling throughout the book; illustration H-IIII with some light staining. Eighteenth century half vellum over boards, leather reinforced corners, scratches to covers, scuffed at edges, green silk ties intact on back board but partially torn on front; skillful marginal restoration on lower inner margin of title and on first section title; very faint tidemark throughout in the upper margin; with a small caricature pen drawing on the flyleaf. Rare complete and almost spotless, as offered here, with excellent impressions on strong paper. Very good. First and only edition of this remarkable work, an exceptional collaboration between two luminaries: Wenzel Jamnitzer, the most famous goldsmith of its time and personal goldsmith to four kings, who conceived and drew the illustrations, and the prolific Swiss engraver Jost Amman, considered the creator of the German book, who engraved them. The Perspectiva is regarded as the most important illustrated work on the solid bodies of the 16th century in the German-speaking world and one of the most spectacular engraved German books of the sixteenth century. The elaborate title page depicts, in four allegorical representations, architecture, perspective, arithmetic and geometry, disciplines for which this manual was intended to serve as a guide. “The frontispiece to the Perspectiva ... articulates Jamnitzer’s intellectual ambitions by framing the title with personifications of arithmetic, geometry, architecture and perspective, emulating the traditional quadrivium of the liberal arts. The reappearance of this allegorical print on the plaque on the artist’s tomb, rather than a representation of his profession as goldsmith, is a mark of his success in elevating artistic labor to a new level of intellectual prestige” (Susan Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, no. 62, p. 256). In Jamnitzer/Amman’s Perspectiva, it is the illustrations, not the written word, that are meant to instruct and inspire. “For Jamnitzer,” writes Dackerman, “textual elaboration is unnecessary” (p. 256). The entire book comprises only five pages of text—in German, not in Latin—and 49 leaves of plates. Of these, 43 leaves are full-page plates of polyhedra (120 images in total), and six are engraved section titles signed “IA”. Each section is dedicated to a type of polyhedron, the title page of which establishes the connection between the respective polyhedron and the classical elements of medieval cosmology: fire for the tetrahedron, earth for the cube, air for the octahedron, and water for the icosahedron, with the dodecahedron representing the sky. The Perspectiva shares similarities with the De Divina Proportione of 1509, a collaboration between Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci, as both books further the study of perspective and solid bodies started earlier by Paolo Uccello and Leon Battista Alberti. The title page of Jamniter’s Perspectiva explicitly mentions the Timaeus of Plato and the Elements of Euclid as precursors, highlighting the book’s focus on the five Platonic solids and Euclidean geometry. The large number of polyhedral variations illustrates the theory current at the time that all variations apparent in the physical world are the result of a combination of basic elements. According to Christopher S. Wood, “Jamnitzer’s drawings seem to show that in constructing his fantastic figures he did not employ any instruments or an especially elaborate perspectival method” (p. 238). The plates, with their abstract forms, point directly to concrete artists of the 20th century such as M.C. Escher and Sol LeWitt. In contrast to these geometric depictions of solids are the title pages by Jost Amman, with their rich naturalistic decoration. Wenzel Jamnitzer (ca. 1507-1585) was a goldsmith, engraver, stamp cutter and medalist from a Moravian family of goldsmiths. He became a master goldsmith in Nuremberg in 1534 and worked as an engraver in the Nuremberg mint. Jamnitzer soon came into contact with the German emperors Charles V, Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II, who continuously commissioned him as their court goldsmith. Throughout his life, Jamnitzer was concerned with advancing the art of perspective, including improving Dürer’s instrument for perspective drawing and developing new scientific instruments of his own. Dedicated to Maximilian II, Jamnitzer labored on the Perspectiva corporum regularium for forty years, as he notes in his prefatory remarks. It is regarded as the most important illustrated work of the 16th century in the German-speaking world, a genre that “delighted the eye and the mind” and “had a much wider potential readership than did the practical handbooks” (Wood, p. 238). The reputation and output of Swiss engraver Jost Amman (1539–1591) arguably established him as the heir to Dürer. Born in Zurich, Amman relocated to Nuremberg in 1560, where he soon began undertaking commissions from publisher Sigmund Feyerabend and Nuremberg’s Pfinzing family. His work includes hundreds of engravings, etchings and woodcuts for Bibles, histories, genealogies, and books on trade and construction, as well as dozens of painted portraits. Rubens, Rembrandt and Joshua Reynolds, among others, acknowledged his prodigious skill and lasting influence. A second edition of Jamnitzer’s Perspectiva was published by Johannes Janssonius in Amsterdam in 1626 under the title Perspectivae Sintagma, in quo varia eximiaque corporum diagrammata ex praescripto opticae exhibitur. Provenance: Franziska Brändli (born 1953) – Paolo Roberto Brändli (born 1924), bequeathed to him by his friend: – Heinz Keller (1928-2019), a respected Swiss artist, collector and former curator of the Kunstverein Winterthur.
* Andreas Andresen, Der Deutsche Peintre-Graveur, no. 217, pp. 173-175; A. von Bartsch, Le Peintre Graveur, vol. 9, pp. 357-360 (“Jost Amman”); Berlin Ornamentstichkatalog 4693; Millard Architectural Collection, Northern European Books: Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries, Vol. III, no. 45; L. Vagnetti, Studi e Documenti di Architettura-Prospettiva, no. EIIb24; VD 16 J. 176. See also: Susan Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Harvard Art Museums, 2012), no. 62, pp. 256-263; J. Fábry, “Meaning of Wenzel Jamnitzer’s treatise Perspectiva corporum regularium (Nürnberg, 1568) and its relationship to history of modern science,” Acta Crystallographica (2021) A77, C1140; Christopher S. Wood, “The perspective treatise in ruins: Lorenz Stoer, Geometria et perspectiva, 1567,” in Studies in the History of Art 59 (2003), Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium Papers XXXVI, pp. 235-257.
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