1
L’Architecture de Vitruve de Perrault.
fol.
1815 Catalogue, page 130, no. 24, as above.
VITRUVIUS POLLIO,
Marcus.
Les Dix Livres d’Architecture de Vitruve corrigez et tradvits nouvellement en
François, avec des Notes & des Figures.
Seconde Edition reveue, corrigée, & augmentée. Par M. Perrault de l’Academie Royalle des Sciences, Docteur en Medecine de la Faculté de Paris.
A
Paris: chez
Jean Baptiste Coignard, Imprimeur ordinaire du Roy,
m. dc. lxxxiv
. Avec Privilege de Sa Majesté. [1684.]
NA2517 .V85 1684 fol
Folio. 196 leaves (the last a blank), including the engraved frontispiece by G. Scotin after S. le Clerc, and LXV numbered engraved plates, part page, full page or folded, by various engravers including le Clerc, G. Edelinck, Tournier, P. Vandrebanc, E. Gantrel and others, all included in the signatures and with printed text, engraved head and tail pieces and initials, woodcut illustrations
and diagrams in the text.
Graesse VI, 378.
Kimball,
Thomas Jefferson, Architect, page
100.
According to Dr. Kimball, Jefferson had made use of this book before 1775. See Kimball, op. cit., page 137. Jefferson cited
it in his letter to Isaac McPherson, dated from Monticello August 13, 1813, in reference to Oliver Evans’ patent for his elevators,
conveyors and hopper-boys. On the subject of wheels with buckets for drawing water from a well Jefferson wrote: “
. . . but it is the principle, to wit a string of buckets, which constitutes the invention, not the form of the buckets, round,
square, or hexagon; nor the manner of attaching them, nor the material of the connecting band, whether chain, rope, or leather.
Vitruvius L.X. c. 9. describes this machinery as a Windlas, on which is a chain descending to the water, with vessels of copper
attached to it. the windlas being turned, the chain moving on it will raise the vessels which, in passing over the windlas,
will empty the water they have brought up into a reservoir, and Perrault, in his edition of Vitruvius, Paris 1684. fol. Plates
61. 62. gives us three forms of these water elevators, in one of which the buckets are square, as m
(
~
r)
Evans’s are . . .”
In a letter to George Wythe dated from Paris September 16, 1787, Jefferson mentioned: “
. . . the best edition of Vitruvius, which is with the commentaries of Ficinus, is not to be got here. I have sent to Holland
for it . . .
”
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Roman architect, lived at the time of Augustus, to whom this work is dedicated. The first edition was printed in Rome, circa
1486.
Claude Perrault, 1613-1688, was at one time a physician, but became the architect of the Louvre. The first edition of his translation of
Vitruvius was anonymously published in 1673. Claude was a brother of Charles Perrault, the author of fairy tales.
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