On the Art of Building in Ten Books

"De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), was the first modern treatise on the theory and practice of architecture and in its time a model of learned Latin writing. Its importance for the subsequent history of architecture is incalculable; yet this is the first major English translation based on the original text on which Alberti's reputation as a theorist is founded.Joseph Rykwert and his colleagues have been scrupulous in following Alberti's original intentions. Their version is based on the critical text published in 1966 by Giovanni Orlandi. It replaces the only other significant English version, by the Venetian architect James Leoni, whose source was not the original Latin but an Italian translation dating from the sixteenth century.Rykwert's substantial introduction discusses Alberti's life and career - as papal functionary, writer on a wide variety of topics, and architect and discusses the "De Re Aedificatoria itself - its relation to the De Architectura of Vitruvius,its influence on contemporary and later architectural theory and practice, and its bibliographic history. The apparatus also includes an index and a glossary of terms. The translators were fortunate to have the help of eminent Alberti scholar Hans-Karl Lucke of the University of Toronto.Alberti set out to replace Vitruvius's authority, which had been undisputed for over a thousand years. In a Latin which was both more elegant and more precise than that of his ancient predAlberti, Leon Battista is the author of 'On the Art of Building in Ten Books' with ISBN 9780262010993 and ISBN 0262010992.