The first quarto edition of Sebastiano Serlio's (1475-1554) Five Books of Architecture, one of the first modern works to popularise the genre by pairing high quality illustrations with text explaining architectural theory in accessible terms. As a result, Serlio's work found favour amongst the painters of the Venetian school during the mid-sixteenth century, leading to a revival in the use of elaborate architectural perspectives in the background of paintings such as Titian's Presentation of the Virgin, which was completed in 1538. The plates in the present edition are reduced copies of the folio originals by Giovanni Krugher (Chrieger).

With provenance for the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who succeeded his former mentor Jacob Burckhardt, the great historian of the Renaissance, as Chair of Art History at the University of Basel in 1893. In 1886 he defended his dissertation Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur on the psychological aspects of architectural appreciation, and developed a methodology for the study of art using side-by-side image comparisons that remains a mainstay of art history pedagogy today.

First 4to edition, 2 works bound in one (28.5 x 21 cm); woodcut titles and initials, richly illustrated throughout including full-page illustrations, library stamp and bookplate to front pastedown, ownership inscription in pencil to front free endpaper, pen trials to final blank page; a large copy with good margins (5 cm), contemporary vellum, gilt morocco title-piece to spine, edges stained blue, annotations to panels, light spotting to margins throughout; leaves: 119, [1]; 52pp; signatures: A-3I⁴; A-N⁴.

Berlin Kat 2570; Cicognara 668; Fowler 327; Charvet p.105, no.21.