Gorgeous volume of provenance with 100 lithographed sketches of Levant architecture, 1871

Beschreibung

Giuseppe CASTELLAZZI: RICORDI DI ARCHITETTURA ORIENTALE. Schizzi dal vero autografati. [Memories of Oriental Architecture. Originally autographed sketches.] With 100 lithographic plates on cardboard executed by Giovanni Kirchmayr, each depicting several hundreds of original drawings. Venice: Tipografia del Rinnovamento 1871.

4to. (33:24 cm). Pages [I-III] IV-VIII (pre-title, preface), 1 cardboard leaf with red and black title printing, 100 lithographic cardboard leafs accompanied with one text leaf each, 6 pages (index of locations, captions and plates). Contemporary private black cloth with gilt title on front board and spine, blind stamped ornamental framing, multicoloured marbled end papers as well as gilt top edge.

Gorgeous collection with bright and detailed lithographic plates depicting architectural sketches from the Levant, with a special focus on buildings of Athens, Cairo and Constantinople.

Author, Contents, Illustration: Giuseppe Castellazzi (1834-1887) was a civil engineer from Florence, became a renown architectural draftsman already in his youth. Travelling the Levant in the early 1860s he skilfully sketched buildings in Athens, Beirut, Cairo (incl. Boulaq), Constantinople (incl. Tophane), Giza, Scutari (Shkodër, nowadays Albania), Syros (Cyclades, Greece), Smyrna (Izmir) and Trieste. The plates, engraved with clear outline by Giovanni Kirchmayr, a most renown Venice engraver and lithographer of it’s times, depict Castellazzi’s accurate and detailed sketches of architectural sites he visited as well as various details of them, all together with floor plans, cross and longitudinal sections.

Provenance: Nicolò Papadopoli Aldobrandini (1841-1922), Italian politician, entrepreneur and numismatic and his brother Angelo Papadopoli Aldobrandini (1843–1919), Italian politician, with an engraved ex libris stating „N & A Papadopoli“ and depicting a coat of arms mounted on front board verso. The Papadopoli brothers obviously assigned a bookbinder (labeled „S. Polo“ ) to bind present book in a superb cloth over stiff cardboard, additionally decorated with colourful marbled end papers.

Condition: Cover at upper edge with one small fault, some pages, most notably the title pages, as well as some plates foxy, otherwise well preserved.

Rarity: JAP/APO and RBH show no auction records at all.

Reference: (Castellazzi) Carlo Cresti and Luigi Zangheri: Architetti e ingegneri nella Toscana dell’Ottocento. Firenze: 1978, p. 559 cit. WBIS/ABI III 101,7; (Kirchmayr) Agostino Mario Comanducci: Dizionario illustrato dei pittori, disegnatori e incisori italiani moderni e contemporanei. Vol. 3 (1972), p. 436 cit. WBIS/ABI II 313,78-79.