De la Architectvra Civil, en que fe contienen las Ichnographias, Orthographias, Figuras, y Delineaciones, que en los Tomos precedentes fe explican; Descripcam da ingenhosa maquina.

In –folio, full calf with ornaments and red tile with title on spine. Pp. 8 + 162 engraved plates + Joao Antonio BELLINE, “Descripçam da ingenhosa maquina…”, Lisboa, Pedro Ferreira, 1737 (pp. 8) + 3 blank leaves.Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606-1682) was a Spanish ecclesiastic scholar and architect, bishop of the Italian city of Vigevano since 1673. A poligrapher, he published more than 70 works on technics, science, philosophy, politics, mathematics and architecture: but the only constructions he realized and completed as an architect were the square and the façade of the cathedral, at Vigevano, where he was bishop from 1673 to his death.Born in Madrid, he was a precocious child and he completed his studies at the universities of Alcalà and Salamanca, in Spain. He became a Cistercensis monk and he was teacher at Lauven university, where he was also responsable for the military defense of the city. Then he moved to Prague, and in 1655 he moved to Italy: in 1657 he was the bishop of Satriano, and then of Vigevano, the city where he died in 1682.This rare book is the illustrated part (the plates) of Caramuel’s important work on civil architecture: as an architect, Caramuel was a strong substainer of the superiority of “oblique” architecture on the “straight” one (i.e. the Vitruvian): this book is considered the most ambitious Spanish architectural treatise to date. Author obsession with geometry and optical distortion was treated as an eccentric aptitude by the most of contemporaries: this work had a great impact in the New World, where Caramuel’s theories were spread by many scientists and the examples of “architectura obliqua” are numerous. The book begins with a “tratado proemial” on the Temple of Jerusalem (plates A-E); then we have 49 plates on the discussion of the sciences and techniques useful to architects and engineers; 65 plates illustrate either the ‘architectura recta’ or Caramuel’s improvements, and 41 plates explicate the laws or ‘architectura obliqua’: technics, architecture, mechanics and hydraulics are the main subjects of this book, the first of eight issued under the imprint “En la Emprenta Obispal por Camillo Corrado”: because of the late recognition of Caramuel’s relevance as a technics, mechanics and architecture scholar, the books were not widely distributed, and now are a notable rarity.The most of the engravings are by anonymous printmakers; on is signed by the Roman engraver Bernard Balliu (part 4, pl. 6), five by the milanese Giovanni Francesco Bugatti , seven by Cesare Laurentio and eleven by the Milanese Simone Durello. The late table on part III is not indexed and is manuscript numbered (it doesn’t appear in bibliographies).