Beschreibung:

ARCHITECTURE] BÖCKLER, GEORG ANDREAS [STURMIO, JOHANNE CHRISTOPHORO-trans]. Architectura Curiosa Nova... Nuremberg: Paul Fürst, [1664]. First Latin edition, published simultaneously or soon after the first German edition. Four parts in one volume, bound in contemporary calf, housed in a clamshell case with levant spine. 13 1/4 x 9 inches (33 x 22 cm); Part I: title, [viii], 30 pp., illustrated with 4 full-page numbered engravings in manuscript. Part II: title, 13, [1] pp., illustrated with 71 full-page numbered engravings (of which nine plates contain four images per page). Part III: title, 22 pp., illustrated with 120 full-page numbered engravings, including one folding (of which four plates contain two images per page). Part IV: title, 26 pp., illustrated with 36 full-page numbered engravings. Binding scuffed and shaken, joints cracking, some browning to the text, but the plates remain in clean, bright, strong impressions. one possibly supplied from another copy (with frayed margins), one folding plate with crudely repaired tear. Despite the defects noted, a visual treat for the remarkable High Baroque plates of fountains, taken from all over Europe, many of which appear closer to pyrotechnics than the flow of water. Böckler, an Alsatian artist and engineer, was also the author of the Theatrum machinarum novum, a collection of mechanical curiosities. Berlin Katalog 3579; Hunt I, 295; Cicognara 886. C