Giovanni BRANCA

Manuale d'architettura, breve, e risoluta prattica... diviso in sei libri .  [16], 224 pp.  Illustrated with 26 full-page woodcuts.  16mo., 123 x 88 mm, bound in contemporary Italian full limp vellum, manuscript blue paper label, with early manuscript title along the bottom fore-edge.  In Ascoli: Appresso Maffio Salvioni, 1629.

Rare First Edition of the first pocket manual of architecture.  Branca's Manuale  represents a practical Baroque guide for architects, builders and workmen constructing in Northern Italy in the middle of the seventeenth century -- "solamente fatta per suo comentario portatile... non potendosi haver sempre commodita' de libri dove gli occoreva far operationi" (the author's note in the preface to the reader, f. *4r).  

The manual discusses building materials, including advice for stone, marble, wood and large timber.  There follows a brief overview of the five orders, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan and the Composite (which Branca calls "latino").  Then appear short chapters on the symmetry of capitals and columns, construction of doors and windows, and several final chapters on practical building techniques based on careful measuring, geometry and perspective.

Important, succinct, thoughtfully composed and illustrated, Branca's mini-manual is not only the first, but also the best pocket guide of architecture.  Writing about this little book, Comolli cites the praise of Maffei and Milizia, both asserting that later pocket guides cannot compare with this original publication.  Giovanni Branca (1571-1645) is also known for his Le machine,volume nuovo e di molto artificio da fare effetti meravigliosi tanto spiritali quanto di animale operazione,  first published in Rome, also in 1629.  These two works assured Branca "un posto di primo piano tra gli scrittori di architettura e tra i precursori della tecnica moderna" (Enzo Pozzato, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani  - Vol. XIII). 

This pocket edition concludes with a separate title: Appendice di trentadoi Afforisimi Intorno alla reparatio ne de Fiumi .  [189-210] pp.  In Ascoli: Appresso Massio Salvioni, 1629.  In the preface to the final edition of 1772, Leonardo de' Vegni states that Branca offered in the final part of the Manuale  ground-breaking technical solutions to hydraulic problems of silting and water management on Italian rivers.

A true rarity, as its size and purpose rendered most copies lost to time. OCLC finds just 6 copies in the U.S. The present copy survives in remarkably fine unsophisticated condition, with a little wear to the spine.

Comolli, IV, 167.  Cicognara 449-50 (second and fourth editions only!).  Riccardi 188.  Berlin Katalog 2613.  Not in Fowler, or Millard.   For Branca see : G. M. Mazzuchelli, Gli Scrittori d'Italia,  II, 4, 64.  L. Thorndike, A History of magic and experimental Science,  VII, 617-618.  Thieme-F. Becker, Künstlerlexikon  IV, 523.