The Italian architect Jacopo Vignola was famous in France and even worked there for several years to cast replica classical statues for the royal gardens in Fontainebleau. After returning to Italy, he won the patronage of the powerful Farnese family and Pope Julius III, for whom he built the Villa Giulia (one of the models for J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library). Dedicated to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Vignola’s Five Orders consolidated his reputation throughout Europe, where it went through dozens of editions. If not so opulent in its binding, the Morgan’s second copy of this definitive textbook shows what Laubespine looked for in his collection of architectural treatises.
Jacopo Vignola (1507−1573)
Regola delli cinque ordini d’architettura (Rules of the Five Orders of Architecture)
[Rome: s.n., 1563]
The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Henry S. Morgan, 1965; PML 55623