PELERIN Jean dit VIATOR La Perspective positive de Viator. Latine et françoise. Revue, augmentée & réduite de grand en petit par Mathurin Jousse, de La Fleche.

Vagnetti, EIIb2 (note) ; Vitry, 667.

First edition, very rare, of the French translation of the book on Perspective by Viator.

It was undertaken by the Jesuit architect from Lyon, Etienne Martellange (1569-1641). Étienne Martellange was responsible for the construction of numerous Jesuit colleges and churches, as well as collections of drawings of many cityscapes and monuments. His plans and drawings are kept in the print room of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

The charming plates inspired by the Toul edition were reduced and engraved by the famous master locksmith and architectural theorist Mathurin Jousse (1575-1645) based on Martellange’s drawings.

Jousse, a native of La Flèche, is best known for publishing three treatises on construction devoted to locksmithing, carpentry and stereotomy, the first of their kind in France. OCLC lists only seven copies (only one in the United States, at Harvard’s Houghton Library) of this rare book.

Rebacked preserving the old spine, endpapers renewed, copy delicately washed.

Provenance: Arnaud de Vitry (Sotheby’s sale 2002, lot 667).