THE FIRST TREATISE ON ART IN ENGLISH, 1598 ~A superb copy

Numerous woodcut initials and typographical ornaments, large woodcut device on colophon.  The names of the printer and publisher are given in the colophon: ‘Printed At Oxford By Ioseph Barnes For R.H. Anno Domini, M.D.XC.VIII.’ – which is printed below the armorial device of Oxford University, and above that of New College.  The work is dedicated by Richard Haydocke to Thomas Bodley.

EXCEPTIONAL COPY OF THE FIRST TREATISE ON ART PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH

The thirteen engravings are the work of Richard Haydocke himself. The first five plates, illustrating the proportions of the human figure, are copied from or adapted after Albrecht Dürer’s Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (1528); the equestrian images appear to reflect Leonardo’s designs, likely known to Haydocke through prints. These constitute important and striking examples of early English copper-plate engraving — a technique uncommon in books printed in England before 1600.

One of the finest copies extant of this pioneering work. Four library copies examined fall well short of the present copy in their state of preservation. The few examples appearing at auction in recent years have been in poor to fair condition at best: title pages in two instances supplied from other copies and laid down, colophon pages imperfect or lacking, text extensively browned throughout, plates missing or trimmed into the image. Practical manuals of this kind were in active use by artists and artisans, and are usually found in less than ideal condition.

Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s treatise was translated by Richard Haydocke (1569 or 1570–c.1642), described on the title page as “student in Physik,” who rendered Books I–V of Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte de la Pittura (Milan, 1584) into English — a work described by Grove Art as “a compendium of Mannerist theory, most interesting for the emphasis it places on light and on psychological expression, where he revived themes explored by Leonardo.”

Haydocke characterised his translation as “neither a Paraphrasticall, Epitomized or meer Verbal translation,” but one arising from “7 years diligent and painful practice in the Arte” — the self-taught amateur’s engravings perhaps somewhat reflective of that painful practice.

By translating – or, rather paraphrasing –  Lomazzo into English he “divulged it to all” – divulged to English readers what Italian painters had conspired to keep scarce: in his preface, Haydocke attributes the rarity of Lomazzo’s Trattato to copies “being bought up [by] Italian Painters for fear least the perfection of the Arte (which they hold to reside whole in them) might bee now divulged into other Nations.”  His own complete copy of the Trattato was procured for him by Thomas Allen, fellow of Trinity College, replacing an imperfect earlier copy Haydocke described as “the reliques of a shipwreck.”

The “Tracte” provides an analysis of the laws of colour, proportion, form, movement, light, perspective and the practice of painting. The work incorporates a Haydock’s own observations which were remarkable for the time: 

“Painting is an art, which with proportionate lines and colors answerable to the life, by observing the perspective light, doth so imitate the nature of corporal things, that it not only representeth the thickness and roundness thereof upon a flat, but also their actions and gestures, expressing moreover divers affections and passions of the mind.”