4to. Contemporary vellum gilt, brown calf and gilt-lettered label, slightly chipped, to the spine, all edges marbled, marbled endpapers; half-title, 154pp. + 30 full-page plates numbered I-XXX, drawn and etched by Francesco and Gaetano Durelli and Giuseppe Bramati; occasional very light spotting to the margins, otherwise a bright, fresh copy.

Provenance: Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche (1810-1873), of Parham Park, West Sussex, with the Parham library book label to the upper margin of the front pastedown. Inscribed in ink by Curzon to the verso of the f.f.e.p, ‘R. Curzon. Milan’. Educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, Curzon subsequently traveled widely in the Near East. He was the author of Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, 1849, and Armenia: A Year at Erzeoom, and on the frontiers of Russia, Turkey, and Persia, 1854.

First and only edition. Large paper copy. Written in response to the completion of the façade of the Duomo in 1813, some four hundred years after work was commenced on the structure we now see, even then some architectural and sculptural details continued to be added until 1965. Franchetti’s work is the first scholarly description and history of the Duomo, enhanced by finely etched plates, including two (VII and VIII) that illustrate the scaffolding designed by the Austrian born Italian neo-classical architect Leopoldo Pollak, erected to complete the façade.

BAL Early Printed Books 1478-1840, 1123

Stock number: 1430