Sebastiano Serlio - Tapa dura

'Ask who was the most influential 16th century architect and the answer you are most likely to get is Andrea Palladio. ... But in Palladio's day, and for much of the 17th century, the answer would have been Sebastiano Serlio. ... the books that Serlio wrote were fundamental to the spread of Classicism across northern Europe. ... It has been hard to judge his significance because, astonishingly, until now there was no book on him in English ... Sabine Frommel's liberally illustrated monograph fills that gap. ... it is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the sources that really lie behind the introduction of Classical Architecture to England.'(Country Life, July 2004)

Italian Renaissance architect Sebastiano Serlio (c. 1475-1555), who began to work as an architect only in his maturity and in France, is known and appreciated chiefly as a theorist and author of the highly influential treatise L'Architettura. This important publication is the first to document Serlio's work both as a theorist and builder. It traces the overall evolution of Serlio's production in relation to his time, commencing with a detailed analysis of the chateau of Ancy-le-Franc, in which the two fundamental components of his formal language are already apparent: his Italian training in the classical manner and the profound influence of the French emphasis on decoration.This book reconstructs the specific features and overall evolution of Serlio's career, one in which his activity as a designer and builder played a much greater role than was previously thought. The analysis of buildings and projects is supplemented by frequent references to his treatise and by a chapter on his life that aims to reveal his true personality by stripping away the prejudices that surround it.