TO THE MOST MAGNIFICENT

MY MOST REVERED LORD

COUNT GIACOMO

A N G A R A N O .

The vast merits of your infinite courtesy (my most magnificent Lord) are due to the many and most singular benefits that, with perpetual liberality for so many years now, you have continually shown me; these have grown in such a way, both in number and in size, that if I did not seek to make myself grateful—at least by showing myself to be ever mindful of them—I am certain that I would run the risk of being noted and held by all as discourteous and ungrateful.

And because since my youth I have greatly delighted in matters of Architecture; whereby I have not only turned over with laborious study of many years the books of those who, with abundant happiness of genius, have enriched this most noble science with excellent precepts Precepts refer to the rules and principles of classical architecture, such as those established by the Roman author Vitruvius.; but I have also traveled many times to Rome and other places in Italy and abroad, where with my own eyes I have seen, and with my own hands measured, the fragments of many ancient buildings. These, having remained standing until our times as a wonderful spectacle of Palladio, like many Renaissance thinkers, viewed the ruins of Rome as survivors of the "barbarian" invasions that ended the Roman Empire. barbarian cruelty, still offer even in their vast ruins a clear and illustrious testimony to Roman virtue and greatness.

Thus, finding myself greatly practiced and inflamed by the excellent study of this kind of Virtue The word "Virtù" here refers to a combination of artistic skill, moral strength, and intellectual excellence highly prized during the Renaissance., and having placed all my thoughts in her with great hope, I also set myself the task of writing the necessary instructions that must be observed by all fine minds who are desirous of building well and elegantly. Beyond this, I aimed to show in drawings many of those structures that have been designed by me in various places, as well as all those ancient buildings I have seen until now.

Therefore—not indeed to repay any of the infinite obligations I have contracted through your kindness (for which you are loved above all others, celebrated, and considered worthy of every highest degree of honor), but only to demonstrate to you, with an honored testimony of my labors, some sign of my grateful soul, mindful of the greatness of your worth—I now make you a gift of these first two books of mine, where I treat private houses. In these, I confess the Heavens have been so favorable to me that—having finally brought them to such perfection as I was able, despite many great occupations that almost constantly keep my body and soul oppressed, and after some of my own significant illnesses—and having approved all that is contained in them with long experience, I dare to say that I have perhaps shed such light on the matters of Architecture in this part, that those who come after me will be able, following my example, by practicing...