"Palladio's lasting influence on architectural style in many parts of the world was exercised less through his actual buildings than through his textbook. This is divided into four sections: orders and elementary problems, domestic building, public building and town planning and temples." (PMM 92)

"Palladio's palazzi, villas, and churches are among the unforgettable monuments of Venice and the Veneto, but it was his Quattro libri that made the man and his architecture internationally renowned. The book can be distinguished from earlier architectural treatises by the prominent discussion of Palladio's own works and by the use of terms familiar to contemporary architects and artisans... As one of the last great architects of the high Renaissance, Palladio translated the language of classical antiquity into a flexible and distinctive vocabulary that was used internationally by architects well into the nineteenth century." (The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection).

The book is composed of four parts. The first mainly deals with the five orders, the second with the private buildings constructed by the architect. The true originality of this work lies here, as it contains the detailed description of the houses built by Palladio in the Terra ferma countryside for Venetian aristocrats (villas Rotonda, villa Maser...) or in Vicenza (Chiericati palace, Thiene palace, Valmarana palace...). The plans and elevations of some villas and palaces are all the more precious as some of the projects were not completed.

In book III, Palladio addresses public buildings, roads, and bridges. He shows erudition, citing Caesar, Tacitus, or Livy about bridges and ancient buildings, while also displaying inventiveness, with the project of a magnificent stone bridge for the Grand Canal of Venice, or the realized one of the basilica in Vicenza; they are presented as the modern interpretation of ancient buildings.

Book IV, the most illustrated of the treatise, is a selection of the most remarkable temples in Rome and its surroundings (Tivoli), in Italy (Naples, Trevi, Assisi), and outside Italy (Pola, Nîmes). Like Serlio in the Terzo libro, he includes alongside the most prestigious buildings of Rome (temples of Peace, Mars Ultor, Jupiter Stator, the Pantheon...) the modern paragon of good architecture, Bramante's tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio.

The treatise is ABUNDANTLY AND SUPERBLY ILLUSTRATED WITH 221 WOODCUTS, 156 OF WHICH ARE FULL-PAGE, attributed by Fowler to Giovanni and Christoforo Chrieger and to Christoforo Coriolano (or Lederer). All of German origin and probably also trained there, these masters of wood engraving were active in Venice from the mid-1560s. A SUPERB COPY OF THE TRUE FIRST EDITION, EXTREMELY SOUGHT AFTER.

On September 7, 2024, a copy of this first edition bound at the time for William Pickering was sold for 196,850 GBP by Sotheby's.