First and only edition of a well illustrated manual on perspective by the Nuremberg goldsmith Hans Lencker (1523-1585), intended for craftsmen. It was the technical counterpart to Lencker's playful Perspectiva literaria (1567) and it would earn him a position at the Saxon court in Dresden.
"It teaches the method of perspective through illustrations of precisely constructed geometric solids and other objects in eleven full-page woodcuts, such as one demonstrating a skeletal, semiregular polyhedron and a spiral staircase (here improving smartly on the staircase attempted a generation earlier by Rodler). In his preface Lencker promises to give the reader not the useless "hull" of the doctrine of perspective but the "kernel". He notes that perspective is a noble art known to physicians and other authorities on nature and the heavens. Lencker explains his methods and instruments in a German-language text but insists on the primacy of the visual evidence" (Wood).
"These model books, issued by professionals for fellow painters, architects, goldsmiths, carpenters, etc., were in constant use and soon worn out [which is] why very few copies have survived" (Hagelin).
With the owner's stamp of the Dutch collector L.A. de Vries on paste-down and a library stamp on the back of the title-page ("Jamniczky Lajos Könyvtárát"). Title-page soiled and with some minor restorations, some small stains on the second leaf, some small wormholes in the last three leaves, one woodcut shaved (several others with the fore-edge margin folded), otherwise in good condition. Berlin Kat. 4696; Honeyman 1985; Kemp, The science of art, p. 62; Vagnetti EIIb27; VD16 L1147; C.S. Wood, "The perspective treatise in ruins" in: The treatise on perspective (2003), p. 236; cf. Hagelin, Art of writing & drawing, p. 133).