Abstract: Vitruvius’s text was reputed to be corrupted and obscure in the early Renaissance period. Without the illustrations that the author composed himself for what was intended to be Book xi, understanding some of the technical aspects of the treatise was extremely arduous. With the publication by the Verona humanist Fra Giovanni Giocondo of his first edition of the De architectura, in Venice, in 1511, the fortune of the treatise changed for the better. This paper considers the transformations with occurred in the preliminary material of Latin and vernacular editions of Vitruvius’s treatise that were published during the first half of the sixteenth century.
