NO COPY IN US LIBRARIES: NEOCLASSICAL SPANISH ART THEORY, IN POETIC FORM. Large 8vo. [22 x 15 cm]. (12), 135 pp, (1), with three large vignettes printed in sepia and signed by José Vázquez after José Ximeno. Bound in contemporary polished calf with gilt trim; gilt-and-red title label on spine. Joints and foot of spine sympathetically repaired. Some light fingersoiling, otherwise a good copy. Very rare sole edition of this contribution to the history of Spanish art couched in the form of a lengthy ‘didactic poem’ – a mode which became fashionable around the mid-18th century for subjects as diverse as physics (Boscovich) and botany and topography (von Haller). Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva (1754-1796) was a painter better-known for his works on art theory, including translations of the treatises of Leonardo da Vinci and Leon Battista Alberti into Spanish (1784). The present work, printed in Segovia, is his rarest. The main text is divided into three Cantos: Drawing; Composition; and Coloring, while the second half of the book (pp. 89-135) is given over to ‘para-texts’ or footnotes explaining Rejon’s critical take on each literal or allegorical element in his poetry. Each canto is also prefaced by an argumento summarizing the main themes of the section. “The contribution of Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva to the theoretical and artistic debate of the 18th century deserves special attention, especially one of his major works redacted [into a] poetic structure: La Pintura: poema didáctico en tres cantos (1786). His work belongs to the Age of Reason trend of generating new knowledge structures by making versified or ‘prosaic poems’… Complementing the paratextual elements of the didactic poem, at the beginning of each canto there are allegorical engravings that reinforce the union of text and image, encouraging an intellectual vision of pictorial art. Rejón de Silva was personally concerned with the invention of these symbolic images; through these emblems it was intended to synthesize the main attributes and virtues that make up the different sections of pictorial art that were to be interpreted in the cantos, acting as a visual synthesis of the subsequent verses.” (Esparcia). OCLC shows just a handful of copies in Spanish libraries, as well as the BL; no copies are recorded in US libraries. This work seems to have around some modern interest, and was reprinted in a frequently-encountered 1985 facsimile edition. The last copy that we can trace in auction records made an impressive $200 in 1989 at Swann. * Aguilar Piñal 465; Brunet 15302; Palau 256838; and cf Esparcia, “La Pintura: Poema didactico en tres Cantos (1786) de Diego Antonio Rejon de Silva. Una relectura a traves de sus paratextos.” Cuadernos dieciochistas Vol 21 (2020), pp. 303-331.