Among the finest books in the James Branch Cabell Library Special Collections is a recent acquisition (Fall 2005), the 1768 version of Palladia's Quattro Libri dell' architettura , published by Consul Joseph Smith in Venice. On the basis of present work, one can reconstruct Consul Smith's remarkable role in the history of international architecture. More than a century later, at least three major American Renaissance architectural firms owned no fewer than a total of four copies of the volume.This copy came from James Otis Post (1871-1951), son of the eminent George B. Post, who bought a copy of the Smith Palladio in Venice in 1896. Among other firms that owned the volume were Delano and Aldrich and Lawrence Hall Fowler, both important American Renaissance Firms in their own rights.