BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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Transcribed version of the text

French

     We know very little about the life of Georg Andreas Böckler, an engineer and architect probably born in Strasbourg, active in Frankfurt and Nuremberg as well as in Franconia and at Ansbach where he died in 1687, in service to the Margrave Johann Friedrich von Brandenburg-Ansbach (1654-1686). The Compendium architecturæ civilis was his first publication, a compilation of several Italian authors: Vitruvius, Vignola, Palladio, Serlio and Scamozzi. It begins with a lexicon giving the German equivalent of Latin and Italian terms, and like Vitruvius, continues with general considerations of the qualities necessary to the architect, on placing buildings, on materials, etc. Most of the book deals with the orders. Here Böckler shows models of the Italian masters in a sort of comparison, endeavoring to reproduce the details in plates which compare the authors, without, however, putting into place a regular system of couples as did Fréart de Chambray in his Parallèle in 1650. Böckler’s intention was in fact not to compare them in order to establish a value system, but more simply, to summarize the various sources to offer them to German readers.
Böckler is better known for his books on engineering and hydraulics, the basis of his main reputation, the Theatrum machinarum novum (1661), an occasionally literal resumption of the publications by Agostino Ramelli, Jacopo Strada, Vittorio Zonca and Salomon de Caus, and l’Architectura curiosa nova (1664). He also left several treatises on architecture, among them a German adaptation of Palladio’s books I-II (Die Baumeisterin Pallas, oder der in Teutschland erstandene Palladius, das ist... Palladii zwey Bücher von der Bau-Kunst..., 1698).

Yves Pauwels (Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours) – 2014

Critical bibliography

W. Bürger, “Georg Andreas Böckler – Architekt, Ingenieur und hochfürstlicher Baumeister”, Ansbach, gestern und heute, 13/14, 1978, pp. 314-321, 328-333.

C. Graf von Klinckowstroem, “Böckler, Georg Andreas”, Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1955.

B. Vollmar, Die deutsche Palladio-Ausgabe des Georg Andreas Böckler, Nürnberg 1698. Ein Beitrag zur Architekturtheorie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Ansbach, Historischer Verein für Mittelfranken, 1983.