BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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Transcribed version of the text

French

     Nicolas Catherinot, born in the château of Lusson in 1628, studied law in Bourges and in Paris where he qualified as a lawyer; again in Bourges in 1650, he practiced as prosecutor and legal advisor to the judicial tribunal and bailiwick of the town, where he died in 1688.  Curious about everything, he wrote many dissertations on the most diverse subjects.  In his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres, Jean-Pierre Niceron, an 18^th century Barnabite compiler, lists no less than 118 books written by this prolific author.  Precision is not always Catherinot's forte: “il y a dans ses nombreux écrits quelque chose de bon & de curieux; mais cela est noyé dans un fatras d'inutilités, qui n'apprennent rien” (1734, p. 192).  So much so that he had the greatest difficulty to find a publisher who was willing to deal with his books; finding it necessary to publish them himself, he was reduced to shortening them, to use only paper of bad quality and to do without a frontispiece.  That is the case with this Traité d'architecture, published in 1688, the year of Catherinot's death, soon after a Traité de la Peinture published in 1687 ; the 24-page book, without illustrations, is even devoid of a title page.  The author gets to the very heart of the matter without a dedication, privilege or introductory words.
It is not a “treatise” on architecture strictly speaking.  Catherinot, aware of his limits in the matter, recognizes himself that his work is not perfectly constructed and that it does not claim to train an architect.  It is a matter of a “mémoire” intending to recall the “aménités de l'architecture” (p. 1).  In fact, headings follow one another, introduced by titles (“Architectes anciens”, “Architectes modernes”, “Empereurs de Rome bâtisseurs”, “Rois de France bâtisseurs”…), which tend to give an impression of a memento, following the example of the Jesuit fathers for their students, like the chapter given over to architecture by Father Binet in his Essai des merveilles de nature published several times starting in 1621.  Like a true well-read person, Catherinot shows his great erudition, nevertheless somewhat heterogeneous.  In architecture, he refers essentially to Vitruvius by means of consulting Philandrier, whom he quotes several times.  He has also read Fra Giocondo (“Frère Jocondi”), Serlio (“Serly”), and Martellange.  His knowledge of real architecture is rather disparate; he readily mentions the buildings in Bourges, Saint-Étienne (“un miracle d'architecture”), Saint-Médard, la Sainte-Chapelle du palais (“un chef-d'œuvre”), l'Hôtel-Dieu, etc. These appreciations testify to the interest in the Gothic during the end of the 17^th century.  Bourges, the capital of the Berry, is cited on an equal footing with Roman antiquities: “le réticulé se voit au Mausolée d'Auguste, au palais Pincien, au tombeau de Virgile et autres lieux d'Italie, et à Bourges aux anciens murs de la ville du côté de Saint Paul”(p. 6).  And Catherinot also mentions the architect who constructed the gallery of the hôtel des Échevins in 1624, “feu M. Jean le Juge, célèbre architecte à Bourges”.
Catherinot's short book stands out because of two ideas found nowhere else.  The first idea consists of transferring to religious orders the stylistic typology that Serlio, following Vitruvius, had conferred on the orders.  In the same way that one can use the Doric, the Ionic and the Corinthian according to the characters of the saints one wants to honor, they can be adapted to the virtues of the religious orders: “ainsi le toscan serait bon pour les religieux de saint François, l'ionique pour ceux de Saint Dominique et le corinthien pour ceux de Saint Benoît et de Saint Ignace” (p. 4). The other originality concerns Hugues Sambin's treatise, not quoted by name, but altogether recognizable: “Termes selon les 5 ordres de l'architecture; j'en ai vu un ramas de 18 imprimé à Lyon en 1572. Le 1 représente Atlas et Atlantide, le 2 le Dolent et la Dolente, le 3 la Nudité, le 4 Hercule et Deianire, le 5 le Fainéant et la Fainéante, le 6 Adam et Eve, le 7 le Captif et la Captive, etc.” (p. 4). These distinctive details, totally missing from the Œuvre de la diversité des termes , bear witness to a lovely imagination.

Yves Pauwels (Centre d'études supérieure de la Renaissance, Tours) – 2011

Critical bibliography

Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne…, 7, Paris, Michaud, 1813, p. 391.

E. Laboulaye, Les axiomes du droit français avec une notice sur la vie et les écrits de l'auteur par Edouard Laboulaye, et une bibliographie raisonnée des écrits de Catherinot par Jacques Flach, Paris, Larose et Forcel, 1883.

P. Niceron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres. Avec un catalogue raisonné de leurs ouvrages, Paris, Briasson, 1734, 29, pp. 191-217.