BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

Consult in image mode

Transcribed version of the text

French

     Jacques Androuet du Cerceau the Elder, architect, drawer, engraver and editor, settled first in Orleans as head of an engraving workshop, and published his first books from 1540-1550, the Petites habitations (c. 1540) and the Moyens temples (1550). In these collections of engraved plates, he brought together architectural inventions in no order or educational plan. At the end of the 1550s, established in Paris, he implemented in a more methodical way an editorial project of an entirely different intellectual and commercial range. In 1559 he published a first Livre d'architecture, to which he added a supplement, the Second livre d'architecture in 1561. Then, after having finished editing the Plus excellents bastiments de France (1576-1579), an anthology without its equal in Europe at that time, he completed the series of the books on models in 1582, publishing a third Livre d'architecture.
The first Livre contained fifty models of residences for all classes of society and all purses; the third Livre showed twenty-eight.
The 1582 Livre appeared in the same circumstances as the 1559 version. In spite of political troubles, the construction sector, thus the market for books of models, did not slow down. The new collection was not only a response to foreign publications, to Andrea Palladio's Quattro libri dell'architettura (Venice, 1570), to Sebastiano Serlio's Livre VII (in Latin and Italian, Frankfurt am Main, 1575) but also to works published in France, in particular those by Philibert Delorme so critical to the "faiseurs d'images" (Nouvelles inventions pour bien bastir, Paris, 1561; Le premier tome de l'architecture, Paris, 1567). But outside of his commercial interests, Du Cerceau also defends his scientific objectives, the heuristic action of the design, and particularly of the drawing in perspective.

Françoise Boudon (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris) – 2004

Critical bibliography

J. Androuet du Cerceau, Les trois livres d’architecture : Paris, 1559, 1561, 1582, (facsimile edition ), Ridgewood N. J., Gregg Press Inc., 1965.

J. Androuet du Cerceau, Les plus excellents bastiments de France..., D. Thomson (ed.), Paris, Sand & Conti, 1988 (Documentary chronology and general bibliography, pp. 310-316).

F. Boudon, "Les livres d’architecture de Jacques Androuet du Cerceau", J. Guillaume (ed.), Les traités d’architecture de la Renaissance, Paris, Picard, 1988, pp. 367-396.

M. Chatenet, "Les maisons des champs de papier : fiction et réalité des modèles de Jacques Androuet du Cerceau", M. Chatenet (ed.), La Maison des champs dans l’Europe de la Renaissance, Paris, Picard, 2006, pp. 69-86.

H. von Geymüller, Les Du Cerceau. Leur vie et leur œuvre d’après les nouvelles recherches, Paris/London, Rouam/Wood & Co, 1887.

D. Thomson, Renaissance Architecture. Critics Patrons Luxury, Manchester/New York, Manchester UP, 1993.

D. Thomson, "Les trois Livres d’architecture de Jacques I^er Androuet Du Cerceau, à Paris en 1559, 1561 et 1582", S. Deswarte-Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie Lyon, Mémoire Active, 2004, pp. 449-450.