Nouveau Traité De Toute L'Architecture Ou L'Art De Bastir; Utile Aux Entrepreneurs Et Aux Ouvriers. On y trouvera aisément & sans fraction la mesure de chaque Ordre de Colonnes; & ce qu'il faut observer dans les Edifices publics ou particuliers. Avec un Dictionnaire des termes d'Architecture, &c. Par M. De Cordemoy, Chanoine Regulier de Saint Jean de Soissons, & Prieur de la Ferté-sous-Joüars.
A Paris,: Chez Jean-Baptiste Coignard, Imprimeur ordinaire du Roy & de l'Académie Françoise, ruë saint Jacques, à la Bible d'Or., M. DCC. XIV. Avec Approbation Et Privilege De Sa Majesté.
Physical Description
[16], 290, [2] p., 10 pl.; 260 mm. (Quarto.)
Contents
[T.p., dedic.] - Avertissement - Table Des Chapitres contenus dans ce Traité - [Text] - Table Des Matieres; Fautes à corriger; Approbation; Privilege Du Roy - [Plates].
Responsibility Note
Some plates are signed as engraved by de Rochefort. (It may be that all ten plates carry his signature; they have been closely cropped in the Royal Academy's copy.)
The title-page vignette is unsigned; the dedic. headpiece and that at the head of the text are signed as designed and engraved by S. le Clerc.
The work is dedicated by De Cordemoy to the Duc D'Orléans.
References
National Gallery (Washington), Mark J. Millard, I (1993), no.54, p.122-3; Johns Hopkins University, The Fowler Architectural Collection (1961), no. 91, p.74-5.
D. Nyberg, 'La Sainte antiquité: focus of an eighteenth-century architectural debate', in Essays in the history of architecture presented to Rudolf Wittkower (1967), p. 159-69; R. Middleton, 'The Abbé de Cordemoy and the Graeco-Gothic ideal', in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 25 (1962), p. 278-320; 26 (1963), p. 90-123.
Summary Note
The treatise was first published in 1706; this second edition incorporates letters responding to criticisms by A.F. Frézier.
Addressed to both students and amateurs, the work is a statement of the principles of architecture, adapted from Claude Perrault. It includes Cordemoy's advocacy of a synthesis of classical and Gothic architecture in church design. Some of Cordemoy's ideas were developed further by G. Boffrand, G. Soufflot, A.B. Desgodets, M.A. Laugier and Sir John Soane.
Provenance
Bought by the Academy in 1779 (RAA cash book 1779).
Copy Note
Inscribed in ink on front endpaper with architectural drawings and calculations.
Binding Note
18th-century calf; rebacked in 1996; red morocco spine-label, lettered 'Trait D'Arch'.
Subject
Architecture - History
Architecture, French - France - 18th century
Manuals - Treatises - France - 18th century
Pictorial works - France - 18th century