[Claude Perrault]
Les Dix Livres d’Architecture de Vitruve, Corrigez et traduitz nouvellement en françois avec des notes et des figures
[Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture, corrected and newly translated in French with notes and pictures]
[Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture, corrected and newly translated in French with notes and pictures]
Paris, Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1673
(Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro)
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| Fig. 1) The frontispiece of the second edition of the De Architectura edited by Perrault, published in 1684 Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B250566101_11604.asp |
[N.B. On Vitruvius see in this blog
also: Francesca Salatin, An Introduction to Fra Giocondo's Vitruvius (1511); Vitruvius,
On Architecture, Edited by Pierre Gros. Translation and Commentary by Antonio
Corso and Elisa Romano. Essays by Maria Losito, Turin, Einaudi, 1997; Giovanni
Mazzaferro, Rare
Books and a Great Discovery: a Specimen of Vitruvius' De Architectura Annotated
by Cosimo Bartoli; El
Greco. The miracle of naturalness. The artistic thought of El Greco through the
margin notes to Vitruvius and Vasari. Edited by Fernando Marías and José Riello,
Rome, Castelvecchi, 2017; The
Annotations by Guillaume Philandrier on Vitruvius' De Architectura. Books I to
IV. Edited by Frédérique Lemerle, Paris, Piccard, 2000; Marco
Vitruvio Pollione's Architecture, translated and commented by the Marquis Berardo
Galiani. Foreword by Alessandro Pierattini (unabriged reprint of Naples
edition, 1790), Rome, Editrice Librerie Dedalo, 2005; Claude
Perrault, Les Dix Livres d’Architecture de Vitruve, Corrigez et traduitz
nouvellement en françois avec des notes et des figures, Paris, Jean Baptiste
Coignard, 1673; Vitruvius,
Ten Books on Architecture. The Corsini Incunabulum with the annotations and
autograph drawings of Giovanni Battista da Sangallo. Edited by Ingrid D.
Rowland, Edizioni dell’Elefante, 2003; Massimo
Mussini, Francesco di Giorgio e Vitruvio. Le traduzioni del 'De architectura'
nei codici Zichy, Spencer 129 e Magliabechiano II.I.141, Leo S. Olschki, 2003;
Francesco
di Giorgio Martini, La traduzione del De Architectura di Vitruvio. A cura di
Marco Biffi, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2002; Francesco
di Giorgio Martini, Il "Vitruvio Magliabechiano". A cura di Gustina
Scaglia, Gonnelli editore, 1985.]
[1] The National Library of France has made available an impressive number of works, freely downloadable in pdf format, on its official website (http://gallica.bnf.fr). It is an immense heritage, from which we have drawn (in pdf format) this copy of De Architectura by Vitruvius in the translation of Claude Perrault, printed in Paris in 1673 for the types of Jean Baptiste Coignard. That by Perrault is the second integral translation in French, after the edition published in 1547 by Jean Martin
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| Fig. 2) The page preceding the frontispecie in the 1684 edition Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B250566101_11604.asp |
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| Fig. 3) Vitruvius/Perrault ed, 1684. Human body proportions Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B250566101_11604.asp |
[3] Vagnetti and Marcucci write (p. 97): "This second French translation of De Architectura, curated by the famous physician and architect of the Court of Louis XIV Claude Perrault, was held in great value especially for the quality of the comments accompanying it, which helped clarify its obscure passages. It is... a free translation, for whose completion he used the best editions appeared earlier and also consulted some codes not yet examined before, leaving, however, no indication of such comparisons. The purpose Perrault proposed himself, in fact, was not so much of philological accuracy... but, as he said openly in the preface of the work, the utility for the artists who, according to the directives given by the authoritarian politics of the Sun King and of his minister Colbert, were required to comply with the guidelines of Classicism. In this sense, the translation by Claude Perrault and its highly numerous replicas, either in whole or in summary, can be considered as an authentic operation of cultural policy sought by the power, which rightly saw in the architecture one of the tools of most immediate propaganda and the affirmation of its presence." These are statements which one must agree with. Twenty new editions of the translation by Perrault have been counted by Vagnetti and Marcucci; one can certainly say that in reality one is not simply facing a translation, but that Vitruvius speaks French in Europe at least throughout the 1700s (thanks also to the diffusion of this language as a communication tool, common to noble classes and to scholarship) and is no longer translated from Latin or Italian, but from the French itself. Vitruvius speaks French in Holland, England, Spain, Russia, Germany, and even in Italy, where the edition by Daniele Barbaro is losing its importance and (more or less abridged) summaries of Perrault are published; and even the Italian scholars who confront themselves with Vitruvius in the eighteenth century (see Poleni in Exercitationes vitruvianae (Exercises on Vitruvius) or Berardo Galiani and his translation of 1758 take Perrault into due account.
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| Fig. 4) Vitruvius/Perrault ed, 1684. Ionic order Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B250566101_11604.asp |
[4] Claude Perrault was born as a scientist. He studies, teaches and writes about physics and medicine. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences since its foundation in 1666. He is actively involved in architecture; he is one of the leading figures of the committee that designs and reorganizes the eastern facade of the Louvre with its colonnade, once the project by Bernini had failed (or, rather, had let be failed). It is also a member of the Royal Academy of Architecture, founded by Colbert in 1671. Maria Luisa Scalvini writes (p. 643): "For all its talents, Claude has excellent credentials to be entrusted with the mission of a new translation of Vitruvius: like all medical graduates of the Sorbonne, he knows Greek and Latin; since he was a youngster, his love for drawing led him to cultivate his taste and to exercise his hand (the known autograph drawings give an indisputable testimony of it); his considerable knowledge of mechanics finally... in an era still far from any specialisation certainly allows him to deal with the difficulties of the Vitruvian text with high hopes of being able to interpret even its darkest passages, also providing those preparatory drawings from which Sébastien Leclerc will take their etchings." And, of course, also the right acquaintances have their own importance. Claude is the older brother of Charles, a literate but especially one of the closest associates of the minister Colbert for a long time.
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| Fig. 5) Vitruvius/Perrault ed, 1684. Corinthian Capitals Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B250566101_11604.asp |
[5] We told the editorial success of the work. We are doing it again, and we are stressing that the translation by Perrault was the subject of careful reading by members of the Royal Academy of Architecture in June of 1674 (and the evaluation was positive). It is worth repeating these circumstances because Perrault is now seen as the one who, in the field of architecture theory, gave birth (or rather gave a new impulse) to the querelle des anciens et des modernes (the controversy of ancients et moderns). On the controversy and its prevalent literary aspects (which, let us not forget, saw Charles Perrault personally involved we are mentioning La disputa sei-settecentesca sugli antichi e sui moderni (The dispute on the ancients and the moderns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) by Maria Teresa Marcialis. We are focusing instead our attention a bit longer on the debate in the field of architectural theory. It should first be noted that Claude Perrault was not only the material author of the translation of the De Architectura of Vitruvius in 1673, but ten years later (1683) also published a short, but of capital importance, writing, called Ordonnance des cinq espèces de colonnes selon la méthode des anciens (On the order of five species of columns according to the method of the ancients). In the translation as well as in the Ordonnance (but with much greater force on the second occasion) Claude gave expression to undoubtedly revolutionary theories for the classicism of his era. In particular, he supported the existence of two types of "beauty": a positive beauty that is based on the purpose of the building, the materials that are used to build it, its soundness, health and comfort; and an arbitrary beauty, which depends instead on the uses and customs of the time; as such, the arbitrary beauty can therefore vary over time. The proportions and in particular the concept of symmetry that was always associated with Vitruvius (i.e. the relationship between the individual parts of the human body and the column) are not a truth hidden in nature, and the architect's task is not to succeed to detect such hidden truth, but varies with taste and times (and the task of authorities is that, through the Academies, to direct architects towards the "right" building models for the time). When the translation of the De Architectura is published, the general judgment on the work is certainly positive, even by that François Blondel who is the director of the Academy of Architecture. Then, of course, Perrault and Blondel have the opportunity to mature and better weigh their opinions, and they proceed to an open conflict: on the one hand Perrault, modern theorist, on the other Blondel, who wrote five volumes of his Cours d'architecture (Course of Architecture) between 1675 and 1683, advocating the "old-fashioned" theory of proportions. It remains the fact that, whatever one may have thought, the reference text of Vitruvius was that in the translation by Perrault, from 1673 onwards.
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| Fig. 6) Vitruvius/Perrault ed, 1684. Doric order Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B250566101_11604.asp |
[6] On the hypothesis that the statements by Perrault have been affected in some indirect way by the ideas advocated by Simon Stevin, see the notes to Charles van den Heuvel, De Huysbou. A reconstruction of an unfinished treatise on architecture, town planning and civil engineering by Simon Stevin
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