The title already reveals a lot about the content of the book “Instituzione pratica dell’ architettura civile per la decorazione de’ pubblici, e privati edifice” followed by “preceduta da un articolo di Geometria in pratica ad uso delli disegnatori, et artefici / di Paolo Federico Bianchi” which translated in English means Practical institution of civil architecture for the decoration of public and private buildings preceded by an article of geometry in practice for the use of draftsmen and architects. So, from my understanding, this book is meant to be read by architects and draftsmen. The content we can read out of the title of the book, is also quite straight forward as we can also read from the title that it is about decoration of public and private buildings.
The book has an introduction an article and 6 chapters for the first have of the book and for the rest is followed by illustrations.
The book is filled with illustrations. The first illustrations are at the start of every chapter, above its title. Most illustrations come after the first half of the book like geometrical shapes and mostly Columns.
A book with almost 600 pages seems to me to be quite thick. The thickness of the book is directly related to the many illustrations that in has.
The author of this book is Paolo Frederico Bianchi, an architect of Milan. The monastery Square in Einsiedeln was build according to Paolo’s plans. I think his intentions with this book was to educate the reader on the decoration of buildings.