The full title of the book is: „LI CINQUE ORDINI DELL’ ARCHITETTURA CIVILE DI MICHEL SANMICHELI Rilevati dalle due Fabriche, E descritti e publicati con quelli di Vitruvio, Alberti, Palladio, Scamozzi, Serlio e Vignola DAL CO: ALESSANDRO POMPEI.“ I think it states that the book summarizes the work of all those great men in the title to bring a uniform recipe of architecture to the reader. It seems to be meant for architects and not just for interested amateurs.
The book doesn’t have a list of contents. It starts with the proemio and then jumps right into the first chapter.
The book has many illustrations. They are very detailed and seem closely related to the texts of each chapter. Some of them seem just like nicely made pictures to illustrate contents and make the book feel more precious. Others are really technical and describe proportions, curves and different styles of decoration. Also there is a portrait of all the men mentioned in the title before their respective chapter in the book.
The book is in the folio format. Before I saw it in person I thought it was printed in a larger format because the content seems very important and fundamental – for me an attribute for big and thick books. But also its thickness plays against this expectation: It was thinner than I expected but not strangely thin. Still, I would generally expect a book out of a series to be in such a format and not a single release.
The Author, Michele Sanmicheli, is from Pompei, Italy. He was an architect and very fond of palazzi and fortified buildings. He lived from 1484 – 1559 and was born and died in Verona.
As already stated in the beginning I think he wants to provided a summary for future architects about all the research that was already done on ancient architecture to also continue his style of building.