Perspective
The most important theme in this book is perspective. Andrea Pozzo wants to reader to properly understand how to draw architecture correctly. He explains that before one can start building things, they first must be knowledgeable in the study of art and drawing. He also prefaces his book with the order that one must fully understand each perspective of a detail of architecture before continuing to the next one and so on. Pozzo carries forward with a note explaining that perspective can oftentimes be deceitful and therefore one should be examined properly and carefully.
For his book, “Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum“ Andrea Pozzo has chosen one hundred different architectural details to explain to the reader. He does so with precise drawings of the chosen detail and a small explanation of the piece. Pozzo calls these architectural details ‘Figures’. These Figures seem to be different pieces of different buildings and design types. That way the book gives a broad understanding of the different types of architecture styles. It is implied that this is fundamental knowledge to architects and should be treated as such.
Pozzo ends his work with a further explanation of the first twelve Figures in order to help the reader properly understand those Figures. By doing that he suggested that these Figures are the ones most important to him.
The most impressive features of “Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum“ to me are the many different drawings that the author included. Especially given the detail of them, I was simply starstruck. I can’t imagine the amount of motivation, time, and willpower it took Andrea Pozzo to finish a book containing this many drawings. Despite these drawings looking so very professional, they are easy to read, an aspect that the author clearly deemed crucial to the understanding of this work.
I was also surprised to see that the initial of each paragraph was embellished with plant-like spirals and small figures of animals or humans. Considering the heavy workload already associated with the book, I would not have expected Mister Pozzo to bother with such a seemingly unimportant task.
Another remarkable feature of Pozzo’s book is the language it is written in. Considering the book is more than three hundred years old, I expected the sentence structure and word choice to be much more difficult to understand. Also taking into account that this book is aimed at professionals, Pozzo has not included many technical names that would make the texts harder to understand.
Geometry – Structure – Precision