The Perspective pratique nécessaire à tous peintres, graveurs, sculpteurs, architectes, orfèvres, brodeurs, tapissiers & autres se servants du dessein is a work about perspective. It’s a collection of various methods of creating perspective which were known and used at that time. It’s a practical knowledge book of the art of perspectival drawing.
The book is structured accordingly. It begins with a purely textual introduction and follows with the first chapter. A typical double page is structured as followed: The header is the title of the book “La perspective practique”. Below it is the main title of the respective chapter. On the left page there is an explanatory text for example about definitions and the main terms used in perspective.
On the right page are different perspective drawings. They represent different drawing techniques. Often two different drawings are shown on one page. The two perspective drawings are vertically organised, that means one above the other. The illustrations are about different perspective topics for example views, foreshortening, exposure and shading. For this reason, the illustrations are usually labelled at specific parts (for example the light source) with letters to link the drawing to the text. In that way it’s easier to follow the text while watching the illustrations.
In general, we can say that the text has the same measure as the pictures, because of the one page text and one page picture. In this kind of reading both aspects are important for the readers, so they have a theory (text) on the left page and the practice (illustration) on the right page.
At the end of the book you will find a table of contents of the various illustrations. They are arranged alphabetically with the respective page number behind.