As I already mentioned in the pervious tasks, the book “L’ expérience de l’architecture militaire où l’on apprendra a fonds la méthode” from De Martins consist of a written part and mixed in pictures. It is written in black ink and every paragraph is situated in the middle of the page, not at the border. Because of the books very small size, the text appears to be quiet big in proportion to the page size.
How is the text composed and organized on the pages (e.g. columns, headings, margins, font size and type)?
The book in its whole has about 153 pages, after the preface, comes the more important part about the subject written before which has about 135 pages. It is organized in 13 chapters headed with roman numbers. The text is very grounded but the initial letter at the beginning of each chaperts are decorated in a similar Corinthian way (with flowers and plants). For the normal text the font size is the same but the chapters ( Figura) have a different size and they are written Niconne. The different chaperts are written in roman numbers.
The organization of the images is very interesting. They are all shaped the same way: A double page, where there should be one, able to unfold it and see the full image, everything in black and white. They show mostly Perspectives and ground plans but also some precise measurement methods and sizes of the architectural walls. Also the measuers get a lot of importance, because in the military architecture back then, I suppose, it was very important to have an exact measurement method to build walls as stable as even possible. Also some cities in the background of the picture were drawn to make the picture look less more dynamic.
So my guess is that the book, because of its size and its big drawings, used to be more like a handbook for engineers and architects to put it in the pocket and take it to the construction scene.
(I translated the book into a Txt. with adobe acrobat. Wanted to upload it, but the page says: De_Martins_L’ expérience_de_l’architecture_militaire.txt: Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons.
/Users/cangemi/Downloads/De_Martins_L’ expérience_de_l’architecture_militaire.txt