The book „Cours d’architecture, ou Traité de la décoration, distribution & construction des bâtiments“ by Jacques-François Blondel is organized in 6 volumes plus 2 extra books for the Illustrations. Each volume is again organized in chapters.
The first book begins with the editor’s opinion, a dedicatory epistle and the preface. After that the Table of Contents shows the content of book’s 6 chapters which are again divided in several subchapters and always referenced to the associated drawing, which is to be found in the extra books.
After an Introduction the actual content of the book follows.
All the other 5 books are organized the same way. The header also contains the title of the respective chapter and the chapter is also structured with subtitles. The text is aligned in justified paragraphs. You can find the page number at the top left or right of the Text.
The front of each chapter has calligraphic features and there are only a few illustrations in the books like little ornaments as decoration. There are two separate books containing all the illustrations like architectural drawings, perspective views, details and schematics. These books only contain the drawings and no text. The first one belongs to the books 1-3 and the second one to the books 4-6. The illustrations are numbered and all of them are lettered with some informations about what is shown, plus to which book and chapter they associated to.
Sometimes there are also descriptions in form of a legend with letters shown in the illustration.
The images are depicted bigger as the written part, they usually fill one page, sometimes two. There are even views and floor plans that were displayed so large that the pages had to be extended with foldout spreads.
The book is as the title already says: „containing the lessons given in 1750, & the following years, by J. F. Blondel, Architect, in his School of Art“, an academic study. It is a great work with a big impact as the architect Blondel is best known for his teaching and writing, which contributed greatly to architectural theory and the taste of his time.
Books:
-Volume: 476 pages
-Volume: 450 pages
-Volume: 421 pages
-Volume: 393 pages
-Volume: 465 pages
-Volume: 457 pages
-Illustrations, book I (volume 1-3)
-Illustrations, book II (volume 4-6)