François Blondel’s 1673 treatise „Resolution Des Quatre Principaux Problemes D’Architecture. Dediée A Monseigneur Colbert, Ministre Et Secretaire D’Estat, Surintendant Des Bastimens, Arts, Et Manufactures De France. Par M. François Blondel, de l’Academie Royale des Sciences, Directeur & Professeur en l’Academie Royale d’Architecture, & des Mathematiques au College Royal, Maréchal de Camp és Armées du Roy, & Maistre des mathematiques de Monseigneur le Dauphin.“
provides just such a description. The book deals with concrete problems of the kind encountered regularly in architectural practice and seeks to solve them in light both of the history of mathematics and of contemporary research in that field.
The book is printed by hand, which means that there are sometimes misprints and certain texts and pictures are slightly crooked on the page. For each new chapter there is an introductory page with a title followed by a short texts and two drawings, the smaller of which is a floral-decoratedt initial letter, but both seemed to serve only as decoration. Also each chapter is closed with an illustration, again I don’t see any educational purpose behind it. All these illustrations are also only for decoration.
But at the end of the book you can find eight full pages of architectural drawings and perspective views. Neither the illustrations nor the architectural drawings are numbered or referenced.
Compared to the text the pictures take up only a small part of the book. On 115 pages I could count 24 pictures.