“La science des ombres” from Dupain de Montesson is a book about plans related to war, navigation and civil and military architecture and engineering.
“La science des ombres ” is a kind of course about how to draw shadows and how the shadows are used in various situations .
The texts are all along the pages with margins on the sides and on the top and bottom of the pages. The writing is not that small, rather medium and the titels are big written. We can see that it is an old font type. Through the book and the drawings Dupain de Montesson is analyising different ways to draw shadows, landscapes, maps and also uses colors for wood for example. He is also using different perspectives and mathematics for his analysis. He explains the rules to know the form, the species , the length and the width of shadows from the different objects on different surfaces which can be vertical, flat, convex or concave.
The drawings and illustrations are in the end of the book. So the book is divided in 2 parts: the first part is the texts and the second part is the illustrations and the drawings. These are in foldout spreads and all together at the end of the book. All drawings are numbered and divided in alphabets parts. The text has the same importance as the drawings because the two go together. They can’t be separated otherwise it is incomprehensible. Through this analysis of technical drawings of threedimensional structures, he describes the projection of the shadow and their geometry.
The text and the images are necessary to understand and explain the art of shadows and is very helpful for artists, draughtsmen, civil and military architecture and engineering.