First, I gave architecture as the element for the topic of conversation. As I typed in again architecture, in the Xenotheka library,more than 10’000 results were recommended to my request. I wanted to narrow them down to ‘only’ 1’000 results by adding system to my already searched architecture topic. But it didn’t help at all. I scrolled through the first 20 books but none of them satisfied my expectations, so I figured I would take a look into the in the library of St. Augustine’s Friends. Unfortunately, the desired outcome didn’t appear. However, the overwhelming number of books was clearly smaller. Now only 269 books were under consideration.
Finally, I came across a book that showed similarities with mine (Sebastiano Serlio’s Tutte Le Opere d’Architettura Et Prospettiva). The Sketchbook by Villard d’Honnecourt is, like the title already tells us, focused on sketches. These are, unlike the ones in Serlio’s work, not only about buildings and architecture but also people and figures are represented. Serlio’s series was written around 400 years later than the one by d’Honnecourt. Latter only drew particular elements of architecture without the intention of focusing on this topic. Still, the drawings reminded me of the ones that Serlio implemented in his work.
After that, I changed the library back to the Xenotheka and set a new topic, namely sketch. Into the search bar I put the name of Vitruvius, since Sebastiano Serlio was one of the first to collect the copies and translate into the italian language Vitruvius’ work. Then I found a rather modern book from 1994 by Sanders named The Art and Architecture of London referring back to Vitruvius and Palladio in his report. It doesn’t really have a lot in common with the Sebastiano’s book itself, but I thought it was interesting that until now Vitruvius has been such an important character in the history of architecture.