PREFACE.

...discover the qualities and properties of things, care little about seeking with great labor the names that different times and peoples have given them; being more curious to learn the things that the learned knew, than the terms with which they explained them.

But experience having shown that it is in vain that one has hoped and waited for so long for this man provided with all the sufficiency required to explain this Author; the need that our French Architects have to know the precepts contained in this excellent book, has led to the undertaking of this translation. It has been done as well as possible with the help of the most famous Interpreters who have worked on it for one hundred and sixty years, the principal of whom are Fra Giocondo, Cesare Cesariano, Giovanni Battista Caporali, Guillaume Philandrier, Daniele Barbaro, and Bernardino Baldi. These were the giants of Renaissance architectural theory: Giocondo produced the first illustrated Vitruvius (1511); Philandrier was a French scholar who worked with Serlio; Barbaro’s edition (1556) featured illustrations by Palladio; and Baldi was a mathematician and philologist.

It has been one hundred and twenty years since two learned men, one in literature and the other in Architecture—namely Jean Martin, Secretary to the Cardinal de Lenoncourt, and Jean Goujon, Architect to the French Kings Francis I and Henry II—undertook this same work, to which they applied themselves jointly and with much care. Jean Martin was a prolific 16th-century translator; Jean Goujon is considered one of the greatest French Renaissance sculptors and architects. But the little success their labor achieved shows clearly that to complete this enterprise, the knowledge of Letters and that of Architecture must be joined in one and the same person, and to a degree that is above the common. Indeed, Cesare Cesariano, who had some inkling of literature, as appears by his commentaries, and who had also devoted himself to the study of Architecture as one of the disciples of Bramante Donato Bramante (1444–1514), the architect who designed the original plans for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. (the first Architect of the Moderns), did not succeed in his work on Vitruvius because he was only moderately provided with these two qualities; and Baldi says he is only estimable because he was industrious.

The versions by these Authors are not read by Architects because of their obscurity, which should not be blamed so much on the language (which is very different from that currently in use) as on the impossibility of making understood that which one does not well understand oneself.

Although for the same reasons there is cause to believe that this new translation will produce hardly a better effect, and that the slight clarification it may have added to that which so many great personages have already unsuccessfully striven to give this Author is small in comparison to the great number of difficulties that remain to be overcome; one does not despair, nevertheless, that it may be of some use—even to those who know the Latin language. Indeed, many people who could understand everything explained here if they applied themselves as we have done, may be very pleased not to be obliged to take that trouble.

Regarding those who do not have an understanding of Latin, and of the Greek terms with which this work is filled (and who are properly the persons for whom this translation is made), they will find in the reading of this book a facility that is not in other translations. In those, most Interpreters have not taken the trouble to explain difficult phrases or words, but have instead "dressed them up" and, as the saying goes, merely "flayed" them. Perrault is criticizing the practice of creating "loanwords" by simply changing the suffix of a Latin word to sound French or Italian without actually translating the meaning. For example, explaining angulos jugumentare original: "angulos jugumentare" (to join/frame the corners) as "to jugument the angles"; trabes everganæ original: "trabes everganæ" (sloping beams) as "everganeous beams"; or scapi cardinales original: "scapi cardinales" (the main stiles or shafts of a door) as "cardinal scapes." Others have placed the interpretation immediately after the words in the text itself; this is inconvenient because one does not know if these kinds of interpretations are from the text (as indeed there sometimes are), or if it is the Translator who added them: as when one finds these...