Choisy, Auguste
L’art de bâtir chez les Romains.
Paris, Librairie Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics (Ducher et Cie), 1873.
Full Description
Large 4to. (8 + 216 + (4) + 2 + (2)pp, 24 engraved plates (3 double-page), 100 text ills. Publisher’s board portfolio, with ties, slightly defective at spine, with printed paper label on upper cover. A few leaves slightly abraded at their outer margins (due to their having been kept loose in the portfolio), and a little spotting on the outer margins of the plates, but the text pages generally very clean and fresh.
First edition of the earliest in a series of publications on the architecture of the ancient world by Auguste Choisy (1841-1909), Professor of Architecture at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris and the greatest expert of his time on the structural aspects of Greek and Roman architecture. Here he focuses particularly on the processes used in the vaulting of Roman buildings, and on the underlying geometric methodology, and his conclusions represent a real advance on all previous studies of the topic.