Palladio/Le Muet - Traicté des cinq ordres d'architecture desquels se sont servy les Anciens. Traduit du Palladio - 1679

Le Muet, Pierre (1591-1669)


Small octavo. Frontispiece title, 26 unnumbered pages. Title of the second part, pages 29 to 59. There are 32 plates in the first part; 43 in the second, totaling 75 plates outside the text. Complete. Tear in the lower corner of page 7 without loss of letters or words. Moisture stain in the upper part, affecting the entire book.

Full brown leather, period binding. The spine of the front cover is split along the length of the case, with a small loss of leather at the top of the spine. There are scuffs and the cardboard of both covers slightly bulges, likely due to moisture exposure.

Le Muet was an engineer-architect for Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII, and Anne of Austria. Among his works are the completion of the Val de Grâce and the Château of Tanlay, as well as the plans and drawings for the Hôtel Coquet, Hôtel Davaux, Hôtel Tubeuf, and the one in Chevreuse. Unlike Fréart de Chambray in 1650, he did not provide a full translation of the Italian treatise, but only a translation of the first book, revised and corrected (Traicté des cinq ordres...), in a more practical octavo format.