Traite de Perspective

This is the most complete, one of the most influential and without a doubt the most beautiful book on perspective ever published. Every other page has a description of the principle being illustrated, followed by a hand engraved plate (in the original you can see the impressions the plates made on the page) to illustrate the principle. The descriptions are in French but as you can see from the plates, each plate is drawn with such care and clarity that even a reader who does not know French can easily understand the principles illustrated. Some of the plates are repeated so that the description of the principle and the illustration may appear consecutively because sometimes the plates illustrate two ideas, or the description exceeds the length of a page. The first plates show a small human figure to demonstrate the position of the eye. Later plates show the various complexities of drawing perspective including curved figures, shadows, and reflections.