Publisher’s sales brochure “Traité du beau essential dans les arts …” Charles Etienne Briseux

Publisher’s sales brochure for the work “Traité du beau essential dans les arts …”

By Charles Etienne Briseux.

Published in Paris in 1752.

4 pages.

36.6 x 25.5 cm.

sold

The dispute between François Blondel and Claude Perrault is one of the most famous and far-reaching controversies in the history of architecture. It forms the architectural centerpiece of the famous literary and philosophical debate known as the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes (The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns). Although the dispute took place in 1683, Charles-Étienne Briseux did not publish his *Traité du beau essentiel dans les arts* until 1752—almost 70 years later. As the text on the brochure shows, Briseux saw Perrault’s theory as the root cause of architecture’s decline. In the first half of the 18th century, the whimsical, asymmetrical Rococo style (the “style rocaille”) had become established in France. For traditionalists like Briseux, this style was pure “whim and caprice.” With his book, Briseux sought to refute Perrault retroactively by attempting to prove, through mathematics and “physics,” that harmonious proportions are, after all, an absolute, unchanging reality. It was a desperate attempt to defend the old architectural order against modernity.