A hundred engraved plates of the orders measured from ancient buildings (Paestum, Aegina, the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, Priene, the Pantheon) set beside the rules of Vignola, Palladio, Serlio and Scamozzi, each plate with a page of commentary. The English edition of 1910 translated the commentary for American students.
Johann Matthäus von Mauch, a professor at Stuttgart and a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, drew the orders not as a single canon but as a sequence of real buildings. His plates put the Doric of Paestum, Olympia and the Parthenon at one scale so that the reader can watch the column grow taller and the entablature lighter over two centuries; they follow the Ionic from the Ilissus temple and the Erechtheum to Asia Minor and Rome, and the Corinthian from the Monument of Lysicrates to the temples of the Roman forum. Only after the monuments does he turn to the Renaissance masters, and he judges their rules against what the ancient builders actually did.
The commentary is a working architect’s: it measures, compares and criticises. Mauch complains when a profile is weak or a member overloaded, points out how the Greeks adjusted each part to its real size and its distance from the eye, and warns against order-books that give one rule for columns of every size and material. He also gives practical constructions, notably several ways of drawing the Ionic volute with compasses, one of them his own, and a set of plates on doorways, windows, arches and ornament.
The Architectural Reprint of Washington issued the plates in 1910 with the descriptions translated by E. R. A. Litzau and edited by W. B. Olmsted, who used a later German edition to supplement the text and added footnotes. The text here is that translation, transcribed from the scan and cleaned; the engraved plates themselves are not reproduced, and the figures in the reader are this book’s own models.
The book, part by part
I Plates 1–3: The orders compared
A frontispiece; the principal ancient orders at one scale; and the Greek Doric from five monuments in date order, showing the column rise from little over four diameters to six and the architrave grow lower.
Rules: The Doric column grew taller and its entablature lighter · An anta as wide as the architrave it carries
II Plates 4–17a: The Greek Doric
The temples at Paestum, Aegina, Olympia, the Theseion, the Parthenon, Rhamnus, Bassae, Eleusis and Nemea, the portico of Philip on Delos, the monument of Thrasyllus and the tholos at Epidauros: proportions, entasis and inclination, cornices, tiles, painted ornament and construction.
III Plates 18–29: Roman Doric and Tuscan
The Doric of the Theatre of Marcellus, Albano and the Baths of Diocletian, and the Doric and Tuscan rules of Palladio, Scamozzi, Vignola, Serlio, de l’Orme and Viala, with the names of every member.
IV Plates 30–52: The Ionic
The Ilissus temple, the Erechtheum, Bassae, Eleusis, Priene and Miletus; Roman Ionic at the temple of Fortuna Virilis and the Theatre of Marcellus; the masters’ Ionic; and the geometry of the volute according to Mauch, Vitruvius, Palladio, Vignola, Davile and Goldmann.
V Plates 53–82: The Corinthian and Composite
The Monument of Lysicrates in four plates, Greek capitals from Eleusis, Bassae and Miletus, the Tower of the Winds; the Roman Corinthian of Tivoli, the Pantheon, the temples of the Forum and the Arch of Constantine; the masters’ Corinthian; the Composite of the arches of Titus and Septimius Severus and of Palladio and Vignola.
Rules: Proportion each order for its real size · The Greek egg-and-dart · The Composite capital: Ionic volutes on Corinthian leaves
VI Plates 83–100: Caryatids, details and monuments
The Erechtheum caryatids and those of the Louvre; entablatures, imposts and architrave soffits; the proportions of the orders (entasis, taper, intercolumniation, pediments); ornament; grave stelae and candelabra; doorways and windows from Athens, Tivoli, Cora and the Renaissance; arches on columns; and a restored view of the Street of Tripods in Athens.