A Book by its Cover

From a modern point of view, Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce is a difficult book to classify. The key organizational decision was to divide the content into two parts, a choice that distinguishes Les Ruines from all preceding works on architecture. The importance of this move is proclaimed on the title page where the work is described as an “ouvrage divisé en deux parties.” Unlike Renaissance treatises made up of different books, Leroy proposes something very different. Rather than presenting the reader with a sequence of topics leading in cumulative fashion toward total mastery of the discipline, Leroy explains that each part will examine exactly the same material, but in different ways. The method is clearly described on the title page: the ruins contained in the book will be examined first from the point of view of history, and then from the point of view of architecture. ¹ The possibility of presenting different points of view in the same publication by one author is surprising, suggesting that there is something unstable about knowledge. Renaissance conventions of architectural writing have been set aside and a different conception is being employed. Indeed, a new conception of the author is being emphasized here, drawing attention to a deep epistemological rupture that radically transformed the author’s enterprise and opened new perspectives for approaching architecture as a historical and aesthetic discipline. ²