Les plus excellents bastiments de France
Les plus excellents bastiments de France is an 1868 Heidelberg University Library reproduction of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau's sixteenth-century engraved survey of French royal and noble châteaux, with plans and elevations drawn for a learned audience of architects and collectors. The pictures are crisp black-line engravings of ground plans, garden layouts and symmetrical façades, with dense parterres, hipped roofs and pilastered windows; a designer could draw on their geometric garden patterns, balanced frontispieces and clean hatched stonework for historical or classical architectural motifs.
