Perrault's Preface as a theory of beauty

“The ancients rightly believed that the proportional rules that make buildings beautiful were taken from the proportions of the human body….” So opens the Preface to Claude Perrault's Ordonnance des cinq espèces de colonnes, published in 1683. As is well known, the Preface proceeds to refute that the beauty of buildings depends on the degree to which their dimensions adhere to a specific system of ratios. The only “things that architecture has well established” are that the orders can be distinguished “with little exactitude or precision” on the basis of their “proportions” (the ratios of their dimensions) and “characters” or ornaments. For the “precise measurement of their members” there is no absolute rule, just as for “the exact outline of [the] profiles” of the ornaments. In fact, “a number of architects have approached an equal degree of perfection in different ways [with regard to “the things that proportion determines”] in the judgment of experts.” This is why Perrault, too, feels entitled to propose a new set of orders.

Perhaps more than the theory of the orders that constitutes the main body of the Ordonnance, Perrault's challenge of the idea that proportion in architecture is based on immutable laws of nature has marked the history of architectural theory. The Preface casts proportion, just like ornament, as a matter of custom, not a hidden secret or a natural law underpinning all of architecture. Proportional systems change over time according to the whims and fancy of humankind. Perrault explains this process by means of a theory of beauty: he examines how and why buildings are judged to be beautiful, and how the ratio of their dimensions contributes to that judgment. Classing proportion amongst the “causes” of beauty dependent on taste and custom allows him to refute that there exists an ideal, natural set of proportions. Proportion is not an “objective” cause for beauty, such as the scale, workmanship or materials of a building, but “arbitrary.”

Perrault's distinction between arbitrary and objective causes of beauty has been related to contemporary writings that ponder the relative importance of objective qualities of objects, the influence of tradition and customs, the authority of the Ancients, or the human faculties of judgment.