Resumen de Mesure et exactitude: le module d'Antoine Desgodets pour ses relevés de monuments antiques
A discussion of Antoine Desgodets' module for his surveys of ancient architecture. The method used by Desgodets in Les Edifices Antiques de Rome (1682) is based on the tradition of surveys of ancient architecture since the Renaissance. Like Fréart de Chambray, Desgodets reduced to one module both his own survey and the disparate surveys by previous authors. The use of the module referred to composition methods established by Vitruvius, in which the analogy between the proportions of the human body and those of architectural elements were used to define architecture as art imitating nature. For Desgodets, module and exactitude constituted a means of understanding the mysteries of ancient architecture, subject to nature's universal laws.
