Jacques-François Blondel was an influential writer, engraver, and teacher of architecture. The last of the four published volumes of his monumental Architecture française includes a detailed discussion of the palace of Versailles, illustrated with twenty-six large-scale engravings (in part recycled from earlier collections). Unlike the volumes of prints commissioned by Louis XIV, Blondel’s project was not celebratory, but didactic and critical. While praising the many “beauties” of Versailles, such as the Hall of Mirrors, he also frankly pointed out what he considered its architectural faults; in his opinion, for example, the excessive height of the chapel created dissonance and asymmetry. The two-plate foldout seen here was thus meant “only to give an idea of the immensity of this palace, not to provide a model for imitation.”