The drawing as critical compositional basis of the analogical methods and of the historical and aesthetic instances in the theories of Quatremère de quincy and Jean-nicolas-Louis Durand

The theories corpus of Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) influenced the culture of late neoclassicism, with the publication of Le but et les moyens de l’imitation dans les beauxarts (1823) and Le Dictionnaire Historique de l’Architecture (1832) , and Essai sur l’idéal dans ses applications pratiques aux oeuvres de l’imitation propre des arts du dessin (1837), highlighting the role of graphic language as a critical point in the analysis and in the definition of type and model, through an analogical method based on the relationships between measures and proportions of the component parts of the architecture. The cataloging through distinction between imitation, archetype and abstract imagination is compared to the idea of type and typology as a design methodology presented in the Recueil et parallelèle des edifices de tous genres, anciens et modernes (1799-1801) by Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis (17601834) through the elaboration of a fragmentation of the typical parts in a sort of systemized abacus and aimed at the rational definition of architectural design. The concepts of taxonomy, repetition, type, recomposition are introduced. Starting from the definition of idea and ideal of Quatremère de Quincy, where idea and image are metaphysical considered as synonyms and the ideal, more applicable to the arts of imitation where nature becomes a visible model and where no art, more of architecture, is based on the principle of what is ideal, the drawing, in its linguistic and geometrical components, is investigated as a significant tool of the generative rules of composition.