This study proposes a critical revision of a recent trend in Renaissance scholarship. Over the last thirty years, scholars have increasingly argued that the rise of printing and the illustrated printed treatise was a transformative development in the history of architecture. Specifically, Mario Carpo has influentially asserted that mechanical reproduction created stable, authoritatively identical reproductions that removed the creative drift inherent in a system of drawn copies. In doing so, the printed treatise, in particular that of Sebastiano Serlio, codified a new canon of easily reproducible, standardized orders and marginalized a fluid sketchbook tradition built on the practice of copying drawings, especially those of antiquity.
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