Philibert de L’Orme's Premier tome de l’architecture, the first original, comprehensive architectural treatise written by a French author, opens with a sobering critique of the author's own built oeuvre:

Readers are thus confronted with a confession of architectural repentance of a particularly bewildering sort, for not only were, and are, de L’Orme's buildings regarded as masterpieces (it will suffice to mention the Château d’Anet and the Tuileries Palace), but de L’Orme himself is better known for the arrogance that earned him countless enemies at the court of King Henri II than for the unassuming modesty conveyed by this passage. De L’Orme's statement is also peculiar for the distinction it draws between the proportional rules of “the true architecture of men,” which he claims to have applied to all his works, and a higher, God-given set of rules—the divine proportions he would use instead if given a chance to redesign the same buildings.

Divine proportions, de L’Orme explains in the same foreword to the reader, are those recorded in the Old Testament as directly dictated by God to men for the construction of the Ark of Noah, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Temple and House of Solomon. The author also claims to be the first to formulate a theory of divine proportions when he declares his surprise that these “have not been known, studied, nor put into practice neither by ancient nor modern architects.” Then, much to the readers’ disillusionment, de L’Orme announces that the Premier tome will contain no in-depth discussion of this groundbreaking theory. Instead, and as its title indicates, the Premier tome will be followed by a second volume dedicated to this matter.