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Vitruvius (fl. 46-30 B.C.) |
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Roman military architect and engineer, expert in ballistic machines, and theorist, whose textbook De Architectura libri decem (Ten Books on Architecture) is the only complete treatise on architecture to survive from Classical Antiquity. Written during the twenties of the first century B.S., it influenced deeply from the Early Renaissance onwards artists, thinkers, and architects, among them Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), and Michelangelo (1475-1564). Vitruvius was not a master of style – "he has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task," said later Morris Hicky Morgan, who translated the book into English. "It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publication in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning. And so the ancients deserve no ordinary, but unending thanks, because they did not pass on in envious silence, but took care that their ideas of every kind should be transmitted to the future in their writings." (from The Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, 1960, originally published in 1914) Little is known of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's life. None of his contemporaries mention his name and services.
Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) referred to Vitruvius in Natural History
as a source
of information on timber – in the Book Two Vitruvius says that the fir
does not easily bend under the load, the oak lasts for an unlimited
period when buried in underground structures, but the Turkey oak (cerrus) and beech are likely to rot. From De architectura we can conclude
that Vitruvius had a Greek Hellenistic type of education – words like graece
and Graecia appear more often in his text than romanus
and Roma.
In addition, he knew much of Ionian buildings. At one period of his
life, he had possibly been apprenticed to an architect of Greek
descend. Many of Vitruvius's anecdotes mention people associated with Julius Caesar. He served under Caesar in the African War (46 B.C.) and had a wide knowledge of military engineering and artillery. It has been suggested that Vitruvius was in fact Julius Caesar's chief engineer Lucius Vitruvius Mamurra. After Ceasar's death (44 B.C.) Vitruvius was involved in the construction of the Roman water supply under Octavian. Like other Romans, Vitruvius regarded water as the source of human society and culture. What becomes of the achievements that Vitruvius accomplished,
he was comparatively unsuccessful. It
seems that his rules were rarely, if ever, followed. Apparently
reflecting his own career, Vitruvius wrote, "the
uneducated rather than the
educated are in higher favour". (The Ten Books on Architecture by
Vitruvius, 1960,
p. 70)
He also said: "I have never been eager to make money by my art, but
have gone on the principle that slender means and a good reputation are
preferable to wealth and disrepute." (Ibid., p. 168) His
basilica (hall for meetings), which was build at Fanum Fortunae (now
Fano on the Adriatic coast), is destroyed, and there are no other
buildings connected to his name. Around 39 B.C., Caesar's supporter
Asinius Pollio and the writer Varro built Rome's first public library
in the Forum. Varro's treatise De
bibliothecis
has not survived. Being a practical persion, Vitruvius said that
libraries should face toward
the east, to catch the morning light and keep the building warm enough
in order to reduce the humidity that might damage the books. Moreover,
books smeared with cedar-oil are not hurt by worms or decay. In his old age Vitruvius composed De architectura, a guide to Hellenistic and Roman practice in town-planning, architecture, and civil engineering. None of his original illustrations have survived. The treatise was probably conceived between 33 and 14 B.C. Vitruvius had retired about 33 B.C. In the preface to Book II he described himself as small, old, and ugly. His pension, granted by Augustus on the recommendation of his full sister Octavia minor, ensured him a care-free old age. Vitruvius based his work on Greek professional literature that is now lost. Contemporary architecture did not inspire him. He complained that the workmen are in a hurry, architecture is professed by men, who "have no knowledge even of the carpenter's trade". (The Ten Books on Architecture, 1960, p. 169) Topics covered in De architectura include: (Book I) qualifications and training of an architect, the fundamental principles of architecture, (Book II) architectural history, building materials, (Book III) symmetry in temples and in the human body, (Book IV) temples, the different types of columnar "Order", the theory of proportion (Book V) theatres, baths, and other public buildings, (Book VI) siting, domestic architecture, exposure and proportions of houses, (Book VII) flooring; lime, stucco, frescoes and their colouring materials, (Book VIII) water-supplies, aqueducts, cisterns, etc. (Book IX), astronomy, sundials and water clocks, and (Book X), machines used in civil and military engineering. Vitruvius's description of the Orders – Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian – and his theory of proportions become the most studied parts of his work. Noteworthy, it also shows that Vitruvius knew better the periods of heliocentric planetary circulations than Copernicus (1473-1543). Vitruvius dedicated the work to "Imperator Caesar" (Augustus),
who
boasted that he inherited Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of
marble. However, Vitruvius did not mention in De architectura
any buildings of the period, in spite of the massive reconstruction
program. Why he lacked an eye for the grand imperial architecture is an
open question. Instead of commenting on what was going on in Rome (although he mentions the Temple of Caesar),
Vitruvius speaks of "new tastes" and "wrongdoers" and pays attention to professional
ethics, that an architect is free from greed. The fifteenth century humanists, who studied Vitruvius and
went to
Rome, soon realized that most of the finest buildings survived were
from much later in date. Already the Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374)
had complained in a letter: "Where are the numerous constructions
erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the
splendorous palaces of the emperors?" (History, Fiction Or Science?: Chronology 1
by Anatoly T. Fomenko, 2003-2006, 2nd edition, revised, p. 411) According to Vitruvius, a good building satisfies three
principles, firmitas, utilitas, venustas,
normally translated as "firmness, commodity, delight". Some of his
ideas found later their way in the planning of Roman cities in northern
Africa, such as Thanugadi (Timgad) and Thugga (Dougga). De
architectura was not unknown in the Middle Ages, copies were in
many libraries around Europe, but its corrupt Greek vocabulary was an
unsurmountable obstacle for most readers, who were mystified by such
aesthetic terms as eurythmia and simmetria. Petrarch
annotated his manuscript of Vitruvius with explanatory notes. De architectura was quoted by Boccaccio in De genealogia deorum; he read the text with fascination, and likewise did Benvenuto da Imola. The Italian humanist and historian Poggio Bracchiolini (1380-1459), who recovered many manuscripts of classical authors, become interested 1414 in the work after finding a copy in the Swiss monastery of S. Gall. In the 1420s, Cardinal Branda Castiglione erected a group of buildings in the country village of Castiglione Olona, near Varese. The Cardinal and his architect drew on Vitruvius and Pliny. Although Vitruvius's writing was obscure, sometimes nearly unintelligible, his fame started to spread. Vitruvius saw that an architect should be widely educated in
arts and sciences from medicine to astronomy, because "it is by his
judgement that all work done by other arts is put to test." (The Ten Books on
Architecture, 1960, p. 5) Vitruvius admitted that an
architect cannot reach perfection in the different fields of knowledge.
Those few great men, such as Archimedes, who thoroughly mastered
geometry, astronomy, music, and the other arts, become pure
mathematicians. The term Vitruvian man,
illustrated by famous drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and later William
Blake, refers to his theory of ideal human proportions presented in the
book III: "For if a man be placed flat on his back, with hands and feet
extebded, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and
toes of his two hands and feet will
touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as
the human body yields a circular outline, too a square figure may
be found from it. For if we measure the distance from
the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that
measure to the outstreched arms, the breadth will be found to be the
same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are
perfectly square." (The Ten Books on Architecture,
1960, p. 73) Vitruvian measurements as presented by Erwin Panofsky: The mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was familiar with
the idea of the Vitruvian man,
who interpreted the human figure as a mirror of the cosmos. Leonardo's
famous drawing appeared in Divina proportione (1509) written by his
friend Luca Pacioli. The Renaissance architect Leon Battista
Alberti, who borrowed a lot of Vitruvius's ideas
in De re aedificatoria (1452,
Ten Books on Architecture), believed that mathematics is
the common ground of art and the sciences. The art of architecture is
essentially governed by mathematical laws and proportions. A
master of Latin prose, Alberti noted that what Vitruvius "handled down
was in
any case not refined, and his speech such that the Latins might think
that he wanted to appear a Greek, while the Greeks would think that he
babbled Latin. However, this very text is evidence
that he wrote neither Latin nor Greek, so that as far as we are
concerned he might just as well not have written at all, rather than
write something that we cannot understand." (Living Well in Renaissance Italy: the
Virtues of Humanism and the Irony of Leon Battista Alberti by
Timothy Kircher, 2012, p. 13) Petrarch, on the other
hand, showed more understanding to Vitruvius's prose. Drawing on Vitruvius, whose source most likely was Aristotle,
Alberti argued that the work of art is so constituted that it is
impossible to take anything away from it or add anything to it. Francesco di Giorgio (1439-1501/2) partly based his Trattato di
architettura civile e militare
on Vitruvius. Leonardo owned a copy of Francesco's book. Also Ten Books on Architecture was among the handful of books he treasured. An incurable
empiricist, Leonardo wrote in one of his notebooks: "Vitruvius says
that small models are of no avail for ascertaining the effects of large
ones; and I here propose to prove that this conclusion is a false one.
And chiefly by bringing forward the very same argument which led him to
this conclusion; that is, by an experiment with an auger." (The Notebooks of Leonardo
da Vinci, selected and edited by Irma A. Richter, 1980, p. 85)
Leonardo compared a well-designed and harmonious building with a
healthy body. Naturally the book X, in which Vitruvius dealt with
machines (water wheels and water mills, catapults, siege machines, and
so on), spoke to Leonardo's engineering mind. Bramante (1444-1514) and Andrea Palladio (1508-80) were serious students of classical learning and of Vitrivius. Palladio drew a plan of a Roman house for his friend Daniele Barbaro's edition of De architectura, the standard Cinquecento edition, with illustrations by Palladio. The first printed version of the work, edited by Sulpizio da Veroli, was published c.1486 in Rome. Further editions appeared in Florence in 1496 and Venice in 1497. The first illustrated edition was issued in 1511 by Fra Gioncondo. An Italian translation was made under Raphael's direction c. 1520. Another translation, with a commentary by Cesare Cesariano, came out in 1521. Translations into other European languages were also published before the middle of the 16th century. For further reading: Brill's Companion to the Reception of Vitruvius, edited by Ingrid Rowland, Sinclair W. Bell (2024); All the King's Horses: Vitruvius in an Age of Princes by Indra Kagis McEwen (2023); Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction by John Oksanish (2019); Vitruvianism: Origins and Transformations, edited by Paolo Sanvito (2016); Architecture, Liberty and Civic Order: Architectural Theories from Vitruvius to Jefferson and Beyond by Carroll William Westfall (2015); Between Science and Drawings: Renaissance Architects on Vitruvius's Educational Ideas by Liisa Kanerva (2006); Vitruvius on Architecture by Thomas Gordon Smith (2003); Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture by Indra Kagis McEwen (2002); A History of Architectural Theory: From Vitruvius to the Present by Hanno-Walter Kruft (1994); The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture: Speculations on Ornament from Vitruvius to Venturi by George Hersey (1988); Vitruvs Architekturtheorie by Heiner Knell (1985); Homage to Vitruvius by John K. Ryan (1981); 'Vitruvius', in Greek and Latin Authors 800 B.C.-A.D.1000 by Michael Grant (1980); Translation of Vitruvius and Copies of Late Antique Drawings in Buonaccorso Ghiberti's Zibaldone by Gustina Scaglia (1979); Vitruvius and Later Roman Building Manuals by H. Plommer (1973); Index Virtruvianus by Hermann Nohl (1965); 'The History of the Theory of Human Proportions as a Reflection of the History of Styles,' in Meaning in the Visual Arts by Erwin Panofsky (1955); Vom Nachleben Vitruvs by H. Koch (1951); Vitruvio by F. Pellati (1938); Vitruv und die Poliorketiker by W. Sackur (1925); Des Marcus Vitruvius Pollio Basilika zu Fanum Fortunae by Jakob Prestel (1901); The Elements of Civil Architecture by Henry Aldrich (1824) Editions:
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