Seventy-eight Vitruvius manuscripts (original) (raw)
Related papers
ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW, 2023
The present paper offers a new reading of Vitruvius' opening statements in De Architectura I.1; it understands that the Roman author attempts to explain what architecture is by describing how architecture-related knowledge is acquired. It further understands that Vitruvius claims that the architect's scientia is born out of the bodily involvement with construction, as well as out of the exercise of the proper deductive reasoning. The knowledge required for the design and erection of sound buildings that can be integrated into the world order is akin to what we today name the "designerly" way of thinking and knowing, enriched with expertise on the realization of the design produced. Finally, it proposes a new translation of I.1 that produces a coherent text with no logical gaps.
2017
Compositiones Lucenses e il nucleo di Mappae clavicula sono due libri di ricette sulle procedure artistiche trasmesse al Medioevo dalla tarda antichità. In questa sede si cerca di presentare una nuova analisi della loro circolazione attraverso nuovi testimoni ed una interpretazione diversa del ruolo di Vitruvio come veicolo per la loro trasmissione: Compositiones Lucenses e la sua tradizione medievale dovrebbero essere intesi come ricettari di grande diffusione nel Medioevo. Questo studio identifica e discute le principali questioni di una versione ridotta, rinominata Editio minor, estratta dalla raccolta principale per essere trascritta esclusivamente dopo il testo di De architectura di Vitruvio a partire dal X secolo. In breve, si propone di fornire una nuova analisi dello sviluppo medievale di questa tradizione testuale ampio, considerando contestualmente i rapporti di CompositionesLucenses, Mappae clavicula e Vitruvio nel Medioevo. ABSTRACT: Compositiones lucenses and the nucleus of Mappae clavicula are two recipe books on artistic procedures transmitted to the early Middle Ages from the late Antiquity. This paper attempts to present a new reading on the circulation of these traditions by means of new pieces of evidence and a different interpretation on the role of Vitruvius as a vehicle for their transmission. It argues that Compositiones lucenses and its medieval tradition should be seen as a recipe book with an incredible diffusion in the Middle Ages. This study identifies and discusses the main issues of an abridged version – that I have renamed Editio minor – that was excerpted from the main collection to be exclusively transcribed after the text of De ar-chitectura by Vitruvius since the 10th Century. In short, this paper aims to provide a new analysis on the medieval development of this wide textual tradition, considering contextually the relationships of Compositiones lucenses, Mappae clavicula, and Vitruvius in the Middle Ages.
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Vitruvius., 2024
would like to thank Kyriakos Demetriou for the initial invitation to undertake the project and his infinite patience in awaiting the results, Sinclair Bell for taking up, like Hercules, this burden of Atlas upon his shoulders, and our stalwart contributors. Special thanks to the Centro di Studi Vitruviani of Fano, Italy, for years of support: to its current Coordinatore Scientifico, Oscar Mei, the President of the Comitato Scientifico, Eugenio La Rocca, my fellow members of the Comitato Scientifico, several of them contributors to this volume, the founding Coordinatore Scientifico, Paolo Clini, President Dino Zacchilli, Honorary President Lupo Bracci, Henry Secchiaroli, Giorgio Mangani, and the people of Fano. Grazie infinite. Sinclair Bell would like to Ingrid Rowland for her generous invitation to collaborate on this project and for her steady hand, good humor, and wisdom in seeing it through, to the contributors for their collegiality, and to Quan Pham for his assistance with various aspects of the volume's realization. The editors are indebted to Orla Mulholland and Hillary Marzec for their translations of several chapters, Jane Barry for her superlative copyediting of the volume, to the peer reviewer for their careful reading of the manuscript and many helpful suggestions, and to Giulia Moriconi, Associate Editor of Classical Studies at Brill, for her assistance at every stage.
Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Vitruvius, 2024
would like to thank Kyriakos Demetriou for the initial invitation to undertake the project and his infinite patience in awaiting the results, Sinclair Bell for taking up, like Hercules, this burden of Atlas upon his shoulders, and our stalwart contributors. Special thanks to the Centro di Studi Vitruviani of Fano, Italy, for years of support: to its current Coordinatore Scientifico, Oscar Mei, the President of the Comitato Scientifico, Eugenio La Rocca, my fellow members of the Comitato Scientifico, several of them contributors to this volume, the founding Coordinatore Scientifico, Paolo Clini, President Dino Zacchilli, Honorary President Lupo Bracci, Henry Secchiaroli, Giorgio Mangani, and the people of Fano. Grazie infinite. Sinclair Bell would like to Ingrid Rowland for her generous invitation to collaborate on this project and for her steady hand, good humor, and wisdom in seeing it through, to the contributors for their collegiality, and to Quan Pham for his assistance with various aspects of the volume's realization. The editors are indebted to Orla Mulholland and Hillary Marzec for their translations of several chapters, Jane Barry for her superlative copyediting of the volume, to the peer reviewer for their careful reading of the manuscript and many helpful suggestions, and to Giulia Moriconi, Associate Editor of Classical Studies at Brill, for her assistance at every stage.
The City and the Text in Vitruvius’ De Architectura
Arethusa, 2016
Consistently at the beginning and end of books and major sections of De Architectura, Vitruvius reflects on the order in which he presents his material (e.g. 2.10.3; 4.3.3). He frequently stresses that the design of his treatise follows a particular ordo, but never makes explicit what this ordo actually is. The underlying structuring principle, however, is crucial to understanding the treatise’s literary design and architectural theory. On the macro level, as has been little appreciated to date, Vitruvius presents his material in the order in which a city is built from scratch – beginning with the choice of the correct site and the laying out of walls (book 1) and the collection of building materials (book 2), continuing with the construction of different types of building (books 3-7), and finally securing the future flourishing of the city by supplying it with water (book 8), clocks (book 9) and defence mechanisms (book 10). As we read the De Architectura book by book, the matrix of a city comes into being, adaptable according to local conditions or the size of the community (Fritz, 132-3). I argue that this macrostructure also creates an implicit parallel between the creation of a city and the creation of the text itself. As the treatise unfolds, the ideal city comes into being – the De Architectura. On the lexical level, the dominant metaphor Vitruvius uses to describe his own text is not the city (or any type of architecture) but the body. The implications of the corpus-metaphor have been explored in detail (Callebat 1989, McEwen 2003, Oksanish 2011). By using it, Vitruvius suggests that unlike his predecessors’ smaller projects, his own work is an organic whole, made up of its membra, its constituent parts. The metaphor conveys the perfect wholeness and completeness of the treatise as well as its harmonious proportions. What it does not readily seem to provide, however, is a natural ordo, a principle of arrangement. This is delivered instead by the process of city construction. The relation between the metaphor of the body and the more subtle, implicit metaphoricity of city construction lies at the core of Vitruvian architectural theory. The two source domains melt seamlessly into one another, since the city is both the result of human design and like a natural organism which grows and develops in accordance with nature – an ideal expressed, for example, in the famous Dinocrates-anecdote (2.praef). For Vitruvius, the city offered a natural ordo for a book on architecture, but I propose that the macrostructure of city-building also stands at the beginning of a larger trend in early Augustan literature, which relates to the contemporary concerns of colony foundation, as well as to the Augustan project of ‘re-founding’ Rome. The parallel between city and text appeals to a group of authors writing at the same time as or just after Vitruvius, who set up their projects and textual foundations explicitly to parallel or rival Augustus’ own building of a new Rome. For example, Propertius (4.1A) and Manilius (Astronomica 2.772-87) explicitly compare their literary undertaking to the construction of a city in order to make a point about literary ambition and prestige as well as (in the case of Manilius) arrangement (Fantham, Welch 25-7, Schindler 252-72). Their poetic cities even display the same combination of organic growth and human construction as Vitruvius’ macro-city. Analysis of the macrostructure of the De Architectura thus not only offers important insights into Vitruvian conceptions of architecture and literary ambition, but also throws new light on Vitruvius’ position within the literary environment of early Augustan Rome. Callebat, L. (1989), ‘Organisation et structures du De architectura de Vitruve’, in Geertman, H. and de Jong, J. J. (1989) (eds.), Munus non ingratum : proceedings of the international symposium on Vitruvius' De architectura and the hellenistic and republican architecture, Leiden 20-23 January 1987, Leiden, 34-8. Fantham, E. (1997), ‘Images of the city: Propertius’ new-old Rome’, in Habinek, T. and Schiesaro, A. (eds.), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, 122-35. Fritz, H.-J. (1995), Vitruv: Architekturtheorie und Machtpolitik in der römischen Antike, Münster. Gros, P. (1992), Vitruve. De L’Architecture. Livre IV, Paris. Gros, P. (1994) (ed.), Le Projet de Vitruve: Objet, destinataires et reception du De Architectura, Rome. McEwen, I. K. (2003), Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge MA. Oksanish, J. M. (2011), Building the Principate: A Literary Study of Vitruvius’ “de Architectura”, diss. New Haven. Schindler, C. (2000), Untersuchungen zu den Gleichnissen im römischen Lehrgedicht, Göttingen. Welch, T. S. (2005), The elegiac cityscape: Propertius and the meaning of Roman monuments, Ohio.
Tell me a curious (hi)story. Historical content in Vitruvius' De architectura
SYMBOLAE PHILOLOGORUM POSNANIENSIUM GRAECAE ET LATINAE XXXII/1, 2022 pp. 57–78, 2022
The article examines the significance of history-themed passages (historiae) in Vitruvius' architectural treatise De architectura and assesses their veracity vis-à-vis their rhetorical impact. The article's particular focus lies on Vitruvius' reflections on history, since the sound knowledge of it-as the author claims-is vital for any competent architect. It asserts that Vitruvius tends to stretch the historical truth whenever he makes an attempt at self-promotion (as an author or an architect) or seeks to win the approval of his patron emperor Augustus, to whom he dedicated his work.