Jekyll2021-11-24T06:09:48+00:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/feed.xmlThinking 3DPoldo d’Albenas et le Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes2020-09-21T08:00:00+01:002020-09-21T08:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/d%E2%80%99Albenas_Discours_historial<p>Jean Poldo d’Albenas, a lawyer, was as keen on antique architecture as his father, who, when he was first consul of Nîmes had taken the initiative to preserve numerous architectural vestiges of the city by moving them to the Porte de la Couronne. For once the French were not neglecting their antique heritage. In 1559 (the date when a few copies were printed) and in 1560 he published a fine book in a folio format at the print shop of Guillaume Roville in Lyon, the <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/ENSBA_LES1356.asp?param=en"><em>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes</em></a>, which on first sight can have certain similarities to several publications devoted to “the antiquity” of a kingdom, a province, or, as here, of a city (Fig. 1).</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1356/B751062305_LES%201356_000041.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 1. Map of Nîmes (J. Poldo d’Albenas, <i>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes…</i>, Lyon, 1560, p. 26)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For once Nîmes could be proud of a prestigious Roman past attested by a quasi-intact amphitheatre and many other monumental vestiges, a dynastic temple (the Maison Carrée), a tower (the Tour Magne) which marked the <em>Augusteum</em> where the “temple of the Fountain” still remained, and an aqueduct of which large fragments existed (the Pont du Gard). But the book puts emphasis on monumental Roman architecture in the text as well as in the iconography. The oriented plan of the antique enclosure and the bird’s-eye view of the modern city appear in front, where one sees the antique edifices of the city shown to advantage free from any interfering constructions (Fig. 2).</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1356/B751062305_LES%201356_000142.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 2. Nîmes, amphitheater (J. Poldo d’Albenas, <i>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes…</i>, Lyon, 1560, n.p.)</figcaption>
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<p>The chapters especially devoted to the Maison Carrée (chap. 16), the “temple of the Fountain” (chap. 17), the pont du Gard (chap. 18) as well as the amphitheatre (chap. 22), are accompanied by engraved plates and numbered captions (Fig. 3).</p>
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<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1356/B751062305_LES%201356_000098.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 3. Nîmes, Maison Carrée, entablature (J. Poldo d’Albenas, <i>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes…</i>, Lyon, 1560, n.p.)</figcaption>
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<p>These are plans marked in inches, feet and toises representing the plan and the elevation of the monument as well as the details of the orders (bases, capitals and entablatures) in which each moulding is represented with its measurements. The illustrations of the Maison Carrée, the “temple of the Fountain” and the amphitheatre even more than those of the pont du Gard are not simply elevations in perspective but constitute the first architectural plans published in France, well ahead of the treatises of Bullant (1564) and Delorme (1567). This archeological vision, unique during the 1550s, indicates an astonishing familiarity with the Coner Codex, or a copy of it, which in its time had revolutionized architectural representation with diagonal perspective created in a cross-section. In this way the draughtsman presents the entablature of the Maison Carrée, the “temple of the Fountain” and the amphitheatre (Figs 4, 5).</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1356/B751062305_LES%201356_000097.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 4. Nîmes, Maison Carrée, base, column and capital (J. Poldo d’Albenas, <i>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes…</i>, Lyon, 1560, n.p.)</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1356/B751062305_LES%201356_000105.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 5. Nîmes, “temple de la Fontaine”, capital and entablature (J. Poldo d’Albenas, <i>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes…</i>, Lyon, 1560, n.p.)</figcaption>
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<p>These are far from the representations of the amphitheatre and the Maison Carrée by Androuet du Cerceau from 1540-1550, which are more ideal than archeological, and far from recent Vitruvian literature which only illustrated theoretical models or which indicated proportions only. And if Serlio in 1540 and Delorme in 1567 relied only on oblique perspective, their plans have no written dimensions. The draughtsman even innovated by representing the Corinthian and composite capitals in a three-quarter view; in this instance this kind of representation is rather clumsy (Fig. 6).</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1356/B751062305_LES%201356_000096.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 6. Nîmes, Maison Carrée (J. Poldo d’Albenas, <i>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes…</i>, Lyon, 1560, n.p.)</figcaption>
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<p>In Italy the only equivalent book which preceded it was written by Torello Sarayna on Verona, with superb plates by Giovanni Caroto (<a href="https://archive.org/details/torellisaraynaev00sara"><em>De origine et amplitudine civitatis Veronæ</em></a>, 1540). The <em>Urbis Romæ Topographia</em> by Marliani, even in its enlarged version of 1544, had few illustrations. As for Serlio’s book on Roman antiquities, the <a href="/SerlioIII/"><em>Terzo libro</em></a>, published in 1540 in Venice, it is less a collection of precise architectural plans of ruins than a book of models, classified by type whose structures and ornaments are so many common assumptions to be amplified.</p>
<p>Here it is doubtless necessary to see the direct intervention of the bookseller Guillaume Roville (and not Rouillé) notwithstanding the undeniable architectural culture of Poldo d’Albenas who quotes Vitruvius, Alberti and especially Philandrier. The attention he brings to the orders and to their constituent parts down to the most minor mouldings, the iconography of the capitals, derives from a refined reading of the French theoretician. But although Poldo measured the enclosure of his native city himself and studied the main monuments in the field, he was neither a draughtsman nor an engraver ; it must be concluded that the text does not refer to the plates. Poldo recalls the history of each edifice, the origin of its name, its function, even its avatars. He develops the description of the amphitheatre rather briefly, as if the image, more explicit than the text, was more important. However we know that Roville personally oversaw the illustrations of the books he printed. Trained in Venice, he retained close links with the Most Serene Republic whose market he watched over. Perhaps he wanted to compete with his Veronese colleague Antonio Putelletto, who had published Sarayna’s book on Verona and himself ordered architectural plans of the antiquities in Nîmes from an Italian artist.</p>
<p>In fact it was the plates of the <em>Discours historial</em> which attracted readers’ attention. Palladio was not mistaken when he was inspired by the <em>Discours historial</em> for book IV of the <em>Quattro libri dell’architettura</em> where he includes the two temples in Nîmes among the most beautiful Roman achievements. The Italian architect, who never went to France, devoted six plates to the Maison Carrée and five to the “temple of the Fountain”, which he calls the temple of Vesta (Fig. 7).</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES1338/B751062305_LES%201338_000302.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 7. A. Palladio, Maison Carrée (<i>I quattro libri dell’architettura...</i>, Venice, 1570, p. 113)</figcaption>
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<p>Palladio could mine his source easily, convert the measurements and, as an alert antiquarian and professional, improve the perspective of the edifices. His knowledge of Roman imperial architecture allowed him to complete Poldo’s plates not always wisely, for the edifices in Gallia Narbonensis have some particularities, unknown to one of the best connoisseurs of Roman antiquity.</p>Frédérique LemerleA book on monumental Roman architecture in NîmesThe “Digression” by Philandrier2020-09-21T07:00:00+01:002020-09-21T07:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/Philandrier's_Digression<p>Guillaume Philandrier had accompanied his employer Georges d’Armagnac throughout his periods as ambassador to Venice (1536-1539) then to Rome (1540-1545). In Venice Philandrier had been initiated in architecture by Sebastiano Serlio in person and was aware of the most modern theory, while reading the <em>De architectura</em> together with d’Armagnac, himself widely read. It was probably at this time that the philologist, already the author of a brief commentary on Quintilian in the form of annotations, planned the project of commenting on the antique treatise. Thus in Rome in 1544 he published at the printing shop of Giovanni Andrea Dossena his <a href="https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/philandrier1544"><em>Annotationes</em></a> on the <em>De architectura</em> by Vitruvius, the fruit of his Italian experience. The <em>Digression</em> on the five orders (<em>Quoniam in rei ædificatoriæ ornamentis, etc….</em>) that he inserted before the notes of chapter 3 of book III is the synthesis of previous theoreticians (Alberti and Serlio) and the fruit of his own reflection on the antique vestiges he studied (Fig. 1).</p>
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/philandrier1544_0092.jpg" alt=""Fig. 1. G. Philandrier, Digression on the five orders (In decem libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura annotationes…, Rome, 1544, p. 72)"" />
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Fig. 1. G. Philandrier, Digression on the five orders (<em>In decem libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura annotationes…</em>, Rome, 1544, p. 72).
</figcaption>
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<p>Although he kept the principal of the five orders, in comparison with Serlio it constitutes a major theoretical step forward without which it is hardly possible to understand the <em>Regola</em> by Vignola and in a general way the <em>trattatistica</em> of the second half of the Cinquecento. Philandrier went beyond Serlio’s purely lexical presentation by integrating it in a much more normative morphological discourse. Like each Latin declension, each one of the five orders is endowed with precise forms, in this case a succession of specific horizontal and vertical elements, whose proportions and mouldings are determined in a definitive way and whose use or the syntax, is strictly regulated. Therefore one single model corresponds to each order (Fig. 2).</p>
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/philandrier1544_0109.jpg" alt=""Fig. 2. G. Philandrier, Digression on the five orders (In decem libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura annotationes…, Rome, 1544, p. 89)"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 2. G. Philandrier, Digression on the five orders (<em>In decem libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura annotationes…</em>, Rome, 1544, p. 89).
</figcaption>
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<p>The Vitruvian commentary written in Latin was not intended for workers ; that is why the text dominates and the illustrations are of minor importance including in the <em>Digression</em>, the most illustrated text. The mediocrity of the woodcuts, due partly to the small format of the book (in-8°) is particularly noticeable in the representation of the orders. The engravings of the complete order are imprecise and rarely allow one to distinguish the different parts described in detail in the text (mouldings of pedestals, bases and capitals) (Fig. 3).</p>
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/philandrier1544_0094.jpg" alt=""Fig. 3. G. Philandrier, Digression on the five orders (In decem libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura annotationes…, Rome, 1544, p. 74)"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 3. G. Philandrier, Digression on the five orders (<em>In decem libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de architectura annotationes…</em>, Rome, 1544, p. 74).
</figcaption>
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<p>It even happens that the illustrations of details show differences in relation to the engraved part in the complete order or that the diagrams do not correspond to the text. Lastly, the proportions of the columns are not respected: for instance the Tuscan and the Doric have identical proportions. Clearly the draughtsman and the engraver did not work closely with the author. On the other hand the woodcuts in the fine reviewed and enlarged in-4° edition that Philandrier brought out at the print shop of Jean de Tournes in Lyon in 1552 are more meticulous, indicating the hand of a talented draughtsman, Bernard Salomon and of a more skilled engraver, but the fact remains that they are still imperfect and correspond badly to the text (Figs 4, 5).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/vitruvius1552_0001.jpg" alt=""Fig. 4. G. Philandrier, Annotationes castigatiores, & plus tertia parte locupletiores…, Lyon, 1552. Title page"" />
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Fig. 4. G. Philandrier, <em>Annotationes castigatiores, & plus tertia parte locupletiores…</em>, Lyon, 1552. Title page.
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</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/vitruvius1552_0111.jpg" alt=""Fig. 5. G. Philandrier, Annotationes castigatiores, & plus tertia parte locupletiores…, Lyon, 1552, p. 95"" />
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Fig. 5. G. Philandrier, <em>Annotationes castigatiores, & plus tertia parte locupletiores…</em>, Lyon, 1552, p. 95.
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<p>Some illustrations are reversed. If the general representation of the five orders, such as the details of their parts corresponds more closely to the text, the proportions of the orders are not respected except for the Doric order, even though the book is in a larger format. Since the orders are almost represented at a constant height, precision diminishes with the width of the diameter, which could explain the increasing deviations in the Corinthian and composite orders, more slender (Fig. 6). Whether it is in the 1544 edition and its Parisian reissue in 1545 or the enlarged version of 1552, the engravings do not give an account of the text.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/vitruvius1552_0125.jpg" alt=""Fig. 5. G. Philandrier, Annotationes castigatiores, & plus tertia parte locupletiores…, Lyon, 1552, p. 109"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 5. G. Philandrier, <em>Annotationes castigatiores, & plus tertia parte locupletiores…</em>, Lyon, 1552, p. 109.
</figcaption>
</figure>Frédérique LemerleA commentary on Vitruvius' *De architectura*The translation into French of Sagredo’s treatise2020-09-21T06:00:00+01:002020-09-21T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/Sagredo's_translation<p>The translation of the treatise by Diego de Sagredo, a humanist from Burgos, is very unusual. The <em>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve et aultres anciens architecteurs</em>, appearing without the name of the author or the translator on the title page, is the first book on architecture published in French (c.1536). Vitruvius, the founding father of the new architecture, available in many Latin and Italian editions, was not to be translated until 1547 by Jean Martin, who also translated Alberti in 1553. He deals above all with the decoration intended to frame paintings and sculptures, that is, the antique bases, capitals, columns and entablatures theorized by Vitruvius. This explains the title chosen by the bookseller-printer Simon de Colines, explicit and commercial, different from the Spanish. The publisher wished to offer the first theoretical text on architecture to the public, accessible to “those who revel in edifices” as well as to practitioners who had to be acquainted with antique forms and vocabulary. This practical handbook, illustrated effectively, is in fact a compilation of Vitruvius and Alberti but also of Pliny the Elder and Pacioli, intended for specialists, in particular sculptors (Fig. 1).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://static.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/gordon/gordonimages/Gordon1526_S27/image/0057_pg24v.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 1. Mouldings ([D. de Sagredo], <i>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</i>, Paris, c.1536, f° 24v°</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was published without a date, in 1536 by all accounts, by Simon de Colines, in an in-4° format with reengraved woodcuts traditionally attributed to Mercure Jollat or Oronce Fine. It is not free of errors but has the great merit of giving birth to the French architectural lexicon and has the characteristic of adding to the original text a new development of the “orders” (Figs 2, 3, 4, 5), the proportions of the intercolumnations under an entablature or an arch, the layering of columns and the necessary optical corrections.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://static.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/gordon/gordonimages/Gordon1526_S27/image/0096_pg44r.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 2. Doric order ([D. de Sagredo], <i>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</i>, Paris, c.1536, f° 44)</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://static.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/gordon/gordonimages/Gordon1526_S27/image/0097_pg44v.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 3. Ionic order ([D. de Sagredo], <i>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</i>, Paris, c.1536, f° 44v°)</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://static.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/gordon/gordonimages/Gordon1526_S27/image/0098_pg45r.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 4. Corinthian order ([D. de Sagredo], <i>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</i>, Paris, c.1536, f° 45)</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://static.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/gordon/gordonimages/Gordon1526_S27/image/0099_pg45v.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 5. “Tuscan” [composite] ([D. de Sagredo], <i>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</i>, Paris, c.1536, f° 45v°)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colines, undoubtedly understanding the challenge posed by an illustrated book on architecture in the vernacular, modernized the French version with supplementary engravings and included an autonomous text of several leaves which made the French Sagredo not just a simple manual of ornaments, but a pre-architectonic treatise ushering in a genre with a great future, the treatise on columns and orders. It was printed shortly before the <a href="/SerlioIV/"><em>Regole generali di architetura</em> (or <em>Quarto libro</em>) by Sebastiano Serlio (Venice, 1537)</a> which revolutionized architectural practice in Europe by proposing a coherent vision of architectural ornament with the five “ways” of building.</p>
<p>In fact it was the <em>Quarto libro</em> which instructed Delorme and Bullant, Henri II’s architects. Goujon followed Serlio in the <em>Vitruvius</em> of Martin. In Antwerp Pieter Coecke committed himself to a vast enterprise of translating Serlio’s works and in the Book IV he circulated the models of Serlio in Europe. It is a collection of places, abundantly illustrated, organized around the five orders of architecture, translated into French in 1542. In spite of that, the translation of Sagredo was successful for quite a while because Colines published two new editions of it in 1539 and in 1542, in which the bases were supplemented with enlarged representations of the profiles of their mouldings with indications of their proportions done in a purely graphic system, entirely new (Fig. 6). This <em>de facto</em> removes the necessity of reading a fastidious description.</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/LES0785/LES0785_050.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Fig. 6. Attic base ([D. de Sagredo], <i>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</i>, Paris, c.1536, f° 25)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colines’ editions thus acquired a status different from that of the Spanish edition because all the interventions were valuable aids for practitioners, master-masons, sculptors, joiners and other craftsmen who had not been to Italy but who needed to be acquainted with the new culture. The editorial success revealed that the publisher had met a demand, in the same way that Pieter Coecke did, writing and publishing a short treatise in Dutch himself in 1539 in Antwerp, <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/Coeke1539.asp?param=en"><em>Die Inventie der colomnen</em></a>, intended for Flemish craftsmen. The four Vitruvian columns were presented in it like in Sagredo’s treatise which Coecke mentioned incidentally, whereas his luxurious editions of Serlio’s <em>Quarto libro</em> were aimed more at sponsors who were eager for modernity.</p>
<p>The editorial parodox did not end there. If it is rare that a translation meets with more success than the original edition, it is also infrequent that it modifies the editions of the country of origin. The development of the orders and the spaces between the columns, the large number of engravings added in Simon de Colines’ editions gave the French version the status of an enlarged edition and for this reason made it a reference for the Iberian editions which followed (Lisbon, 1541 et 1542; Toledo, 1549 et 1564). Most of the French additions, translated into Castilian, became an apocryphal but substantial part of the later editorial history of the book, of a “Sagredo” which was no longer only Sagredo’s. At the same time the success of the treatise in France and in the Iberian peninsula revealed that Colines and his Portuguese and Spanish colleagues responded to a demand emanating from sculptors and masons and not high level architects. Besides, Sagredo’s treatise was in fashion for a long time in France since it was reedited three times in Paris (1550, 1555 and 1608).</p>
<p>The French version which played an essential role in spreading the Vitruvian architectural lexicon, simultaneously influenced the sculptor Jean Goujon in Saint Maclou in Rouen. Other traces can be found in the “Belle Chapelle” of the Saint Pierre abbey at Solesmes, in the château of Villers-Cotterêts (c. 1536), the château of Dampierre-sur-Boutonne (c. 1545), and at the château of Joinville (1546). In 1624 Louis Savot was still recommending it in his <em>Architecture françoise des bastimens particuliers</em>.</p>Frédérique LemerleAn unusual translation of the treatise by Diego de Sagredo, a humanist from Burgos.Three atypical publications in France (Sagredo c.1536, Philandrier 1544, Poldo d’Albenas 1559-1560)2020-09-21T05:00:00+01:002020-09-21T05:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/Three_atypical_publications<p>Three illustrated publications, all very different from each other, came out in France in less than twenty-five years. Each one was very important in its respective domain: the <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/Gordon1526_S27.asp?param=en"><em>Raison darchitecture antique, extraicte de Victruve…</em></a> (c.1536), the anonymous French translation of the <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/Sagredo1526.asp?param=en"><em>Medidas del Romano</em></a> by Diego de Sagredo (Toledo, 1526), the “Digression” on the five orders that Guillaume Philandrier added to his <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/Phil1544.asp?param=en">commentary on the <em>De architectura</em> by Vitruvius</a> which was printed in Rome in 1544, and the <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/ENSBA_LES1356.asp?param=en"><em>Discours historial de l’antique cité de Nîmes</em></a> by Jean Poldo d’Albenas, published in Lyon (1559-1560). Because the texts diverge from the illustrations, they are worth examining, as much from the point of view of the authors of the texts as from the involvement of the booksellers well-known in the choice of illustrations as they kept in mind the public they were intended for. How indeed to explain the additions, the explanatory diagrams, the new illustrations in the translation of Sagredo’s treatise, the weakness of Philandrier’s illustrations in a fundamental text on architectural theory and the puzzling modernity of the illustrations of the main antiquities in Nîmes, some in oblique perspective similar to those of the Coner Codex, long before the illustrations in Philibert Delorme’s treatise (1567)? The illustrated book on architecture was an entirely new type of publication in France then.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/Sagredo's_translation/">The translation into French of Sagredo’s treatise</a></li>
<li><a href="/Philandrier's_Digression/">Philandrier’s “Digression”</a></li>
<li><a href="/d-Albenas_Discours_historial/">Poldo d’Albenas et le <em>Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes</em></a></li>
</ul>Frédérique LemerleThe illustrated book on architecture as a new type of publication in sixteenth-century FranceSebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…2020-08-20T06:00:00+01:002020-08-20T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/SerlioIV<p>Also known as the <em>Quarto libro</em> (<em>Fourth book</em>) due to where it comes in Sebastiano Serlio’s complete treaty, the work was the first to be released and was fundamental in helping to formalise and propagate the architectural language that was developed in Rome at the beginning of the Cinquecento within Bramante and Raphael’s circle.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_1.jpg" alt=""Fig. 1. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537). Title page"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 1. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537). Title page (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After being initially schooled in the art of painting in his native town of Bologna, Serlio went to Rome during the 1520s to perfect his architectural culture. He achieved this by particularly spending time with Baldassare Peruzzi, to whom the treaty is greatly indebted, alongside Raphael’s students and collaborators. He subsequently moved to Venice, which really allowed him to acquire rhetorical and pedagogical skills as he benefited from his relationships with the best humanists of the town (Giulio Camillo Delminio and Aretino), alongside the artistic elite and Titian or Lorenzo Lotto with whom he rubbed shoulders. He was thus able to take on the role of <em>professore di architettura</em> (professor of architecture), given that he could not himself construct buildings. Alongside a series of copper boards representing the five orders that Antonio Veneziano engraved in 1528, he at that point published the initial elements of the great treaty he had already imagined – the <em>Regole</em> or <em>Quarto libro</em> (1537) and the <em>Terzo libro</em> (<em>Third book</em>) (1540). He was invited to France and in 1541 went to the court of Francis I, for whom he constructed no buildings – yet he did publish the rest of the treaty with books I and II (1545), book V (1547) and the <em>Extraordinario libro</em> (<em>Extraordinary book</em>) (1551).</p>
<p>At the heart of the overall form that emerges from the seven books that had been planned from the very beginning, the <em>Regole</em> links the first three books dedicated to apprenticeship (geometrical apprenticeship in book I, perspectives in book II and ancient culture in book III) to the last three books focusing more on creation (religious architecture in book V, civil architecture in book VI and studies of ‘accidents’ in book VII). It was therefore naturally the first book to be published, for it defines what can be seen as the most effective tool for successfully bridging the gap between the different themes at play: the modern system of architectural ‘orders’.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_2.jpg" alt=""Fig. 2. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537). 'De le cinque maniere degli edifici'"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 2. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), ‘De le cinque maniere degli edifici’ (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, adopting a stylistic approach, Serlio classifies all of the theoretical notions inherited from Vitruvius and the archaeological data provided by ancient ruins. The Tuscan, Doric, ionic, Corinthian and composite ‘orders’ of architecture indeed allow both for a rational analysis of the diverse nature of ancient architecture to emerge, and also for contemporary architectural creation to be provided with pertinent stylistic categories. The <em>Regole</em> thus puts forward particularly effective forms of grammar and rhetoric that, through the large quantity of republications and translations that were released throughout the sixteenth century and during a part of the seventeenth century, helped to convert European architecture into Vitruvian works that were adapted to the demands of modernity.</p>
<p>The book therefore presents the five styles one after the other; columns and entablatures are merely the most typical figures used to represent what is covered: certain examples, particularly for the Tuscan order, are included without them, yet the rustic character of their bossages is enough to make them appear in the pages devoted to the order. For each of the <em>maniere</em>, Serlio initially provides grammatical features (proportions, profiles and the ways in which various parts have been arranged), before recalling some ancient examples and putting forward examples of doors, frontages, chimneys and various compositions created following the style in question. Images thus play a notable didactic role here. During his youth, Serlio was himself trained in a form of painting specialising in representing decorations in perspective, which led him to becoming interested in architecture.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_3.jpg" alt=""Fig. 3. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 8"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 3. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 8 (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_4.jpg" alt=""Fig. 4. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 9"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 4. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 9 (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second book of his treaty is for that matter entirely devoted to perspective views (1545). The ways in which architectural objects are represented vary according to the role they play in the book, and follow three types of representation. All of the paradigms that graphically elucidate morphological rules – full-length arrangements, base details, capitals and entablatures – are represented with pure geometrical elevation, that is to say in two dimensions without depth. These images do not require the inclusion of the third dimension – they are principally meant to be used in the creation of models, or <em>moule</em> (‘moulds’) in Philibert De l’Orme’s words (<em>Premier tome</em>, 1567, fol. 57), that is to say wooden profiles that are made to fit the desired dimensions and applied to stone so as to guide the carver.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_5.jpg" alt=""Fig. 5. Le premier livre d’architecture de Sebastian Serlio… ; Le second livre de perspective (Paris, J. Barbé, 1545), p. 40v"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 5. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Le premier livre d’architecture de Sebastian Serlio… ; Le second livre de perspective</em>, (Paris, J. Barbé, 1545), p. 40v (Paris, Ensba, Les 1736).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Next, the ancient examples that are designed to enrich the reader’s culture and are only presented through some details here clearly require some amount of realism. The engravings included adopt a system inspired by the Coner Codex (London, Sir John Soane’s Museum): an orthogonal two-dimensional profile generates oblique lines that allow us to visualise the reality of the composition and the decorations of the elevation with a certain amount of perspective (fol. 21v and 22, 40, 49v and 50). In addition, hatches in the engravings create shadow effects, and thus an impression of virtual light that gives more realism to the representations.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_6.jpg" alt=""Fig. 6. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 21v"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 6. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 21v (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_7.jpg" alt=""Fig. 7. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 22r"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 7. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 22r (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_8.jpg" alt=""Fig. 8. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 40r"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 8. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 40r (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_9.jpg" alt=""Fig. 9. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 49v"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 9. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 49v (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Pauwels_SerlioIV_10.jpg" alt=""Fig. 10. Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 50r"" />
<figcaption>
Fig. 10. Sebastiano Serlio, <em>Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici…</em>, (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537), p. 50r (Évreux, Bibliothèque - médiathèque, RA 101).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This type of representation thus combines the objectivity of geometrical data that allows for an exact reproduction of ancient edifices, with the effectiveness of perspective views that contribute to the enrichment of visual culture. From this point of view, it is very suited to the central discourse running through the work. It was frequently used for the representations of details that were common during the Renaissance, such as those by Giuliano da Sangallo (Barberini Codex) or Michelangelo (drawings of ancient Roman buildings details in Casa Buonarroti). Finally, a note on the representations of doors, frontages or chimneys that Serlio invented and puts forward here not as models that should be reproduced as they appear in his work, but rather as examples of a form of creation that can develop an idea or theme in line with a selected style. He uses classic three-dimensional perspective views with a central vanishing point and hatching effects in the engravings that simulate a sense of depth through interacting projected shadows.</p>
<p>The work’s success can be measured through the rapid pace at which it was translated into other languages: in as early as 1539 a Dutch translation was released in Anvers; it was printed by the painter and publisher Pieter Coecke d’Alost who also published French and German translations of the work in 1542. Numerous authors also used Serlio’s paradigms in verbatim accounts – Guillaume Philandrier in his commentaries on Vitruvius (Rome, 1544; Paris, 1545…), Hans Blum in Germany (<em>Quinque columnarum exacta description</em>, Zurich, 1550; a German translation in the same year, a French translation in 1551 and numerous republications), Jean Goujon for the first French translation of Vitruvius (<em>Architecture ou art de bien bâtir</em>, Paris, 1547), and Jean Bullant (<em>Reigle generale d’architecture</em>…, Paris, 1564).</p>
<p><strong>Further reading</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Mario Carpo, <em>Metodo ed ordini nella teoria architettonica dei primi Moderni</em>, <em>Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance</em>, 271, Geneva, Droz, 1993.</li>
<li>Hubertus Günther, “Das geistige Erbe Peruzzis im vierten und dritten Buch des Sebastiano Serlio”, in J. Guillaume (ed.), <em>Les traités d’architecture de la Renaissance</em>, Paris, Picard, 1988, pp. 227-46.</li>
<li>Hubertus Günther, ‘Serlio e gli ordini architettonici’, C. Thoenes (ed.), <em>Sebastiano Serlio</em>, Milan, Electa, 1989, pp. 154-68.</li>
<li>Deborah Howard, ‘Sebastiano Serlio’s Venetian Copyrights’, <em>The Burlington Magazine</em>, 115, 1973, pp. 512-16.</li>
<li>Frédérique Lemerle, ‘Genèse de la théorie des ordres : Philandrier et Serlio’, <em>Revue de l’Art</em>, 103, 1994, pp. 33-41.</li>
<li>Frédérique Lemerle, <em>Les Annotations de Guillaume Philandrier sur le De architectura de Vitruve, Livres I à IV</em>, Introduction, traduction et commentaire, Paris, Picard, 2000, pp. 36-40.</li>
<li>Yves Pauwels, ‘La méthode de Serlio dans le Quarto Libro’, <em>Revue de l’Art</em>, 119, 1998, pp. 33-42.</li>
<li>Yves Pauwels, <em>L’architecture au temps de la Pléiade</em>, Paris, Monfort, 2002, pp. 27-58.</li>
<li>Yves Pauwels, <em>Aux marges de la règle. Essai sur les ordres d’architecture à la Renaissance</em>, Wavre, Mardaga, 2008, pp. 21-40.</li>
</ul>
<p>See also [Yves Pauwels’ entry] (http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/B272296201_A101.asp?param=en) in the website <a href="http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/"><em>Architectura</em></a>.</p>
<p>Translated by <a href="/people/#louise_ferris">Louise Ferris</a>.</p>Yves PauwelsPropagating the architectural language developed in Rome at the beginning of the CinquecentoThinking 3D. Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present2019-10-12T06:00:00+01:002019-10-12T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/T3D2019<p>The <em>Thinking 3D</em> team is proud to announce the launch of our new book, <em>Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present</em> which is to be published on 11 October 2019. This book, a tie-in to <a href="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/bodexhibit/">the Bodleian Exhibition</a>, features 80 colour illustrations from Oxford and international collections which illustrate 200 pages of in-depth investigation into the development of the techniques used to communicate three-dimensional forms on the two-dimensional page and contemporary media.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/T3D_Book_1.jpg" alt=""Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present, cover."" />
<figcaption>
Daryl Green and Laura Moretti, eds. <em>Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present</em> (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2019), cover.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through essays on some of the world’s greatest artists and thinkers (Leonardo da Vinci, Euclid, Andreas Vesalius, William Hunter, Johannes Kepler, Andrea Palladio, Gallileo Galilei, among others), <em>Thinking 3D</em> shows how techniques developed to illustrate three-dimensional forms on the two-dimensional page. The book features Leonardo da Vinci’s ground-breaking drawings in his notebooks and other manuscripts, extraordinary anatomical illustrations, early paper engineering including volvelles and tabs, beautiful architectural plans and nineteenth-century views of the moon.</p>
<p>With in-depth analysis of over forty manuscripts and books, <em>Thinking 3D</em> also reveals the impact that developing techniques had on artists and draughtsmen throughout time and across space. The book has been edited by Thinking 3D co-directors, Daryl Green (Fellow Librarian at Magdalen College, Oxford) and Laura Moretti (Senior Lecturer in Art History at University of St Andrews).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/T3D_Book_2.jpg" alt=""Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present, 58-9."" />
<figcaption>
Daryl Green and Laura Moretti, eds. <em>Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present</em> (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2019), 58-9.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Contents</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>“The history of thinking 3D in forty books” by Daryl Green and Laura Moretti</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Leonardo da Vinci, 500 years on” by Matthew Landrus</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“The third dimension from the ninth century” by Ken Saito</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Master teacher of Renaissance mathematics” by Renzo Baldasso</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“The third dimension on the page” by Yelda Nasifoglu</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Polyhedra and the photograph” by George Hart</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“A geometrical system of the heavens” by Karl Galle</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“The starry messenger” by Thony Christie</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“The hand-made moon” by Stephanie O’Rourke</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Mapping the terrain of our red neighbour” by Daryl Green</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“A medieval architectural vision” by Karl Kinsella</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Learning from the past” by Laura Moretti</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“The most famous of French buildings” by Frédérique Lemerle</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Perspectives of a measured world” by Francesco Marcorin</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“The embodiment of anatomical education” by Mark Somos</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Remarkable reproductions” by Camilla Røstvik</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Electric brains” by Dániel Margócsy</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“Two eyes are better than one” by Denis Pellerin</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present</em> can be purchased from the <a href="https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/thinking-3d">Bodleian’s online shop</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-3D-Images-Leonardo-Present/dp/1851245251/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=thinking+3d&qid=1570702687&sr=8-1">Amazon</a>, and other outlets.</p>Thinking 3Dmail.thinking3d@gmail.comWe are proud to announce the launch of our new bookMilitary Perspective2019-10-04T06:00:00+01:002019-10-04T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/Military_Perspective<p>Military perspective, also known as cavalier perspective, combines illusionistic depth and orthographic measure to produce a depth dimension that both aids the identification of the monument in a satisfying manner and at the same time contains measured depth using the same scale as the frontal plane. In the early modern period, the employment of parallel perspective used to draw machines and architecture merged with the latest developments in orthographic perspective to create varieties of non-converging perspective that could be read rigorously with a single unit of measure.</p>
<p>Although one can argue that the basics of military perspective were already present in the fifteenth century, military perspective as it is most rigorously understood maintains consistent measure into the third (or “z,” to complement the “x” and “y”) dimension, and this is first seen in the sixteenth century. Preserving the ground line and elevation and extending parallel lines into depth created “oblique” perspective, where parallel orthogonals simply connect at the ground line. In addition, other varieties – such as one preserving symmetry (a primitive form of isometry) – were developed under the umbrella of “military” or “cavalier” perspective (so-named because it appears to be drawn from an elevated gun platform called in Italian a <em>cavaliere</em>. This new perspective allowed for rapidly imagining, studying, and calculating the costs of fortifications.</p>
<p>Military perspective follows the older mode of drawing machines that can be summarized as “one machine, one drawing” (McGee). Such drawings maximized recognition of the whole and the perception of its parts from an elevated viewpoint. This medieval approach was developed by Taccola, Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo da Vinci in the fifteenth century. However, these early drawings were not metrically accurate. As Massimo Scolari (215-246) has argued in seminal essays, the basis of military perspective emerges first in mathematical proofs and can be inferred in architectural treatises when one can read dimensions from uniformly sized blocks or bricks. In these cases, the mode of representation already incorporates a depth orthogonal of approximately 45 degrees to the frontal plane.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://ia801600.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/23/items/divinaproportion00paci/divinaproportion00paci_jp2.zip&file=divinaproportion00paci_jp2/divinaproportion00paci_0112.jp2&id=divinaproportion00paci&scale=2&rotate=0" alt="" />
<figcaption>Figure 1. Luca Pacioli, <i>De divina proportione</i> (Venice, 1509), book 3, 14v. (Image courtesy: Getty Research Institute via archive.org).</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://ia802500.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/35/items/gri_33125008262210/gri_33125008262210_jp2.zip&file=gri_33125008262210_jp2/gri_33125008262210_0095.jp2&id=gri_33125008262210&scale=2&rotate=0" alt="" />
<figcaption>Figure 2. Cesariano, “opus isodomum,” <i>Lucio Vitruvio Pollione de architectura…</i>, 1521, 39v (Image courtesy: Getty Research Institute via archive.org).</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mature military perspective was born through the reforms to orthography by Bramante, Leonardo, Raphael and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. While orthography for buildings and ichnography for cities was taken for granted, the depth dimension could become more nearly accurate, as in Francesco Paciotto’s map of Rome from 1557, based in large part on the ichnographic map of Leonardo Bufalini (1551).</p>
<p>When does intuitive or pseudo-military architecture begin to incorporate a sense of rigorous depth? In the 1520s and 1530s, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and his collaborators were measuring the Aurelian wall with a great deal of accuracy. When he, or one of his family members, sought to illustrate parts of Vitruvius on military architecture, they resorted to what is essentially military perspective. The following illustration of a curtain wall (on the right), though it lacks dimensions because it is merely illustrating a point, can be read in elevation and depth.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/dp/original/DP160089.jpg" alt="" />
<figcaption>Figure 3. A member of the Sangallo family, The Fortification of City Walls (Vitruvius, Book 1, Chapter 5), 1530–45. Metropolitan Museum of Art.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As far as theoretical elaboration, it was Scolari, again, who pointed to a textual comment by Giovan Battista Belluzzi (1598 but written c. 1545), a Marchegian military engineer working for the duke of Florence, who wrote of a “perspective suited to practice” (<em>quella prospettiva che serve alla pratica</em>). “We must,” he explained, “see the whole thing intact, detached, and measured” (<em>havemo di bisogno veder la cosa tutta intera, & spiccata, & misurata</em>, p. 3). Scolari however did not use Belluzzi’s illustrations to bolster his arguments. His autograph drawings in his autograph manuscript in Anghiari show nevertheless that he was one of the most rigorous early adopters of military perspective (Lamberini).</p>
<p>In his 1564 treatise, annotated by Girolamo Maggi, Castriotto used military perspective perhaps for the first time in print. Contemporary treatises by Zanchi (<em>Del modo di fortificare le città</em>, 1554) and Cataneo (<em>Opera nuova di fortificare, offendere et difendere et far gli alloggiamenti</em>, 1564) continue to use orthography or slightly receding perspective orthogonals. Yet Castriotto – who apparently knew Belluzzi from the duchy of Urbino, suggesting a common practice – reproduced images like 27 recto below, which rigorously extend parallel lines from the ground and elevation lines. In this section, he introduced the term “soldierly perspective” (<em>prospettiva soldatesca</em>) and framed it as a less technical than “prospettiva.” Military perspective, then, served both as more intuitive and less difficult than perspective. The connection to measure is clear when Castriotto presents cross-sections of bastions with graphs, which aid the measurement of earth fill or bricks.</p>
<p>Calculating cost had been a standard problem of construction from the late middle ages on. Using standard quantities of brick, sand and mortar, one could calculate per unit of measure and architects like Baldassare Peruzzi used orthographic plans to help calculate costs (Huppert). The sloping scarp of the new curtains and bastions, in addition to the irregularity of footprints due to the terrain, complicated matters and Castriotto’s procedure shows how issues of cost can clearly be tackled with his new kind of perspective. He writes of the figure below: “In this view one sees half a cortina, a half bastion, and a half cavalier, and above it I placed these profiles and plans each assigned 2 feet, where the good geometer is able to see how many feet, how many bricks, how much sand (<em>arena</em>) and burnt lime (<em>calcina</em>).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://ia802607.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/2/items/dellafortificati00magg/dellafortificati00magg_jp2.zip&file=dellafortificati00magg_jp2/dellafortificati00magg_0065.jp2&id=dellafortificati00magg&scale=4&rotate=0" alt="" />
<figcaption>Figure 4. Girolamo Maggi and Giacomo Castriotto, <i>Della fortificatione delle città libri III</i> (Venice, 1564), 27r (Image courtesy: Getty Research Institute via archive.org).</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://ia802607.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/2/items/dellafortificati00magg/dellafortificati00magg_jp2.zip&file=dellafortificati00magg_jp2/dellafortificati00magg_0081.jp2&id=dellafortificati00magg&scale=2&rotate=0" alt="" />
<figcaption>Figure 5. Girolamo Maggi and Giacomo Castriotto, <i>Della fortificatione delle città libri III</i> (Venice, 1564), 34v-35r (Image courtesy: Getty Research Institute via archive.org).</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is no theoretical elaboration of military perspective until Bonaiuto Lorini, who wrote of a “more common perspective,” and how “such perspectives have to show their own height from close-to; thus they are all formed of parallel lines both for the height and for the width of any building whatsoever, though placed perpendicular to its plane…drawing the lines so that they fall perpendicular and remain parallel to infinity.” The succession of treatises that elaborate military perspective – Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Ambroise Bachot and Jacques Perret – is well documented (Scolari, Galindo Dias).</p>
<p>More interesting is to ask where the conventions were put into practice, either in a manuscript or printed context. To judge where true military perspective is being used, one must find drawings in which there is no diminution and the front and back of a fortress, for example, have curtain walls the same height. Even better, if a scale is attached one has even more of a mandate to extract absolute measures not only from frontally represented elements – the width and height of a façade – but also the depth of the <em>enceinte</em>.</p>
<figure>
<img src="http://sammlung.woldan.oeaw.ac.at/uploaded/thumbs/layer-7b679ccc-289c-11e8-8ea1-005056a80659-thumb.png" alt="" />
<figcaption>Figure 6. Domenico Zenoi, <i>Il vero ritrato della fortezza di Vienna Citta nobilissima in Austria, si veramente come ogi di si ritrova</i>, 1567 (Image courtesy: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften).</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the middle of the sixteenth century, manuscript maps were widely circulated and some published as prints. When wars and other events of note occurred, it was possible for printmakers to obtain plans of high reliability. One such printmaker was Domenico Zanoi, whose plan of Vienna was published during the Habsburg-Ottoman war of 1566. Zenoi consistently follows the rules of military perspective with the curtain wall a ribbon of parallel lines. Furthermore, he includes a dimensional scale of <em>canne</em>. The plan is combined with information that can be used approximately with the height of the walls to truly appreciate the characteristics of the city’s defenses.</p>
<p>As engineers, architects and draftsmen became more and more comfortable with military perspective, its potential for rapid visualization was realized. Just as three-dimensional models were derived from plans, the rise of military perspective allowed a kind of model making without the extensive cost of an actual model.</p>
<p><br />
<br /></p>
<p><strong>References:</strong></p>
<p>Belluzzi, Giovan Battista, <em>Libro di fortificazioni, assedij et difese di piazze</em>, c. 1545, Archivio Storico Comunale di Anghiari, F. 1624, in Daniela Lamberini, <em>Il Sanmarino: Giovan Battista Belluzzi architetto militare e trattatista del Cinquecento</em>, 2 vols. (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007).</p>
<p>Belluzzi, Giovan Battista, <em>Nuova inventione di fabricar fortezze</em> (Venice: Tomaso Baglioni, 1598).</p>
<p>Maggi, Girolamo, and Jacopo Castriotto, <em>Della Fortificatione della Città … libri tre</em> (Venice: Rutilio Borgominieri, 1586).</p>
<p>Lorini, Bonaiuto, <em>Delle fortificationi libri cinque</em> (Venice: Antonio Rampazzetto, 1596).</p>
<p>Galindo Diaz, Jorge, “The Dissemination of Military Perspective through Fortification Treatises between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” <em>Nexus Network Journal</em> 16 (2014): 569-85.</p>
<p>Huppert, Ann, “Practical Mathematics in the Drawings of Baldassarre Peruzzi and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,” in Anthony Gerbino, ed., <em>Geometrical Objects: Architectural Practice and the Mathematical Sciences 1400-1800</em> (Cham: Springer, 2014), 79-106.</p>
<p>McGee, David, “The Origins of Early Modern Machine Design,” in Wolfgang Lefèvre, ed., <em>Picturing Machines 1400-1700</em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 53-84.</p>
<p>Scolari, Massimo, <em>Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective</em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).</p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong></p>
<p>Filippo Camerota, “Renaissance Descriptive Geometry: The Codification of Drawing Methods,” in Wolfgang Lefèvre, ed., <em>Picturing Machines, 1400-1700</em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 175-208.</p>Ian VerstegenCombining illusionistic depth and orthographic measureAmbrosius Wilfflingseder’s Erotemata musices2019-10-03T06:00:00+01:002019-10-03T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/MusicalVolvelles<p>The RISM series, <em>Écrits imprimés concernant la Musique</em>, two volumes containing the location of all known theoretical works of music dating from late-fifteenth-century incunables to printed books of the late eighteenth century, was published in 1971. These volumes have not yet been digitized, a process that would have allowed for the inclusion of recently discovered sources. One of these is a copy of the music book, <em>Erotemata musices</em> by Ambrosius Wilfflingseder, published by Christoph Heussler in Nuremberg in 1563, extant in nineteen copies as of 1971.</p>
<p>A few years ago, the Special Collections department of the Sheridan Libraries at the Johns Hopkins University purchased a copy of the <em>Erotemata</em> for my teaching and ongoing research on images and symbols of musical learning in the early modern era. This copy, the twentieth known copy of Wilfflingseder’s text, is now housed in its magnificent George Peabody Library. Apart from this copy, IMSLP has digitized the Munich copy of this music text in octavo format with nearly 400 pages of music and text intended for the students at St Sebald’s School in Nuremberg in 1563, Wilfflingseder’s <em>Erotemata</em> contains what we now believe are the earliest examples of volvelles in a music text.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_1.jpg" alt=""Figure 1."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 1. Ambrosius Wilfflingseder, <em>Erotemata musices</em> (Nuremberg: Christoph Heussler, 1563). Copy on IMSLP from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Volvelles (from the Latin <em>volvere</em>, to turn) are interactive wheel charts inserted in manuscripts and printed books as mnemonic aids for learning a variety of subjects. They had been present in medieval manuscripts beginning in the thirteenth century in works as diverse as Ramon Llull’s <em>Ars Magna</em> and Matthew Paris’s <em>Chronica Majora</em>, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.<a href="#footnote-1">[1]</a></p>
<p>These ‘pop-ups’—similar to analog computers— are not only visual enticements but also pedagogical aids giving students an extra opportunity to engage in learning both visually in 2D and kinesthetically in 3D. Each of these devices are paper versions of sundials and astrolabes and other ivory and metal instruments used for a variety of computational purposes. Readers of these paper ‘substitutes’ for the actual instruments, in a variety of disciplines— from astronomy, astrology (the zodiac), computation, calendrical calculations, cryptography, navigation, and architecture— are able to absorb technical information in a variety of ways.</p>
<p>Daniel Muzzulini and Michael Dodds have been engaged in research on volvelles in particular as they relate to circularity in music, but their examples date from at least sixty years after the Wilfflingseder publication. Dodds believed that the earliest example appeared in the <em>Arte de Musica</em> (Lisbon, 1626) by the Portuguese theorist Antonio Fernandez. This volvelle was capable of revealing by a turn of the wheel transpositions of intervals to any key in the circle of fifths. Dodds originally hypothesized that books containing volvelles were associated with important navigational centers, such as busy ports along the Atlantic and Mediterranean. <a href="#footnote-2">[2]</a></p>
<p>The volvelles were an added attraction in that they were symbolic of steering wheels and allowed for virtual navigation. In recent papers presented at the American Musicological Society, at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, and at the 47th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference at the <em>Schola Cantorum</em> in Basel, I argue that musical volvelles did appear before 17th-century and were not necessarily associated with seaports and regions close to navigational centers. <a href="#footnote-3">[3]</a> In fact, many of the late fifteenth and sixteenth century texts containing astronomical, calendrical and navigational volvelles were published in Nuremberg.</p>
<p>This past semester, in a graduate musicology seminar at Princeton, one of my students with an interest in early printed books focused on architecture and acoustics chose to study Daniele Barbaro’s translation of Vitruvius <em>De Architectura</em> (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1556), one with illustrations designed in part by Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). It is said to be the first architectural work to employ flaps, extensions or volvelles, three of the latter. These interactive paper computers signal a transition from the linear into spatial dimensions, to simulate realistic visual representation, in contrast to the ‘flatness’ seen in earlier images. In the chapter on the acoustics of a room, other 16th century editions of this treatise contain one of the most common ‘flat’ symbols of musical learning, the so-called Guidonian hand, an image that is part of my ongoing research on the materiality of music pedagogy in the Renaissance.<a href="#footnote-4">[4]</a></p>
<p>One other peripheral but significant connection between volvelles and music is one that appears in a calendrical work by the 16th-century well-known music theorist Gioseffo Zarlino, his <em>De Vera Anni Forma: Sive De Recta Eius Emendatione</em> (Venice: Giovanni Varisco,1580). All of this confirms the notion that these interactive devices were more common than once thought. That the only surviving sixteenth-century musical volvelle is the set in the text by Ambrosius Wilfflingseder is a question worth pursuing.</p>
<p>Ambrosius Wilfflingseder was a schoolmaster and Kantor at St. Sebaldus in Nuremberg, where he lived and worked. Nuremberg was a thriving mercantile center, that lay on active routes and established itself as an important manufacturer of metal ware. According to Penny Gouk, Nuremberg’s reputation for making quality products, such as compasses, ivory sundials and musical instruments, spread throughout Europe, and many attended the several trade fairs held there each year. <a href="#footnote-5">[5]</a> The astronomer Johannes Müller, called “Regiomontanus” settled in the city in 1471, setting up a workshop and a printing press for the production for scientific instruments and books, further enhancing Nuremberg’s reputation as a center for learning the subjects of the quadrivium. One of the earliest volvelles to appear in a <em>Calendarium</em>, a book printed on Regiomontanus’ private press in Nuremberg in 1474 and it is no surprise that among the books in Regiomontanus’ library was a manuscript copy of Llull’s works that describe the use of volvelles. In 1476 in Venice Erhard Ratdolt published more elaborate versions of Regiomontanus’ volvelles.</p>
<p>Wilfflingseder’s <em>Erotemata</em> is essentially a regulation music textbook of the variety found in German-speaking lands in the 16th century. Another music text with the same title by Luca Lossius was published in Nuremberg in the same year by the well-known firm of Montanus and Neuber. There are no volvelles in the Lossius text, but in other aspects the materials resemble the question and answer format used by Wilfflingseder. Apart from a standard introduction with some historical background on the origins of music with quotations from the bible and classical authors, with sprinklings of Greek and Hebrew text, the customary questions in dialogue format regarding the rules of music theory, the book is filled with music by some of the more illustrious composers of Josquin’s generation. Still, the most interesting aspect of the volume are the four volvelles. The first provides the reader with an interactive tool to enhance the understanding of the hexachord system as shown in chart on the facing page. and three others as companions to text on the rules of ligatures of and elements of mensural notation.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_2.jpg" alt=""Figure 2."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 2. Ambrosius Wilfflingseder, <em>Erotemata musices</em> (Nuremberg: Christoph Heussler, 1563), 4-5. Copy on IMSLP from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are various ways in which to view it, thanks to multiple copies scattered around the US and Europe. One can see it as it appears in the book, or as taken apart: the base, the larger disc and the smaller one.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_3-4-5.jpg" alt=""Figure 3."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 3. Dismantled volvelle, p. 4.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What follows are 20 rotations of the wheel (courtesy of a copy in the NYPL).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_6.gif" alt=""Figure 4."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 4. Volvelle, p. 4.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second volvelle on p. 137 is an aid to Chapter 4 “Quid est ligature,” the rules for the ligatures. The cover is missing in the Baltimore copy, but present in thirteen frames in the IMSLP Munich copy, enabling an animation.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_7.jpg" alt=""Figure 5a."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 5a. Wifflingseder, <em>Erotemata</em>, Baltimore copy, p. 137
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_8.gif" alt=""Figure 5b."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 5b. Wifflingseder, <em>Erotemata</em>, IMSLP Munich copy, p. 137 (animated).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The two remaining volvelles in Wilfflingseder’s text aid in determining values in augmentation (on page 323) and diminution (on page 324).<a href="#footnote-6">[6]</a></p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_9-10.jpg" alt=""Figure 6a."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 6a. Wifflingseder, <em>Erotemata</em>, Augsburg copy, left, p. 323; Baltimore, right, pp. 322-3.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_11-12.jpg" alt=""Figure 6b."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 6b. Wifflingseder, <em>Erotemata</em>, Augsburg copy, left, p. 324; Baltimore, right, pp 324-5.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_13.gif" alt=""Figure 7."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 7. Wifflingseder, <em>Erotemata</em>, Baltimore, p. 323, animated. <a href="#footnote-7">[7]</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Opportunities to see other copies of Wilfflingeder’s <em>Erotemata</em> in libraries in Glasgow and London provided me with more parts to complete the puzzles, as well as some surprises that led me to propose further steps, one of which is to examine the existing books for signs of ownership and use, and the other for circling back to earlier texts that may have been models for musical wheel charts.</p>
<p>The Glasgow copy belonged at one time to John Stafford Smith, the composer of the music to our “Star Spangled Banner,” a bibliophile and one of the earliest collectors of Bach manuscripts. Apart from his signature on the title page and the date, 1778, the only other significant annotation is his labelling the instrument pictured on the outer wheel of the volvelle on page 323 as a <em>lyra mendicorum</em> or hurdy gurdy.</p>
<p>One of the two copies in the British Library belonging to Sir John Hawkins, also dated 1778, author of <em>A General History of the Science and Practice of Music</em> contains a pastedown with a list of some of the composers whose pieces are used in the <em>Erotemata</em>. Curiously, these are not German, but Franco-Flemish composers popular at the turn of the sixteenth century.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_14.jpg" alt=""Figure 8."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 8. Smith copy in Glasgow, possession note dated 1778.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Weiss_15.jpg" alt=""Figure 9."" />
<figcaption>
Figure 9. Hawkins copy in London BL, signed.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p>
<p>What do these volvelles reveal? A study of surviving copies of Wilfflingseder’s Erotemata suggest that these ephemeral mechanical devices appeared before the early years of the seventeenth century. These wheel charts were clearly meant to provide other ways of condensing tabular data and of learning, adding a tactile vector. Wilfflingseder and his printer-publisher Christoph Heussler were likely working in an environment in 16th century Nuremberg that encouraged novelty in the production of books. It is clear that these devices were fragile and likely to be damaged or destroyed in the course of use. Laurel Braswell-Means has written about “the vulnerability of volvelles” describing how the simpler ones are more likely to survive, while others with more numerous and delicate disks are less fortunate and strew the volvelle graveyard. <a href="#footnote-8">[8]</a> Determining survival were strength of materials, skill of craftsmen, frequency of use or abuse, and the chance fortunes of later manuscript history.</p>
<p>The presence of volvelles in the musical context can be seen as interactive mnemonic aids for learning music. Their use of the circle as a template may also signal a shift away from the vocal conceptualization of musical space toward an instrumental one that displayed the musical structure of the circular octave.
<br />
<br />
<strong>NOTES</strong></p>
<p><a name="footnote-1"></a>
<a href="#text-1">1</a>. See Suzanne Karr Schmidt, <em>Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance</em> (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 240-44.</p>
<p><a name="footnote-2"></a>
<a href="#text-2">2</a>. Michael Dodds <em>From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory</em> is under contract with Oxford University Press. Dodds, Daniel Muzzulini, myself and others will present further materials on a panel at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America.</p>
<p><a name="footnote-3"></a>
<a href="#text-3">3</a>. In those presentations, I discuss the life and career of this little-known pedagogue and theorist and another of his publications, written for his school in Nuremberg, one of the first music theory textbooks written in German, intended primarily for young learners.</p>
<p><a name="footnote-4"></a>
<a href="#text-4">4</a>. See Susan Forscher Weiss, “<em>Disce manum tuam si vis bene discere cantum</em>: Symbols of Learning Music in Early Modern Europe”, <em>Music in Art</em> XXX/1–2 (2005): 35-74 and “The Singing Hand” and “Steps to Singing” in <em>Writing on Hands: Knowledge and Memory in Early Modern European Culture</em>, ed. Claire Richter Sherman (The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, with the participation of The Folger Shakespeare Library, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 35-45, 174-83.</p>
<p><a name="footnote-5"></a>
<a href="#text-5">5</a>. Penny Gouk, <em>The Ivory Sundials of Nuremberg, 1500-1700</em> (Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1988).</p>
<p><a name="footnote-6"></a>
<a href="#text-6">6</a>. I am indebted to Ursula Korber at the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg for photographing their two copies one containing intact volvelles and one with missing wheels.</p>
<p><a name="footnote-7"></a>
<a href="#text-7">7</a>. I wish to thank my colleague Nathan Scott, Senior Design Instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins, for animating this volvelle.</p>
<p><a name="footnote-8"></a>
<a href="#text-8">8</a>. Laurel Braswell-Means in <em>Manuscripta</em> XXXV/1 (1991): 43-54.</p>
<p>Thanks to Paul Espinosa, Director of the George Peabody Library, and to Sasha Novack and Nathan Scott for their work on the animations.</p>Susan WeissThe earliest examples of volvelles in a music textSebastiano Serlio’s spatial representation through linee occulte2019-09-02T06:00:00+01:002019-09-02T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/Serlio_Linee-occulte<p>Sebastiano Serlio (Bologna 1475 - Fontainebleau 1554) was a virtuoso of spatial representation through applying “linee occulte” or hidden lines. Serlio’s knowledge culminated in rhetoric architectural drawings by applying these lines. This, so the lines represent hidden connections by drawing geometrically following Neoplatonic thinking (Hersey, 1976, 81-87; Hart & Hicks, 1996, 458). For Serlio, architecture needs taught first by geometry and subsequently by the study of perspective. Unsurprisingly, the two first books are the books on geometry and perspective. Despite this, the books were published in a bilingual edition in 1545, a few years later than the fourth book on the orders (<em>Regole Generali</em>, 1537), and the third book on antiquities (<em>Le Antiquità di Roma</em>, 1540). In these books Serlio outlined the importance of geometry and perspective for the architect, without which “the architect would be unable to produce anything worthwhile” (Serlio, Hart, 1996, 3). Such knowledge on geometry and perspective manifested itself through drawing, indicating Serlio’s principle of <em>linee occulte</em> relates to the architectural drawing. Thus, Serlio developed <em>linee occulte</em> as technical tools for drawing ‘hidden’ geometries whilst at the same time used them as judicious instruments, for making reasoned decisions.</p>
<p>Evidently <em>linee occulte</em> relate to Alberti’s principle of “lineamenta,” or lineaments. Such lineaments have been described as derived from the mind and relate to all lines and linear characteristics in design (Alberti, Rykwert, Leach, & Tavernor, 1988, 422-23). Here, lineaments belong to the intellect, and differ from “materia” or worldly matter (Alberti, Rykwert, Leach, & Tavernor, 1988, 7). In contrast stands Serlio’s <em>linee occulte</em>, which connect mind and matter, making <em>linee occulte</em> distinct from lineaments. This is evident in book VI where Serlio used “lineamenti” to describe the lines outlining the layout of the gardens as seen in figures 1 and 2 (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 1996, 196).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_1.jpg" alt=""Figure 1"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 1. Serlio’s text mentioning <em>lineamenti</em>, seventh book: On the thirteenth house on the countryside: “Li semplici lineamenti intorno l’edificio dinotano li giardini.” The simple (or single), lineaments around the building denote the gardens. Serlio, <em>Book VII</em> (1575), 28.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_2.jpg" alt=""Figure 2"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 2. Plan of Serlio denoting lineamenti for a garden design. Serlio, <em>Book VII</em> (1575), 29.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First, this denotes Serlio’s awareness of Alberti’s lineaments. Second, this implies Serlio used lineaments for perceivable lines. This is the opposite of <em>linee occulte</em> which are to be erased when being drawn in order to become “hidden.” <em>Linee occulte</em>, are thus an intrinsic part of the drawing process in which the hidden (<em>occulte</em>) differ from the perceivable (<em>evidenti</em>) (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 1996, 457-459). The difference between linee occulte and linee evidente is clear in figures 3 and 4, where the dotted lines depict hidden geometry, whilst the solid lines are the ones seen. As such, linee occulte are the method for creating an architectural representation. This is apparent throughout books one and two were linee occulte are mostly mentioned as constructive tools (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 11, 42, 50, 51, 52, 56, 64, 66, 70, 72, 76).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_3.jpg" alt=""Figure 3"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 3. Linee occulte of a gate visualised, Serlio, <em>Book II</em> (1566), 30.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_4.jpg" alt=""Figure 4"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 4. The same gate in linee evidente. Serlio, <em>Book II</em> (1566), 31.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyond tools for drawing, evidence suggest <em>linee occulte</em> are also theoretic. For instance, Serlio explains that the outer appearance of lineaments gives less insight in architecture than the geometric study of hidden parts (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 1996, 48). Then Serlio elaborates; “once a man is acquainted with … hidden parts, … [he] will make many things with a practice which, however, will have originated with theory” (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 1996, 48). Hence, <em>linee occulte</em> narrate architectural concepts due to its embeddedness in theory. However, when looking to the work of Serlio, it is not only the mathematical but also the ornamental that is important. This can be seen when looking at the elaborate flooring pattern in figure 4. Thus, every architectural representation consists of the ornamental and the mathematical. The ornament pleases the modal observer, whilst, its mathematics are only distillable by the initiates of <em>linee occulte</em>. Moreover, <em>linee occulte</em> were the ideal instrument for creating spatiality, making the architectural representation more communicative and comprehensible. As a case to point this out, figure 5 shows one of Serlio’s licentious gates in which the spatiality is analysed by looking into the perspectival <em>linee occulte</em>. No other hidden geometries will be analysed. The gate is exemplar since Serlio described it as a “disguised and masked” Doric gate in which “the columns are unfinished [rusticated] but their measurements are nonetheless present” (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 2001, 468). In the same <em>Extraordinary Book</em> Serlio mentions that “it seems evident that even for the most licentious inventions, its hidden geometry can be deduced” (Serlio, Hart & Hicks, 2001, 461).</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_5.jpg" alt=""Figure 5"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 5. Serlio’s masked and disguised Doric gate, Serlio, <em>Libro Estraordinario</em> (1566), 9.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Striking about this figure are its ornaments, as they are partially used to suggest spatiality. By using <em>linee evidenti</em>, Serlio simulates spatiality in a two-dimensional drawing by adding shadow, material and depth. For instance, the shadows are insinuated by using horizontal, vertical or inclined lines. Coarse and rusticated materials are suggested by rough shortly curved and whimsically, yet carefully, orchestrated lines. Last, depth is represented through shadows which to outline curvature, progressions and regressions from the surface. However, depth is also suggested by applying perspective which can be seen by looking at the steps, the door, the voussoirs and the cornice. Thus, Serlio’s skill in architectural representation comes forth, namely <em>linee evidenti</em> are wielded to suggest spatiality. Yet, less evident is the role <em>linee occulte</em> play in representing spatiality. For this a perspectival analysis of the gate is required. This is done by applying LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a remote-sensing technology which three-dimensionally scans surfaces transmitting data in point-clouds. When imported into CAD (Computer-Aided-Design) software the format of the data is vectorial, and thus mathematical. This allows a more mathematically accurate analysis of geometry and perspective in comparison to conventional hand-measuring. The process of going from the scan to a CAD emulation can be seen in figure 6.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_6.jpg" alt=""Figure 6"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 6. CAD emulation of Serlio’s masked and disguised Doric gate, Serlio, <em>Libro Estraordinario</em> (1566), 9, the 3D scan (1), the scan depicted with scalar fields (2), a point-cloud selection of the scalar fields (3), and the CAD emulation (4).
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Figure 7 shows a CAD emulation of the perspective as derived from the laser-scan. The lines do not converge in one vanishing-point. However, these fallacies can be explained when taking-into-account the inaccuracy resulting from printing and cutting the xylograph. Further, as the measure and scale of the perspective lines are very small, a distortion can easily be drawn in the reconstruction. This is particularly the case at the bottom, where the perspectival mismatch is biggest. More interesting is that Serlio used several vanishing-points for the construction of the initial drawing. The reasons for this can be explained by looking into figure 8. Here a one point-perspective is simulated by applying one central vanishing-point at the approximate eye-level. This perspective would work well for the upper part of the drawing, with the exception of the voussoirs which are more distorted in comparison to the original design. Due to the distortion there is less space for the ornamental which are required to please patrons. The ornamental is nonetheless important for these gates, as Serlio wanted to ‘satisfy everyone’ particularly when one wanted to be ‘different from everyone else’ (Serlio, Hart, & Hicks, 2001, 468). At the bottom of the gate, the distortion of the steps would be so big, they would draw to much attention, creating a discord in the composition.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_7.jpg" alt=""Figure 7"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 7. Doric Gate, CAD emulation. Showing the different perspective lines in <em>linee occulte</em>.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_8.jpg" alt=""Figure 8"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 8. Doric Gate, CAD emulation. Showing the <em>linee occulte</em> with a one-point perspective applied.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Serlio explains two methods for drawing an architectural perspective (see figure 9), but, he uses neither method for the construction of the gate. This is not surprising as Serlio also explains that licence can be taken if need be, repositioning the vanishing-point for a better effect. Serlio even uses several vanishing-points if required but always “with the assistance of good judgement” (Serlio, 1566, 27-28, 31). Further the erroneous methods of Serlio have already been outlined, but, Serlio himself endorses his errors stating, “I can well imagine, however, that some purists in this art, would reproach the liberty taken by me” (Serlio, Hart, & Hicks, 1996, 31). Thus, when Serlio takes licence from perspectival rules, he does this for the representative effect and takes-into-account the perception of the audience.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_9.jpg" alt=""Figure 9"" />
<figcaption>
Figure 9. Serlio’s two perspective methods, Serlio, <em>Book II</em> (1566), 19.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sheds new light on Serlio’s gate constructions. Figure 10, depicts perspectival <em>linee occulte</em> in the easiest possible way, having two vanishing-points positioned on a central axis. The results in a drawing which resembles the original composition. Here, the discord at the bottom is resolved, but the voussoirs are still not distorted through which the roundels cannot be depicted properly. For drawing the roundels clearly, the voussoirs need distorting. This is achieved by adding more vanishing-points at the lowermost horizon as can be seen in figure 11. Unsurprisingly, this ‘optimised’ perspective resembles the original composition of Serlio, best.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_11.jpg" alt=""Figure 10"" />
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Figure 10. Doric Gate, CAD emulation. Showing the perspective with all the centre-points on its central axis, resulting in the least amount of focal points.
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Mols_12.jpg" alt=""Figure 11"" />
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Figure 11. Doric Gate, CAD emulation, ‘optimised’ version resembling the original perspective reconstruction best.
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<p>To conclude, Serlio used several vanishing-points in his designs, knowingly renouncing correct mathematical applications. This shows he was aware of more complex perspectival applications than book two suggests. Serlio allowed the amending of methods to create the desired effect which was most didactic to the eye of the beholder. Nonetheless, such amendments were based on mathematical reasoning to visualise spatiality. Endorsing such a mathematical constitution in the most licentious book of Serlio is remarkable. For every single design, however ornate these might look, mathematical reasoning lies at the basis and was done through <em>linee occulte</em>. Thus, hidden lines were not only a mean for drawing, but also rhetoric ones as it relied on reason. Hence, Serlio can be considered a virtuoso of spatial representation. A representation perceivable by <em>linee evidenti</em> but always conveyed by <em>linee occulte</em>.
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<p><strong>Further Reading:</strong></p>
<p>Alberti, Leon Battista, <em>On the Art of Building in Ten Books</em>, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor (Cambridge Mass., London: The MIT Press, 1988), 422-3.</p>
<p>Damisch, Hubert, <em>The Origin of Perspective</em>, translated by John Goodman (Cambridge Mass., London: The MIT Press, 1994):</p>
<p>Emmons, Paul, <em>Drawing Imagining Building: Embodiment in Architectural Design Practices</em> (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).</p>
<p>Hersey, George, <em>Pythagorean Palaces: Magic and Architecture in the Italian Renaissance</em> (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976).</p>
<p>Kemp, Martin, <em>The Science of Art, Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat</em> (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1990), 87.</p>
<p>Onians, John, <em>Bearers of Meaning; The Classical Orders in Antiquity the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance</em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 263-309;</p>
<p>Serlio, Sebastiano, <em>Regole generali di architettura</em> (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1537).</p>
<p>Serlio, Sebastiano, <em>Il Terzo Libro</em> (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1540).</p>
<p>Serlio, Sebastiano, <em>Le premier livre d’architecture… Le Second livre de perspective mis en langue francoyse par Iehan Martin</em> (Paris: Jean Barbé, 1545).</p>
<p>Serlio, Sebastiano, <em>Libro Primo-Quinto d’Architettura</em> (Venice: Francesco Senese & Zuane Krugher, 1566).</p>
<p>Serlio, Sebastiano, <em>On Architecture</em>, translated by Hart Vaughan, Peter Hicks, volume 1 (New Haven, London: Yale University press, 1996).</p>
<p>Serlio, Sebastiano, <em>On Architecture</em>, translated by Hart Vaughan, Peter Hicks, volume 2 (New Haven, London: Yale University press, 2001).</p>
<p>Temple, Nicholas, <em>Disclosing Horizons, Architecture, Perspective, and Redemptive Space</em> (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 129.</p>Nick MolsHidden lines and architectural space3D Touch2019-08-27T06:00:00+01:002019-08-27T06:00:00+01:00https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/Shapiro<p><em>An interview with Leonard Shapiro</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Why observe 3D objects using the sense of touch?</strong></p>
<p>Our sense of touch is an extraordinarily powerful accumulator of tactile information about everyday three-dimensional objects. We use our sense of touch automatically and without giving it much thought, in the form of what Roberta Klatzky and Susan Ledermann refer to as ‘exploratory procedures’ (EPs), which they identified in 1987 and have researched until 2012. Yet, we seldom use our sense of touch actively in exploring and understanding objects when we wish to observe them more fully, including their 3D form. Our eyes can only inform us of so much, and by combining sight and touch, to complement what we observe with our eyes alone, we gather a great deal more information about the 3D form of an object. Neurologically, the afferent nerves from our fingers take up a relatively large area of the sensory cortex of our brain, compared to any other part of our body. This makes our sense of touch an effective sensory modality.</p>
<p>Two dimensional images are formed on our retina when we use our eyes to observe an object, yet when we observe that same object using our sense of touch, we are engaging directly (in a ‘hands-on’ way) with its three-dimensionality.</p>
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Shapiro1.png" alt=""Observation using touch and drawing – Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2015. UCT Department of Human Biology."" />
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Observation using touch and drawing – Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2015. UCT Department of Human Biology.
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<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Shapiro2.png" alt=""Observation using touch and drawing - Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2015. UCT Department of Human Biology."" />
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Observation using touch and drawing - Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2015. UCT Department of Human Biology.
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</figure>
<p><strong>Haptico-visual observation and drawing (HVOD): Touch and Drawing: A method of enhanced anatomical observation and learning</strong></p>
<p>I developed the Haptico-visual observation and drawing (HVOD) method after teaching observational drawing over many years to artists and so-called ‘non’-artists alike. I realised that whenever I needed the student to observe the three-dimensionality of the object more closely and accurately, I would ask them to ‘feel the object’. The difference in their drawing was remarkable in that they reflected the observed object into 2D marks on paper which effectively re-presented the 3D object.</p>
<p>The type of drawing approach that I teach is ‘gesture drawing’ with a specific emphasis on what is known as ‘cross-contour’ drawing. The reason for this is that ‘cross-contour’ mark-making closely approximates the ‘lateral stroking’ and ‘contour following’ EPs as described by Klatzky and Lederman (see illustration).</p>
<p>In addition, these specific types of marks contain a ‘descriptive value’ (a semiotics value) in that each mark (singularly and in combination) describe the 3D <em>form</em> of the object. Marks are more fundamental, more primal than letters and words: in our evolution as humans, we made marks long before we formed letters and words. The kind of ‘descriptive marks’ that I am referring to can be seen in the portrait drawings of British artist, Frank Auerbach.</p>
<p>The HVOD method employs our sense of touch in combination with the simultaneous act of gesture drawing, in order to achieve the enhanced observation and memorisation of anatomical parts as a ‘mental picture’. While we observe the 3D form of an object with our ‘feeling hand’ we simultaneously make gestural marks on paper with our ‘drawing hand’ to reflect on paper what we are feeling.</p>
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Shapiro3.png" alt=""Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2017, UCT Department of Human Biology."" />
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Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2017, UCT Department of Human Biology.
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<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Shapiro4.png" alt=""Observing a non-anatomical object using touch and drawing. Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2015, UCT Department of Human Biology."" />
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Observing a non-anatomical object using touch and drawing. Anatomy Observation and Drawing, Special Studies Module (SSM) 2015, UCT Department of Human Biology.
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<p><strong>‘Touch is gesture’ and ‘drawing is gesture’</strong></p>
<p>When exploring an object with our fingers, we are in effect using gestures in order to acquire object knowledge – the ‘exploratory procedures’ are gestures in their own right. When drawing on paper, we make gestures as we make marks. When applying the HVOD method, we are re-presenting the EP gestures that we make with one hand, into marks on paper with the other hand. In doing so, we externalise the 3D form of the object, into marks on a 2D surface.</p>
<p>Students and health-care professionals who have studied an anatomical part in this way (such as a humerus, skull or heart) report being able to ‘see more’ of the object than they did before and remember and recall the object as a visual image.</p>
<p>On completion of an HVOD course, one medical student commented, “I still remember all the objects perfectly in my head from observing it in this way…I mean you could close your eyes and draw a humerus. Now I can see it in my mind’s eye.”</p>
<p>There are a number of important benefits to applying the HVOD method in the learning environment:
i) closer observation and understanding of the three-dimensional form and detail of the object under investigation (such as an anatomical part).
ii) cognitive memorisation of anatomical parts as a ‘mental picture’.
iii) improved spatial awareness and spatial orientation within the volume of an anatomical part (for example the chambers of the heart or the space within the skull).
iv) retention of anatomical knowledge over time.
v) An ability to draw.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Shapiro5.png" alt=""After observing and drawing a humerus, it can be annotated by the student by referencing an anatomy atlas. If they notice that they are unable to annotate a part of their drawing, this is an indication that they should re-observe and re-draw that part of the humerus."" />
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After observing and drawing a humerus, it can be annotated by the student by referencing an anatomy atlas. If they notice that they are unable to annotate a part of their drawing, this is an indication that they should re-observe and re-draw that part of the humerus.
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<figure>
<img src="https://www.thinking3d.ac.uk/assets/images/Shapiro6.png" alt=""In 1987, Professors Roberta Klatzky and Susan Lederman identified and named six manual exploratory proceedures (EPs) and their associated object properties."" />
<figcaption>
In 1987, Professors Roberta Klatzky and Susan Lederman identified and named six manual exploratory proceedures (EPs) and their associated object properties.
See: “Hand Movements: a Window into haptic object recognition,” by S. J. Lederman and R. L. Klatzky, 1987, <em>Cognitive Psychology</em>, 19, p. 346. Copyright 1987 by Elsevier.
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<p><strong>Anatomy Observation and Drawing Workshop, London, 12 August 2019</strong></p>
<p>I will be running a one-day anatomy observation and drawing workshop on 12 August 2019, at The Gordon Museum of Pathology, King’s College London. To register, please see <a href="https://www.anatsoc.org.uk/news/all-news/2019/05/30/anatomy-observation-and-drawing-workshop-london-12th-august-2019"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
<p>In 2018, I wrote a paper <em>How Haptics and Drawing Enhance the Learning of Anatomy</em> with my colleagues, Steve Reid and Graham Louw. This was published in Anatomical Sciences Education (ASE) journal. <a href="https://www.lateralleap.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Reid_et_al-2018-Anatomical_Sciences_Education.pdf"><strong>Here</strong></a> is a link to that paper.</p>
<p><strong>For more information, please visit my website: <a href="www.lateralleap.co.za">www.lateralleap.co.za</a></strong>.</p>
<p><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p>
<p>University of Cape Town (UCT) medical students for use of their drawings.
We acknowledge with gratitude the contribution of body donors to the UCT Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology.</p>Leonard ShapiroHow our sense of touch and drawing emphasises the three-dimenisonal form of objects, including anatomical parts