The Trattato as Textbook: Francesco di Giorgio’s Vision for the Renaissance Architect

Abstract

In fifteenth-century Italy, the architect’s role lacked definition. The classical conception of the architect — the distinguished professional lauded by Vitruvius and Cicero, as theoretically versed as he was technically skilled — had faded in the medieval period. Even the term 'architectus', with its powerful connotations of creation and authorship, had fallen out of use (Kostof 1977: 60–61). Furthermore, there was no standard of training or apprenticeship for the architect. Depending on the context, the engineer, carpenter, patron, or building administrator might be considered the building’s architect (Hollingsworth 1984: 385–410). On the role of the architect in the Italian Renaissance and the development of an architectural profession, see Ackerman 1991, Ettlinger 1977, and Wilkinson 1977. But beginning around 1400, numerous artists, scholars, and patrons began to express the need for an established architectural profession

The Engineering and Mechanics of Self-Propelled Vehicles from the Renaissance: The Projects of Francesco di Giorgio

“…Unlike Leonardo da Vinci (Innocenzi, 2020), Francesco di Giorgio organized his work in an ordered and systematic way and compiled technical proto manuals that brought the technical knowledge out of the closed artisan workshops to promote it to a common heritage. Francesco di Giorgio's manuals (Merrill, 2013) would strongly influence his contemporaries and will be the basis of subsequent Theaters of Machines; however, although numerous manuscript copies have been compiled, a printed copy was never realized (Reti, 1963). Over time, the work of Sienese engineers and their importance in the history of engineering gradually became less prominent and their memory slowly faded away.…”

Architecture

“…Francesco di Giorgio Martini wrote his Trattato di architettura between 1475 and 1495 (Merrill 2013;Evers and Thoenes 2003;Payne 1999). Like Filarete's treatise, it was written in Italian and fully illustrated.…”