Ars et Ingenium: The Embodiment of Imagination in Francesco di Giorgio Martini's Drawings

Pari Riahi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317755982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Historia de la arquitectura

When did drawing become an integral part of architecture? Among several architects and artists who brought about this change during the Renaissance, Francesco di Giorgio Martini's ideas on drawing recorded in his Trattati di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare (1475-1490) are significant. Francesco suggests that drawing is linked to the architect's imagination and central in conveying images and ideas to others.

Starting with the broader edges of Francesco's written work and steadily penetrating into the fantastic world of his drawings, the book examines his singular formulation of the act of drawing and its significance in the context of the Renaissance. The book concludes with speculations on how Francesco's work is relevant to us at the onset of another major shift in architecture caused by the proliferation of digital media.

1 Writing the project of architecture

There are four ways of making a book. There are some who write down the words of others, without adding or changing a thing, and he who does so is a scribe, (scriptor). There are those who write down other’s words and add something, however not their own additions. One who does that is a compiler (compilator). Then there are those who write down both others’ and their own things, but materials of others predominate, and their own is added like an annex for clarification. Who does this is a commentator (commentator), rather than an author. But he who writes both what comes from himself and the others, with the material of others annexed for the purpose of confirming his own, ought to be called author (auctor).¹

Bonaventure

Overture

In an autobiographical tale, The Vision, Lucian (c. 125 AD–c. 180 AD) recounts the story of his early adolescent years and the incident that changed his fate.² Upon finishing school, Lucian’s father gathers a council in order to determine which profession would best suit his son. The members of the council agree that a life of culture would be challenging for a family of limited resources and they guide him toward a life of handicraft work. Eventually, they select Lucian’s uncle, a sculptor, to take him as apprentice as the young child had previously demonstrated some talent in making wax figures. Due to a first-timer mishap, Lucian falls into an argument with his uncle, gets beaten, runs back home and falls asleep in tears. In a life-altering dream, he finds himself divided between two women, each holding on to one of his hands and pulling him in her direction. One woman appears as a “working woman, masculine looking, with untidy hair, horny hands, and dress kilted up ... all powdered with plaster ...” reminding Lucian of his sculptor uncle.³ The other woman, on the contrary, possesses “a beautiful face, a comely figure, and neat attire.”⁴ As they fight over the young Lucian, neither succeeds in physically pulling him toward herself, so they ask him to listen to their pleas and choose for himself.

The woman in untidy clothes and rough appearance is Statuary (Statua). Speaking in a “strange jargon, stringing her arguments in a very earnest manner,” she pleads with Lucian to join her and remain faithful to his maternal family’s profession.⁵ Promising him a steady life, fame and the notice of his fellow citizens, Statuary specifically emphasizes the value of being rewarded for one’s works over words. She confirms that if Lucian chooses her he will never experience spite and will have no need to leave his country and people under any circumstances, and names Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron and Praxiteles, as members of her entourage. Then the well dressed, beautiful, eloquent Culture attempts to persuade Lucian to join her. She first reminds him that being a sculptor will bring him a life of manual labour in lieu of the many rewards and privileges that will be granted to Lucian if he chooses her over Statuary. Culture reminds him that influence, distinction from the masses and a higher rank than a common craftsman are attributes of her company. She enumerates the benefits of such an alliance in understanding ancient wisdom, the love of beauty, the yearning for all things great and in attaining all human and divine knowledge. She boasts about her dependents by naming Demosthenes, Aeschines and Socrates.

Cultura warns Lucian that, in joining Statua,

you will be bowed over your work, with eyes and thoughts bent earthwards, abject as abject can be, with never a free and manly upward look or aspiration; all your care will be to proportion and fairly drape your works; to proportioning and adorning yourself you will give little heed enough, making yourself of less account than your marble.⁶

Determined to avoid living such an interminable life and seduced by the charms of Culture, Lucian eagerly joins her and abandons the “clumsy mechanical woman.”⁷ To reward him for his excellent choice and right mind, Cultura then takes Lucian for a ride in her chariot to show him his future life, his admirers, his fame and his status. Lucian concludes that all the hardships and difficulties he encountered in the course of pursuing Culture are worth the rewards for making the right decision. The Vision, written in the second century, articulates a distinction between Cultura and Statua by contrasting intellectual activity with manual work.

Over 1300 years later, the dream that determined Lucian’s destiny took a much more complex turn in Italy, in the case of another man of modest upbringing and artistic inclinations. Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501), a Sienese artist, architect, sculptor and engineer lived an eventful life and produced work in each of the aforementioned domains. Moving between the poles of culture and craftsmanship continuously, Francesco operated as a craftsman as well as an artist and architect; yet he never lost the company of Cultura. Over the years, he gradually sculpted himself into a theorist of architecture, a writer.

In Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge, Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier remind us that the architectural drawings of the Renaissance should not be understood as “neutral artifacts that might be transcribed unambiguously into building.”⁸ They state that the process of transfer from the abstract idea to built work is less systematic than is often perceived in our contemporary understanding. By reminding us that, on the one hand, the practice of building was rooted in the medieval tradition; and on the other hand, architecture was understood as a liberal art, they draw our attention to the complexity of the context of the early Renaissance. Investigating the work of Francesco reveals such complexity by manifesting the different potentials and capacities of architectural drawings at work. Even at the scale of the individual, Francesco’s work and life defy categorical identification. The fact that in Francesco’s life the borders between the domain of the craftsman and the world of the artist are blurred only adds to the difficulty of negotiating a ground for him as a writer. In the paragraphs that follow, Francesco’s course of life and specifically the body of his written and drawn oeuvre are reviewed to make a case for him as an author who deliberately selected a certain process of writing – one that involved drawing. To be able to see his efforts in that light and look at his treatises from this vantage point, the present chapter aims to examine Francesco’s life and work in light of his infatuation with the theory of architecture.

The architect’s fate

In order to review Francesco’s life, we begin with a brief biography based on a selected translation of Flavia Cantatore’s account of his life.⁹ Other voices, shedding light on specific traits of Francesco’s practice, will then be examined to gain a better understanding of certain features of his life and work.

Francesco di Giorgio was born to a modest family in Siena on September 23, 1439. According to Cantatore, Francesco’s father, Giorgio, abandoned his paternal tradition of being in service of the Comune di Siena and became a property owner in Siena and the surrounding area. Francesco might have known Mariano Jacopo, il Taccola, through his father. Taccola was an engineer of sorts – commonly referred to as the Archimedes of Siena. Francesco’s interest in machines, mechanics and waterworks is either directly or indirectly related to him. Gustina Scaglia mentions that Francesco was in possession of Taccola’s books and copied some of his machines into his own books.¹⁰ Francesco’s first official training began with his role as a painter in the bottega of Bartolomeo Alefi di Montalcino. Francesco might have traveled to Rome some time between 1460 and 1470; during this time he might also have come in contact with yet another Sienese Master, Lorenzo di Pietro, known as il Vecchietta. Cantatore states that from around 1469 to 1475, Francesco had a joint partnership with another Sienese painter, his brother-in-law Neroccio di Bartolomeo de’ Landi. Their partnership was dissolved in 1475. The possible date for the start of a project by Francesco for the church of San Bernardino dell’ Osservanza is 1476. The life-changing incident in Francesco’s life occurred some time in May 1477, when he met with the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, and Federico’s childhood friend and advisor, Ottaviano Ubaldini. The dedication of the Opusculum de architectura to the Duke of Urbino was the precursor of extensive collaborations including the Palazzo Ducale in Gubbio, the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino and the fortifications of Sassocorvaro. In November of the same year, Francesco moved to Urbino, now officially in the service of the Duke. He started to work on the Ducal Palace, picking up where Luciano Laurana had left off. Corrado Maltese suggests some time between 1479 and 1486 as the date of the early iteration of the two surviving copies of the Trattati di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare. A later addition of the drawings of antiquity was made by 1486. Maltese offers the period between 1485 and 1492 as the time during which Francesco revised his earlier treatise and wrote a manuscript – now lost – that became the source for the two later copies of the Trattati. Between the years 1469 and 1492 Francesco was in charge of the works in the bottini – the underground Sienese aqueduct system – that provided water for all the fountains in the city. Around 1484, Francesco was paid for the design of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Calcinaio. In 1485, the Comune di Siena elected him as a supremo magistrate and in 1489 he made the two bronze angels, which are located in the altar of the Duomo in Siena. Although he had made sculptures earlier in his life, the angels are quite exceptional – consider...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Illustration credits
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Writing the project of architecture
• 2 Drawing the lines of theory
• 3 Interlacing ingegno, inventio, and fantasia into the fabric of drawing
• 4 A multi-faceted mirror: drawing’s different faces
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Index