Prior to the advent of modern structural engineering, architects and builders used proportional systems to imbue their works with a general condition of order that was integral to notions of beauty and structural stability. These mostly invisible intellectual frameworks ranged from simple grids and symbolic numbers, to sly manipulations of geometry and numbers that required privileged knowledge and arithmetical calculations to access. Since the origins of architectural history, proportional systems have served as objects of belief and modes of iconographical communication. Whether they are capable of fulfilling more tangible functions remains a matter of debate today, but as the contributors to this volume show, these ancient and diverse belief systems continue to infiltrate architectural thinking in subtle and sometimes surprising ways today.

Publication Date: 2018

Research Interests:
Medieval Philosophy, Medieval Literature, Renaissance History, Medieval History, Research Methods and Methodology, and 31 moreResearch Methodology, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Humanism, Renaissance Philosophy, Renaissance Art, Medieval Church History, Early Medieval History, Medieval Archaeology, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier), Architecture in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art, Intellectual History of the Renaissance, Survey Methodology, Medieval Europe, Medieval Architecture, Northern Renaissance, Renaissance literature, Italian Renaissance literature, Medieval Art, Parthenon, Metrology, Renaissance magic and astrology, Le Corbusier, Theories of Proportion, Italian Renaissance, Renaissance Florence, Proportioning Systems, proportions and Harmony in architecture, Medieval and Renaissance Architectural Proportion and Geometry, Historical Metrology, Proportion, and The Divine Proportion

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The notion that numerical proportional systems contribute to the serene, orderly appearance of the basilica of San Lorenzo has long stood as a virtual axiom of architectural history. In this book, Matthew A. Cohen challenges this and other longstanding preconceptions about proportional systems in the history of architecture. Using Brunelleschi's basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito as case studies, the author reveals multi-layered, late medieval proportional systems through his analysis of building measurements that he recorded from scaffolding, other observations of the built fabric, and a variety of documentary sources. The proportional analysis is continually explored in light of late medieval developments in mathematics and measuring systems, and in light of modern scholarly theories of proportion. In particular, this book provides an alternative understanding of medieval and Renaissance proportional systems in response to Rudolf Wittkower’s influential writings on this subject. It furthermore uses proportional analysis as a form of historical evidence to shed new light on difficult questions of authorship and construction histories. This book presents a rigorous new observation-based approach to an important but little studied area of architectural history with wide applicability. Winner of the James Ackerman Award in the History of Architecture.

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