Leon Battista Alberti

In a often quoted but little studied text, the Profugiorum ab ærumna libri III, Leon Battista Alberti compares the literary invention to the invention of the mosaic: an architect would have recovered the debris of precious materials used to ornate a temple and would have assembled them in the shape of figures to decorate the pavement. Similarly, the humanist writer doesn't create ex nihilo his ideas but uses fragments of ancient writings to compose his own texts. This paper intends to show that mosaic as an invention model for Alberti is based on a visual culture that is founded on the art of Memory; and this model applies to writing as much as to architecture, or painting. But the mosaic origin narrative by Alberti is itself a pure creation. How to understand this text where his theory seems to contradict his own writing?

This ambitious book is about a way of building that for centuries dominated the making of monumental architecture – yet now not only is it lost as practice, knowledge of its very existence is consigned to oblivion. In pre-modern Europe, the architect built not just with imagination, brick and mortar, but with time, using vast quantities of duration to erect monumental buildings that otherwise would have been impossible. Not mere medieval muddling-through, this entailed a sophisticated set of norms and practices. Virtually all the great cathedrals of Europe were built under this regime. In particular, the major works of pre-modern Italy, from the Pisa cathedral group to the new St Peter’s – the apotheosis of the practice – are thus cast in an entirely new light.  Even as ‘Building-in-Time’ flourished, the fifteenth-century Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti proposed a new temporal regime whereby time would ideally be excluded from the making of architecture (‘Building-outside-Time’). Planning and building, which had formed one fluid, imbricated process, were to be sharply divided, and the change that always came with time excluded from architectural facture. Ironically, it was Brunelleschi, as creator of the cupola of Florence cathedral and one of the supreme practitioners of Building-in-Time, who was the lynchpin of Alberti’s turn to the arts in the mid-1430s. That he arrived in Florence just at the moment Brunelleschi’s dome was being completed was crucial to Alberti’s subsequent career in visual culture.  In telling this story, Trachtenberg rewrites the history of medieval and Renaissance architecture in Italy and recasts the turn to modernity in new terms. Recovering this lost element allows us also to see the present in a new way: temporality is not a neutral or secondary factor in modern architecture culture, but an epistemic condition that silently affects all production and experience of the built environment.

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Testo di circa 200 pagine che analizzando con appropriati strumenti teorici ed adeguata conoscenza bibliografica l'intero pensiero dell'autore (che scrisse circa 50 opere) restituisce una nuova interpretazione dell'Alberti umanista e teorico dell'architettura e delle arti, sganciata dai precedenti stereotipi e rinnovata negli interessi interdisciplinari.

RESUMEN Insistiendo en aspectos tratados y otros no destacados, sus intenciones y sentidos respecto a Pienza y su plaza como núcleo y aglutinante urbanos, sus funciones y connotaciones, se efectúa un exhastivo estudio que, a modo de ensayo reflexivo, va evidenciando, en el preciso contexto de mediados del Quattrocen-to, los logros y significados de esta pionera experiencia de arquitectura y ciudad, consecuencia de los ideales de su culto comitente, el papa Pío II, bajo claves y coordenadas del pensamiento albertiano y la cualificada aportación in situ de Bernardo Rossellino. ABSTRACT Insisting on some aspects mattered, and other not so many, its intentions and meanings about Pienza and its plaza as urban heart and agglutinative, its functions and connotations, there is here an exhaustive study wich, as a reflexive essay, goes on demonstring, in the rigth context of middle Quattrocento, the achievement and meaning of this pioner experience of architecture and city, as a consequence of the ideal of its cultured principal, Pope Pius II, under the essential components and coordinates of the Al-bertian thoughts, and the qualifed support, in situ, of Bernardo Rossellino.

In 1436, Leon Battista Alberti wrote a letter to Filippo Brunelleschi, which he attached to a manuscript of his recently completed treatise on painting, De pictura. In it, Alberti lauded some of the Florentine artists of his day, singling out Brunelleschi for particular praise on account of the unprecedented engineering feat of constructing the cupola of the Florentine cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. This article undertakes a close reading of some parts of the letter, focusing especially on the link that Alberti draws between great intellects (ingegni) and giants. Exploring the cultural traditions that might have informed Alberti's thinking—in particular, canto XXXI of Dante's Inferno— -the article considers how the giants introduce an element of moral jeopardy, significantly complicating what might otherwise appear to be a purely celebratory text. This sense of ambivalence is further explored in relation to the 'long exile' from which Alberti says that his family (banished from Florence for nearly three decades, until 1428) had recently returned. Similar phrases appear in Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and consideration of these poems, it is argued, might further inflect our understanding of Alberti's words in the letter. In this way, the article investigates how Alberti employed sophisticated literary means in order to express his own feelings regarding Brunelleschian ingegno and technical mastery; feelings that were both highly nuanced and, ultimately, unsettled.

"L’archivio dell’architetto Prospero Sorgato, donato generosamente dalla famiglia al Comune di Reggio Emilia
e conservato presso la Biblioteca Panizzi, custodisce le importanti testimonianze di un protagonista delle trasformazioni urbane della nostra città a partire dagli anni venti fino all’immediato dopoguerra.
A partire dal secondo decennio del secolo scorso Sorgato compie una serie di rilevanti interventi come lo Chalet dei Fratelli Bottazzi ai Giardini Pubblici (non più esistente), l’ingresso e il padiglione centrale della celebrata Mostra Agricola Industriale del Lavoro tenuta nel 1922. Successivamente realizza il Mercato Coperto, recentemente restaurato e portato a nuova vita, la Casa del Mutilato in zona Porta Castello e l’ingresso e l’ampliamento del Cimitero di S. Pellegrino. E’ stato per lungo tempo ingegnere capo del Comune di Reggio Emilia, quando ha progettato e realizzato numerose opere pubbliche quali scuole, edifici per la residenza e altri servizi di pubblico interesse. Appassionato sportivo di tiro a volo, mostra anche un grande interesse verso la fotografia e per questo motivo l’archivio include pure un’importante documentazione fotografica delle sue realizzazioni.
L’archivio di Prospero Sorgato è stato riordinato, catalogato e reso disponibile per la consultazione."

Alberti & Gender The field of Architecture  -In practice and in theory – has historically been of the male domain. Alberti's The Ten Books of Architecture was the first modern treatise on the theory and practice of architecture, effectively setting the framework for architectural theory to come. In order to illuminate the complicity of syntax, grammar and diction in the gendering of contemporary architectural practice, it is necessary to fully deconstruct its origins – to parse out how and why the gender has determined, as well as manifested within, the language of the profession.

Sgraffito as a decorative element of the exterior of 14th and 15th century Florentine buildings has long been known, although seldom granted much attention. The present dissertation, therefore, examines the phenomenon of sgraffito, a technique in which motifs are scratched into smoothened or whitewashed plaster. These decorations can be found as wall decorations on public and semi-public buildings, religious structures, and private dwellings. For the period in question 34 buildings with sgraffito decorations—preserved or otherwise accounted for—could be identified. They have been compiled into a catalogue of the objects under investigation in this study; their documentary value is assessed in a separate chapter. Since many of the sgraffito renderings have only been preserved fragmentarily, extensively restored, or reconstructed, the question of their testimonial value must be treated with caution. The chapter about the history of the technique explores its invention and further development. Scrutiny of the characteristics of the earliest known examples allows the origins of the sgraffito technique—unclear until today—to be traced back to stone work designs and masonry joints. Furthermore, the material suggests a dating of the adoption of grey coloring to the mid-quattrocento, connecting it with the design of the Palazzo Medici’s inner courtyard. The chapter on technology addresses how artists and artisans executed the decorations before and after the Palazzo Medici. Written sources and, most importantly, close study of the decorated objects are the foundation for a reconstruction of the technique in its different stages, taking materials, tools and the time taken to execute these steps into account. The fact that sgraffito decorations were used on both public and private buildings of importance suggests that they were intended to give the buildings a cachet of distinction. The chapter on the significance of sgraffito decorations examines which buildings were so decorated, and investigates who gave the work in commission and what their social standing was. The success of the inexpensive and uncomplicated wall decorations was owed above all to their inherent pictorial character, as the chapter Architektur/Bild argues on the basis of the first and simplest motif—the ashlar. The final chapter compiles examples of the technique’s dissemination from Florence. In particular Rome and Pienza, where many examples of sgraffito have survived, are key locations in this context.
Andreas Huth
Florentiner Sgraffito-Dekorationen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts Erfindung, Technologie, Bedeutung
Abstract (Deutsch)
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht mit den Florentiner Sgraffito-Dekorationen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts eine in der Forschung seit langem bekannte, aber wenig erforschte Form der Außengestaltung von Bauwerken. Mit Sgraffito wird eine Technik bezeichnet, bei der in die geglättete oder geweißte Oberfläche eines Putzes Motive eingeritzt werden. Sgraffito-Dekorationen sind an öffentlichen/halb-öffentlichen Bauwerken, Gebäuden in religiösem Kontext und privaten Wohnbauten zu finden. Für die Arbeit wurden für den Untersuchungszeitraum insgesamt 34 Bauwerke ermittelt und in einem Katalog erfasst. Die erhaltenen und nachweisbaren Sgraffito-Dekorationen bilden das Untersuchungsmaterial, dessen dokumentarischer Wert im einleitenden Kapitel diskutiert wird, da viele der Wandgestaltungen nur fragmentarisch, stark restauriert oder als Rekonstruktionen überliefert sind. Ein Kapitel zur Geschichte nimmt die Erfindung und die weitere Entwicklung der Technik in den Focus. Mit Blick auf die Charakteristika der frühesten bekannten Dekorationen wird die bislang unbekannte Herkunft der Sgraffito-Technik aus Formen der Mauerwerks- und Fugengestaltung erklärt. Darüber hinaus kann der Zeitpunkt der Einführung der Grau-Färbung auf Mitte des Quattrocento eingegrenzt und mit dem Innenhof des Palazzo Medici verbunden werden. Wie Handwerker und Künstler Sgraffito-Dekorationen vor und nach den Palazzo Medici ausführten, behandelt ein Kapitel zur Technologie. Auf Basis von schriftlichen Quellen, vor allem aber Beobachtungen an den Objekten wird hier die Technik in ihren Einzelschritten und unter Berücksichtigung der verwendeten Materialien und Werkzeuge sowie der Ausführungszeit rekonstruiert. Der Einsatz von Sgraffito-Dekorationen für bedeutende öffentliche und private Gebäude erlaubt die Annahme, dass es sich bei ihnen um eine besondere Form der Aus- und Kennzeichnung der Bauwerke handelt. Ein Kapitel zur Bedeutung der Sgraffito-Dekorationen fragt, welche Gebäude verziert wurden, wer die AuftraggeberInnen waren und welchen gesellschaftlichen Status sie besaßen. Der Erfolg der kostengünstigen und technisch wenig aufwändigen Wanddekoration verdankt sich vor allem ihrem bildlichen Charakter, wie das Kapitel ‚Architektur/Bild‘ anhand der Quaderung als dem ersten und einfachsten Motiv zu zeigen versucht. Das letzte Kapitel versammelt Beispiele für die von Florenz ausgehende Verbreitung der Sgraffito-Dekorationen. Hierbei kommt vor allem Rom und Pienza eine Schlüsselstellung zu, wo sich zudem zahlreiche Bauwerke mit Sgraffito-Gestaltungen erhalten haben.

Leon Battista Alberti, probably the most innovative architect of early Renaissance
Italy, has always fascinated scholars by virtue of the striking interpenetration
of theory and practice manifest in his work. As an architect, Alberti was
an autodidact. Without the benefit of the formative influence of a master
or design education, the roots of his conception of architecture lie in his intellectual
formation through humanistic rhetoric. The present study demonstrates
with reference to a specific project — the Tempietto of the Holy Sepulchre
in Florence — how Alberti’s humanist approach conditioned his method of
architectural design.

Leon Battista Alberti, der wohl innovativste Architekt der italienischen
Frührenaissance, hat die Forschung von jeher deshalb fasziniert, weil
in seinem Werk Theorie und Praxis eindrucksvoll ineinandergreifen. Als
Architekt war Alberti Autodidakt. Ohne Vorprägung durch einen Meister
oder eine Entwurfslehre liegen die Wurzeln seiner Architekturauffassung
in seiner humanistisch-rhetorischen Formation. Die vorliegende
Studie zeigt an einem konkreten Projekt – dem Heiliggrabtempietto in
Florenz – auf, wie sich Albertis humanistische Denkweise auf seine architektonische
Entwurfsmethodik auswirkt.

"This study gathers and interprets the earliest extant references to architects in ancient Greek philosophy, as found in select works of Plato and Aristotle.  Throughout this review, Plato and Aristotle [are] shown to consistently present architectonic agents as exemplary civic and intellectual leaders, acting in awareness of their own (and others’) limits, with knowledge of the most appropriate archē, and with a view to the most comprehensive aims—the common good. This discloses an alternative and more accurate etymology of architects: not as master-builders but as leaders and makers of beginnings (archai). The aim of this essay has been not only to rediscover the discursive beginnings for a renewed philosophy of architecture, but to suggest how these philosophical 'archai' might help present-day architects reimagine the full relevance of their still contested role."

The reception of Plato’s Timaeus during the Early Renaissance coincided with ground-breaking developments in the conceptualisation of architectural space and the ‘invention’ of perspective. This gave rise to fertile areas of influence of Platonic principles on artistic/architectural creativity, that consciously drew upon the Timaean commentary tradition of Calcidius and others through the intellectual exchanges of humanists, artists and architects. In this chapter I will highlight how the Timaeus influenced architectural representation through a combination of harmonic proportional systems, deployed to convey building as a ‘cosmological receptacle’, and the creation of a new projective (illusory) space, that drew direct alignment between human and divine vision. The study will focus on early fifteenth century Florence, when architects, artists, theologians and humanists were engaged in creative and intellectual initiatives that were influenced in various ways by Plato’s account of Divine Creation.

La storia di otto capolavori della letteratura italiana raccontata a partire dai manoscritti autografi conservati in biblioteche o collezioni private. 

Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron
Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere
Leon Battista Alberti, Grammatica
Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso
Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo
Giacomo Leopardi, Operette morali
Eugenio Montale, Satura
Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa

***

Quarta di copertina:

La forza narrativa del Decameron di Boccaccio. La potenza visionaria dell’Orlando furioso di Ariosto. La disarmante bellezza delle Operette morali di Leopardi. Siamo abituati a pensare ai capolavori della letteratura come a qualcosa di immobile e perfetto. Ma c’è stato un momento in cui anche le grandi opere hanno avuto una forma incerta, fragile, provvisoria. Partendo da otto manoscritti d’autore, Matteo Motolese guida il lettore in un viaggio appassionante attraverso biblioteche e collezioni private nel cuore della creazione letteraria. Dal codice su cui Boccaccio, ormai anziano, copia per un’ultima volta le sue novelle al taccuino da tasca su cui Montale scrive con una semplice biro una delle poesie d’amore più belle del Novecento. Dalle pergamene bianchissime su cui Petrarca dà la forma finale al Canzoniere fino al quaderno di una papéterie parigina su cui Eco costruisce la trama del Nome della rosa. Storia dopo storia, questo libro ci accompagna attraverso le trasformazioni della nostra lingua e ci permette di osservare da vicino l’attimo in cui il gesto quotidiano e comune della scrittura dà vita a quella cosa eterna ma profondamente umana che chiamiamo letteratura.

A partire dall’episodio lunare del Furioso, si ricostruisce in una prospettiva estetica e storico-culturale il particolare modo in cui Ariosto ha tradotto in forma la contrapposizione platonica fra l’Idea e la copia. Si inserisce, così, Ariosto nella tradizione platonica dell’Umanesimo-Rinascimento tenendo conto dei legami con la cultura ferrarese del suo tempo.

ITALIAN ABSTRACT: Nel De pictura, paragonando la pittura prima a una finestra e poi a uno specchio, Leon Battista Alberti sottolinea l’importanza del punto di vista per la rappresentazione artistica. Nelle Intercenales, che costituiscono il contraltare giocoso del trattato, il cambiamento di punto di vista determina una diversa visione del mondo. Attraverso riferimenti testuali ad entrambe le opere, il saggio dimostra che, sia come teorico dell’arte sia come letterato, Alberti ha esaltato la «forza del vedere», il rifiuto di una visione monodirezionale e l’importanza di discernere e valutare differenti prospettive, lasciando ai posteri un insegnamento coerente di natura sia etica sia estetica.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In his work De Pictura, Leon Battista Alberti underlines the importance of viewpoint for artistic representations by comparing painting first to a window and then to a mirror. In the Intercenales, which make the playful couteract of the treaty, the shift in the point of view leads to a different view of the world. By making text references to both works, the essay shows that Alberti, as an Art theorist and a scholar, hightlights the «power of viewing», the refusal of a one-direction vision and the importance of recognizing and evaluating different perspectives, by leaving the posterity with coherent ethical and aesthetical teaching.

This contribution aims to offer some elements to study the problem of political advising in Renaissance political thought. The introductory section considers the Momus by Leon Battista Alberti, some letters by Marsilio Ficino and the chapters 22-23 of Machiavelli’s Prince. The focus then shifts to the fourth book of Castiglione’s Courtier, in order to analyze the relationship between the prince and the counsellor by clarifying its conditions of necessity, its internal structure and its conditions of possibility.

The Architectural Treatise in the Renaissance examines the Italian Renaissance architects' efforts to negotiate between the imitation and reinvention of classicism. Through a close reading of Vitruvius and texts written during the period 1400-1600, this study identifies ornament as the central issue around which much of this debate focused. Argues that ornament facilitated a dialogue across disciplines and invited exchanges with literary and rhetorical practices. Also highlights the place of the architectural treatise in the text-based culture of the period and of architectural discourse in Renaissance thought.

برز عمل ألبرتي التنظيري في مرحلة خلت من التنظير الرياضي والهندسي. فألبرتي منظر  في الرياضيات ويمارس الرسم وبذلك مثل النموذج مثالي في النهضة للرسام الطموح والعالم المنظر الذي ساهم في تطوير الفنون بفضل كتبه التي تشرح المبادئ الأساسية للهندسة والبصريات لتجعل من عمل الفنان يتأسس على العقلانية وترقيه من الحرفية اليدوية.
نلقى لدى ألبرتي توجيه للرسامين بشكل ممنهج إذ يفصل في شرح مبادئ الهندسة التي تتقاطع مع عمل الفنان. يبدأ ألبرتي بتحديد النقطة ثم الخطوطه والأحجام لينتقل إلى شرح كيفية صياغتها فوق مساحة اللوحة المسطحة. إذ قدم ألبرتي التعليمات الهندسية التي يحتاجها الرسام لبناء المكان الهندسي الذي يصيغه الرسام وهي عبارة عن عمليات معقدة تحول المكان المسطح للوحة إلى فضاء منفتح ومنسجم وممتد بشكل يوهم بلانهائيته.
هكذا يولي ألبرتي أهمية خاصة لفعل الصياغة الهندسية للمكان المسطح للوحة، كما اهتم بشكل واضح بفعل الرؤية أي الإدراك من خلال تعاطيه للبصريات التي تشرح وتفصل عملية الإدراك البصري وكيفياتها. يخلص ألبرتي إلى أن عملية الرؤية أي الإدراك تحدث بفضل وجود الأشعة، أشعة الضوء التي تحيط بالأشياء. وبذلك خدمت نظريته هذه التي اقتبسها من البصريات عمل الرسامين وقدمت خدمة كبيرة على المستوى المعرفي، فالقاعدة الأولى التي طرحها ألبرتي هي كيفية انتشار الضوء فوق الأشياء المرئية وتأثيرها على حجم تلك الأشياء، فكلما استعملوا أشعة أكثر كلما بدا حجم الأشياء أكبر.
ميز ألبرتي بين نوعين من الأشعة، وهي الأشعة الخارجية التي تمتد على مجمل المساحة المرئية بحيث تكون سياجا حول عموم تلك المساحة. لذلك ينطلق فعل الرؤية من انعكاس الضوء فوق عدسة العين. ويأخذ الضوء فوق مساحة اللوحة شكل الهرم الذي تنتظم فيه الأشعة هندسيا تكون قاعدته السطح المرئي، وهي الأشعة البصرية التي يسميها الأشعة الخارجية. أما رأس الهرم فيستقر داخل العين حيث يصبح نقطة التقاء زوايا الأحجام على شكل مثلثات. وما يحدد الرؤية بالنسبة لألبرتي، هو عنصر الضوء أو الشعاع الضوئي الذي ينبعث من الأشياء المرئية وبذلك يرتبط بوضعية الشعاع المركزي من جهة وبوضعية المشاهد من جهة أخرى.
يذهب دورر متبعا في ذلك فرضية دي لافرانسيسكا التي تعتبر عملية الإدراك تستلزم الشروط التالية. ويتم الإدراك البصري على مستويين تحدده عناصر أساسية هي العين المشاهدة والأشياء المرئية. ويحدد فعل الرؤية أي الحكم واللون وحجم الضوء والظل المسافة التي تفصل بين الأشياء المدركة والمشاهد.  ويستنتج من هذه النظرية أن عملية الإدراك تتم بإزالة المسافة التي تفصل بين الشيء المرئي والعين المشاهدة. يمكن شرح هذا المسلسل البصري حسب هذين الرسامية، بأن الإدراك البصري هو انعكاس للأشياء المرئية بواسطة الأشعة التي تبعثها نحو عدسة العين المبصرة. وكأن الأشياء المرئية تلج صورها في قلب العين المشاهدة بحيث تربط عالم الأشياء المرئية وهي ذات وجود مستقل تفرضه على العين التي تدرك الأشعة الخارجية والمركزية هو ما نسميه الحقل البصري الذي يواجه المشاهد ويجعله يستجيب له بإبصاره .
نستنتج مما سبق الكيفية التي تتم بها عملية الإدراك في مستواها الفيزيوجي، أما الإدراك في بعده الذهني والذي عمد ألبرتي على بيانه وتوضيحه للرسام فيتركز في كيفية صياغة المكان الفيزيائي للوحة بحيث يحيل يبني أشكال هندسية بواسطة النقط والخطوط والأحجام مواضيعه بشكل متناسق ومنسجم وممتد وهذه تعتمد على قواعد ثابتة لها من الدقة الرياضية ولكنها ليست بدقة العلماء. وهذه الشروط النظرية لبناء المكان الهندسي هي نفسها التي تحدد إدراك المشاهد للمشهد فوق اللوحة. لأن القواعد الرياضية التي يشتغل بها الرسام تحيل بدورها للشروط السيكولوجية التي تحدد الإدراك البصري حيث يقترن التعيين الاصطناعي ب"نقطة الرؤية" الذاتية للفضاء التصويري.
يفترض "جان بياجي" أن عملية بناء المكان في فضاء تصويري ترتبط بقدرة الإنسان على الإدراك العقلي، لكون الإنسان يمتلك هته القدرة  بشكل طبيعي، فما دام الكائن البشري ذا امتداد معين، أي امتداد حجمه أو جسده داخل الفضاء، فإن إمكانية الإدراك بهذا الشكل تكون فطرية لديه. ويبقى أن هذا النمط من الإدراك هو إدراك حسي وتلقائي ومباشر وعفوي. أما صياغة المكان هندسيا فيعتمد على قواعد هندسية لبناء فضاء اللوحة عقليا، أي بناء مكان ذي الخصائص الأقليدية وهي الانسجام والامتداد والوحدة. وهذا يتطلب قدرات عقلية تقتضي التمكن من وسائل وتقنيات هندسية، لأن الأمر هنا يتعلق بإعادة بناء هندسي لموضوعات الرسام فوق مساحة مسطحة تمتلك البعد الثنائي فقط ويراد صياغتها لتوهم بالعمق والبعد الثالث.

The papers considers, with a comparative approach, the architecture of vertical connections and city edges. We hypothesize that the city edge, when its elevation overwhelms the surrounding urban fabric, cannot be redesigned within a basic typological repertoire. This research considers the transformations of the edge in historical towns, taking into consideration the architectural models used and investigating the contextual deformations impressed. The design of vertical connections between different city levels redefines the image of the city from its meaningful points of view, changing the collectively recognized city image. A repertoire of models, divided into typologies according to the morphology of the site, is the base for a new theory outlining which parameters (i.e. measure, elevation, slope, and major urban nodes) to use to deform models in each context. The study cases range throughout the history of architecture, focusing on some pre-modern examples such as Laurana's Torricini façade in the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino.

Understanding visually presented stories requires intense effort from our visual imagination. Artists and theoreticians from the Renaissance onwards suggested various ways to depict stories, either to enhance their understanding and enjoyment, or to help adjust the depictions to the aesthetic ideas of the era. Alberti's concept of istoria, Leonardo's practice of visual stimulation, Lessing's advice on how to choose the most fruitful moment of a story relied both on personal experience and the scientific knowledge of the era. Visual imagination is specially needed in non-figurative and sequential narratives in modern and contemporary art, which are supported by Arnheim's notion of stroboscopic motion. Recent developments in image-making technologies enable some clarification of the processes involved in human perception with regard to the understanding of painted scenes and visually presented stories. The objective of this paper is to find the counterparts of these art theoretical concepts in psychology and neuroscience. Through the phenomena of mirror neurons, scene perception, gist of scene, and face and object recognition, these findings establish parallelisms between art history and neuroscience.

The aim of this paper is to discuss fundamental aspects of the concept of decorum detected in writings of Leon Battista Alberti and Louis Kahn. These architects favour – during modernity and the radical criticism of concepts such decorum, decoration and ornament – postures that encourage a direct relationship between architecture, art and life – the primary precept of decorum.

This thesis examines the carnal sin of sodomy in early modern Florence, Italy (1432–1600). More specifically, this project investigates one particular sodomitical locale: the San Niccolò bathhouse. Domenico Cresti’s (called ‘Il Passignano’) Bathers at San Niccolò (1600) depicts a contemporaneous scene of all-male bathing, imbued with homosexually suggestive acts within a locatable urban space. What can this particular image tell us about the lived realities of sodomy in early modern Florence? When examined alongside topographical, legal, health, and religiopolitical archives, Bathers illuminates the intricacies of same-sex pleasure and punishment. In identifying this specific site along the Arno River, and combining Bathers with various written documents, one can better achieve a history of sexual persecution, its surveillance, and institutional efforts to control illicit sex across the urban landscape. The bathhouse, a simultaneously public and private space, was a center for relaxation, sociability and health but also functioned as an arena for homosexual encounters. Sodomy was blasphemous, generating anxiety throughout early modern Italian city-states. Citizens feared for their safety: a sodomite in their midst could provoke divine wrath, as it had in the biblical narratives of Sodom and Gomorrah—sexual sins could lead to urban destruction. Police forces were created to surveil and punish such abominable acts in order to maintain the sacrality of the urban interior. While these magistracies policed every parish, the Florentine bathhouse was more challenging: it permitted nakedness and, as such, often resulted in unsavory interactions between men. How might topographical and painterly representations of water, wantonness, and punishment allow the historian to check written accounts (legal, religious, literary) of sexual encounters within specific architectures—and vice versa? Looking at and beyond the figures in Bathers, this project investigates the represented backdrop in which sodomitical activities are depicted. In so doing, this project engages with larger historiographical issues, namely the ways in which studies on premodern sex and gender have and have not been mobilized through postmodern theories. This thesis combines Passignano’s artwork with other visual and written materials to challenge and expand on the ways in which sex, space, art, and society functioned in Renaissance Florence. © 2021 Aidan Flynn. All rights reserved.

Dall’excursus dei testi albertiani - dal De iciarchia agli Apologi, dalle Intercenali agli elogi del Canis e della Musca, ai Libri della Famiglia, al Momo - emerge una concezione etica e poietica incentrata sulla praxis. Sorprende, pertanto, leggere nei Libri della Famiglia che l’attività peculiare dell’uomo, quella che lo contraddistingue dagli animali proni al suolo, è la “contemplazione”: citando il filosofo Anassagora, Lionardo ricorda che l’uomo fu creato da Dio per essere «contemplatore del cielo, delle stelle, e del sole, e di tutte quelle sue meravigliose opere divine». Eppure, come si evince dai testi di Alberti, questa “contemplazione filosofica” è estranea ai suoi interessi radicati nella realtà e nella concretezza.
Come interpretare quindi l’affermazione di Lionardo nei Libri della Famiglia, come conciliare un ideale di vita e di cultura incentrato sulla praxis e sulla poiesis con una prospettiva esistenziale volta alla pura teoresi? Si tratta, in realtà, di una contraddizione apparente, che può essere sciolta interpretando quella contemplazione che distingue l’uomo dagli animali non secondo una prospettiva teoretica, ma estetica. L’uomo, infatti, è l’unico essere vivente in grado di sollevare in alto il viso e soffermarsi ad ammirare le opere della natura, senza altro scopo che la percezione del bello.
Nel passaggio dalla sfera etica a quella estetica quell’inerzia, più volte condannata e considerata negativamente, cambia di segno. Pertanto se nel De iciarchia viene condannata la “lentezza” dell’animo “desidioso”, sul piano estetico questa stasi, in cui l’azione cede il passo al godimento della bellezza, si carica di connotazioni positive e diviene l’elemento connotativo di quell’esperienza contemplativa che costituisce il fine dell’esistenza umana e la possibilità di rendersi simili a Dio.

Alberti's aims with De pictura/Della pittura are closely mirrored by the tripartite division of the text, as well as the compressed ideas within each section. He sought to elevate the status of painting that of a liberal art, which entailed addressing both painters and the circle to which Alberti himself belonged: the humanist scholar,  so as to establish painting as an intellectual activity worthy of academic discussion. The end result is a text whereby painters and scholars are addressed simultaneously and seamlessly, with the aims of elevating the painter to the rank of a liberal artist, and the profession of painting to a liberal art.

The analysis of two Renaissance drawings offers the occasion for a discussion of light in ecclesiastical architecture.
The first exemple considers the well-known drawing – drafted on parchment by Giovanni di Gherardo Gherardi da Prato in competition with Filippo Brunelleschi for the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore – which constitutes both the first fifteenth-century graphic testimony concerning the natural illumination of the church’s interior, and the only drawing contemporary to its construction that has survived and is datable to 1425.
The second drawing is a “studio dal vero” by Baldassarre Peruzzi of Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome, dating from the beginning of the sixteenth-century. It offers a perspective view of the interior of the monument, portraying a system of artificial lights as evinced by the sharp double-shadows on the pavement, and which remind one of the contemporary studies of Leonardo da Vinci. Because of the importance it attributes to light, this drawing is an unicum among those depicting ancient structures all along  the Renaissance. It is precisely with the depiction of light, with the irregularity of its reflections and of its shadows, that this study gives the impression of a captivating and suggestive space, actualizing ancient architecture as if it were visible to the present. And it is also thanks to the pictorial sensibility of Peruzzi, who knew how to combine a philologic spirit with an unsurpassed expressive naturalism in the Renaissance’s corpus of architectural drawings

A large painting by Maerten van Heemskerck, today in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, takes as its subject matter a contest among the Classical gods with the figure of Momus—the arch critic—acting as arbiter. This story is told in Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Hermotimus, and in Leon Battista Alberti’s political satire Momus, subtitled The Prince, which was composed in 1492, dedicated to Sigismondo Malatesta, banned, then published in 1520.  Each of these texts tells how, when Zeus created the world, a contest was held to see which immortal could make the best gift for Earth. Momus found fault with each deity’s craft. Of Poseidon’s bull, he judged that the eyes should be atop the horns to enable better sight when charging forth; Athena’s house should have been mounted on wheels to make its location mobile in the event of having to flee bad neighbors; of Hephaestus’s invention, a man, Momus quipped that, while almost perfect, the construction could have been improved if a window were placed over the heart to make visible the thoughts inside. It is this reproach that Maerten van Heemskerck records in the foreground of his composition.
This essay argues that the painting had a much more public character than has previously been recognized. Van Heemskerck’s work should be considered in the context of the rhetorician’s contest—called the Landjuweel (literally “land jewel”)—of 1561 (the same date inscribed above Momus’s head). This competition staged public statements, in the form of plays, about the role of art in the betterment of society. The subject matter and size of the painting suggests that it was made as part of the visual accompaniments to these theatrical events and thus that its message was neither privately directed nor backward-looking but one that jutted out into the social world, provoking recognition that the moment that the painting depicts—the moment of criticism—was society’s own moment. The second part of this essay considers what the painting, through the words and actions of Momus, is saying: it transmits a statement about the necessity of revealing content that resides inside. This matter, of art’s capacity for disclosure, was a religious concern during the Protestant Reformation. It is also something that, at various points in history—including the year 1561—art has struggled to give up. The third part of this essay classifies what the painting is showing—the placing of neighboring choices side by side. The proffering of options is van Heemskerck’s civic message about what art can do. Making selections available for judgment was a valued role for art in the aftermath of religious fracture. It offered a socially conscious alternative to an art of containment equipped with revelatory structures.