Vitruvian Man

Humanism

• via contemplativa
• via activa

Vitruvius, De architectura (ca. 20 B.C.)

• fabrica (practice)
• ratiocinatio (reasoning)

1416 - Council of Constance

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)
Donatello (1386-1466)
Rome - survey of ancient architecture

dome of Sta. Maria del Fiore (1436)

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72)

• Ludi mathematicid
• Elementa picturae
• Descriptio urbis Romae
• De statua
• De pictura (1436), Ital. + Lat.
• De re aedificatoria (ms. 1452, printed 1486)
  • "The carpenter is but an instrument in the hands of the architect."
  • The architect, “by sure and wonderful reason & method, knows how to devise through his own mind & energy, and to realize by construction, whatever can be most beautifuly fitted out for the noble needs of men.”
    • ratiocinatio
    • fabrica
    • aesthetics
    • moral/ethical

Vitruvius, De architectura

Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man (ca. 1490)

The Arsenal

Roger Bacon
text & image

mechanics
northern Italian communes

Taccola, (Mariano di Iacopo, 1382-1453)
Filippo Brunelleschi
obelisk, 1586 - Vatican

• AD 37 - Caligula
• AD 1586 - St. Peter's Basilica

Leonardo's burning mirrors (ca. 1500)

• The mirror of uniform concavity casts the refracted rays up to a distance equal to the fourth part of the diameter of the spherical body from which such a mirror has been taken
• The flatter the mirror, the greater the sum of the rays that will be reflected on the same place. And, conversely, the more concave the mirror, the fewer rays it will reflect on a place.
• If the mirror has a diameter of one braccio, and is taken from a circle of 400 braccia in diameter, it will not be very curved, and it will cast its rays at 100 braccia, that is 1/4 of the diameter of the circle.

patron/client
"trading zones"

• arsenal
  • Innsbrück
    • Gregor Löffler
    • Georg Hartmann
  • Venice
    • Michael of Rhodes
    • Galileo
• mining
• metallurgy