ENGLISH VERSION Rosa Maria Giusto. Alessandro Galilei: Il Trattato di architettura

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Rosa Maria Giusto
Alessandro Galilei. Il Trattato di architettura
(Alessandro Galilei. The Treatise on Architecture)

(review by Giovanni Mazzaferro)

Rome, Argos editore, 2010

Isbn 978 88 88690 35 3

Rome, Facade of San Giovanni in Laterano (Alessandro Galilei, 1732)

 Text of the back cover

"This book is not only an essay, but also a veritable treatise on architecture; a set of texts and reflections which return voice and assign new identities to a well-known, but still little studied, architect in the history of Western architecture of the Eighteenth Century. A tribute to one of the protagonists of pre-illuminist architectural culture, who linked Florence to Rome and Rome to London, along the route of a renewed classicism. He also opened the way to a new and exciting vision of the architect profession as a process of encyclopaedic, multicultural, and multilingual knowledge.

Science, mathematics, geometry, theory of fortifications, hydraulics, land surveying are, in addition to architecture itself, some of the fields of investigation and experimentation favoured by Alessandro Galilei (1691-1737). He guides the culture of his time to the revolutions of modern thought, by assigning to architecture a much wider and vital margin of action and application. For the first time, his treatise Della Architettura Civile e dell’uso, e modo del fabbricare e dove ebbe origine (On Civil Architecture and use, and the method of manufacturing and from where it originated) is integrally published. It is both a manual on and a compendium of architecture’s classical sources, written by Galilei in Italian and English, to achieve the eventual acceptance and validation of the centrality of Italy in the cultural and scientific debate in Europe, during the eighteenth century. A user-friendly tool, which returns another side of his story to the architect who won the competition for the facade of St. John Lateran."

Between Florence, Rome and England

Indeed, the name of Alessandro Galilei is known to most people because he executed the facade of St. John Lateran in Rome, winning a famous and troubled competition organized by the Pope. We are in 1732 and (oversimplifying) we can say that that church facade marks the return of architectural classicism and the abandonment of the language of the Roman Baroque, which had dominated the scene throughout the seventeenth century. The attention of the authoress, however, is focused on the years preceding those of the Lateran endeavour, namely the years of Galilei’s study and training. Galilei was a Florentine, and had studied architecture in Florence; in that Florence which de facto was the bastion of Italian classicism, linked as it was to the architectural models conceived by Michelangelo. In 1713, he moved to Rome for a month; the confrontation with the Roman Baroque, the personal inspection of the works will be anyway reflected in the projects of the following years, and will create 'intermediate' solutions, where the influence of Bernini can still be perceived in the framework of an education marked by a focus on Michelangelo and Palladio. Also in 1713, Galilei decided to move to England to seek his fortune there; since his days in Florence he had enjoyed good acquaintances in the circles of the English aristocracy, and his goal was to enter in the circuit of major UK clients. Galilei stays first in England and then in Ireland, until 1719. It can be said that, in terms of career, the English experience was a failure; in fact, of the many projects proposed by him, virtually nothing was implemented. This led him to finally go back home to Florence, where he will first become 'Engineer of the forts and buildings of the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany' (and then - as seen - will make a career path leading him to build up the front of the Lateran). 

The manuscripts held by the Galilei Fund

The English years, although not particularly brilliant in terms of personal satisfaction, are nevertheless important because he drafted the treatise on Civil Architecture (which is the subject of this volume) exactly in those years. The papers by Alessandro are preserved in the State Archives of Florence, in the Galilei Fund. Among them, "there are four manuscripts that document the various stages of the drafting of the treatise. A first version, so far neglected, probably corresponds to the preliminary draft, preparatory to the final version. The manuscript highlights the many 'debts' of Galilei vis-à-vis some of the most respected and well-known sources of classical Italian architecture, from which he draws fully, more often hiding the origin in the final version, or 'counterfeiting' the information. At the opening of some chapters, the author takes note of some acronyms which, once solved, refer to some name abbreviations of authors and books consulted by Galilei [note of the editor: the most looted authors are Palladio and Scamozzi]; the acronyms fully disappear in the final version and the parts where the author in the original drafting spoke on himself or illustrated some thoughts of him are 'translated' into impersonal form, so as to make lose track of those references, removing anything which  may make any explicit reference to places or events narrated by a third party. In addition to the preliminary draft is the 'start-clean' script, which corresponds to the veritable Treaty [...] followed by the almost faithful translation in English [...] Last but not least, there is a fourth manuscript, also autograph, which [...] was probably written at a later date [note of the editor: after his return to Italy], to include omitted topics, or complete those which had been only partially addressed in previous writing "(pages 88-89). 

It must be said, however, that the treatise of architecture is not the only preserved writing in the papers of the State. Alessandro was a prolific writer. This allows us to understand that his vision of architecture does not end only in the pages of the treatise, but rather extends to a much broader technical-scientific knowledge. Among his papers are "Sheets relevant to the studies of Mr Architect Alessandro Galilei, a Notebook with various arithmetical rules...; a Treatise on fortifications; a Treatise on Military Architecture; On the garrison, ammunitions, and supplies necessary for a fortification; a treatise on geometry; a definition of linear perspective; a Brief Treatise on Conic Sections; On the utility that can be drawn from mechanical science and its instruments; a Treatise on cosmography; a Compendium of Astronomy: [...] Rules for Water jets - Of Water motions ... and a Treaty with many observations around the countryside ..."(p. 92). 

Rome, Facade of San Giovanni in Laterano (Alessandro Galilei, 1732)

The Civil Architecture

After having acknowledged the magnitude of Galilei’s interests, which go so far as to astronomy on the one hand and the management of water and land surveying on the other, it is natural to ask: what kind of treaty is this Civil architecture? The authoress has no doubts: a sort of textbook on theory and practice, which, as far as the theory is concerned, often draws (as mentioned) from specially masked sources, but has its real strength in the pragmatic approach to the matter. Little theory, therefore (to be clear: there is not even a summary plate of the classic Orders) and a lot of emphasis on the practice of the construction site, i.e. on matters that, as from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, will be only discussed as part of engineering (and that will be indeed been the subject of studies by engineers, professionally emancipated from architects). Again, let us read what Rosa Maria Giusto writes, because of her special clarity: "Galilei is more interested to indicate ways to (and seasons when) or times when (or places where) to manufacture, or different types of materials to be used and, in general, everything would belong, by definition, to the practice of the construction site, rather than to linger in disquisitions of a theoretical nature, more suited to the reading rooms of a library" (pp. 94-95). "This is the reason why Galilei, like Vignola and Palladio, opts for a specialist language and for 'industry' terminology, which is never, not even at the beginning of the text, explained or questioned: the author wishes to speak to an audience of professionals and experts of the matter, who are clear about the fundamentals of architecture" (p. 96). "In the treaty is absent any reference to constructed works, whether they are well-known models of antiquity or contemporary examples, including his own accomplishments or projects; equally, no reference is to be found, except incidentally, to the anthropomorphic theories, so important in Vitruvius, Alberto and Palladio" (ditto). "In the text is absent any indication of the contemporary European debate on the baroque style: there is not a single position on such a topical and debated issue; nor, on the other hand, Galilei ever expresses any personal idea on architecture, which he will instead formulate clearly once he will have returned in Florence, in different 'opinions' and appraisals in which (in addition to following his technical judgment, according to appointments) he takes position without misunderstandings in favour a critically revised reworking of the classic code" (pp. 95-96). 

Rome, Facade of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (Alessandro Galilei, 1733)

A somewhat 'biased' interpretation?

So far everything was written by the authoress seems very interesting and absolutely convincing. Where we are more cautious to agree with her is when she draws at least two further conclusions from what we have just tried to describe. First: the text by Galileo would be encyclopaedic by nature; or, to be more clear, the Civil architecture, combined with the other manuscripts preserved in the Fund, would show that (i) Galilei’s interest for architecture is of a purely scientific nature (the architecture is a science, and therefore Scamozzi is so often sacked) and that (ii) he was in some way a precursor of the encyclopaedic approach of Enlightenment France. Secondly, and as a direct consequence of the first argument, the possible publication of the treaty would have somehow reshaped times and manner of the architectural debate, not only in Italy but also in Europe. In Italy, on the one hand, it would have proposed functionalist instances that became explicit only by the end of the century; in Europe, on the other hand, it would have redesigned the role played by the culture of our country in the continental evolution process. "The drafting of his treatise on architecture, if it had published, would have anticipated the texts which proved nodal for Neoclassic architecture and encyclopaedism by several years, shifting the axis of European scientific debate in a decidedly Italy-centric direction; Marc-Antoine Laugier published his Essai sur l'architecture in 1753, anonymous, and later one in 1755, and the first volume of Encyclopédie was printed ... 'only' in 1751" (p. 12). "The text by Galileo anticipates the Italian participation in the eighteenth-century debate on the theories of architecture by several years. The official historiography has long ascribed the origin of that debate to the works by Jean-Louis de Cordemoy and Marc-Antoine Laugier in France, or by Colen Campbell and James Gibbs in Britain. In Italy, a room for new, more informed, theoretical arguments  can be found only secondarily (and in fact, following temporarily the first, important evidence in Europe), in the writings of Carlo Lodoli and Francesco Algarotti, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francesco Milizia and Andrea Memmo. They include: Algarotti, who publishes the Essay on Architecture in 1756, Piranesi who publishes the Magnificence and Architecture of the Romans in 1760, and the Opinion on Architecture in 1765; Milizia, the theorist 'by excellence' of the eighteenth-century classicism of an Italian brand, who authored the Principles of civil architecture only in 1781; and finally, Memmo, who makes known the functionalistic theories by Lodoli in Elements of Lodoli’s Architecture... published for the first time in 1786"(p. 87).

With great sincerity, these views seem to us a bit biased. We quite naturally reflected on a chronologically preceding experience, that we believe can help categorise the Civil architecture. The experience is that of the Florentine school of science, which - if you want - has its symbol in the short life of the Accademia del Cimento, born in 1657. Let me explain: there is no doubt that there was a scientific tradition in Tuscany, which in 1600 had been headed by the better known Galilei, or Galileo Galilei (incidentally, the two come from a single family strain). This tradition should not be neglected and has its reflection also in the world of the arts. Around the middle of 1600, for example, Cosimo Noferi wrote another treatise on architecture (the Travagliata Architettura - the Troubled Architecture), also left manuscript, which seems to us to have a very similar approach to that of Alessandro: architecture as a science, little room for much theory and much room to the practices of construction, a pragmatic and didactic purpose (see Antonino Pellicanò, Da Galileo Galilei a Cosimo Noferi verso una Nuova Scienza. La Travagliata Architettura: un inedito trattato galileiano nella Firenze del 1650 - From Galileo Galileo to Cosimo Noferi towards a New Science. The Troubled Architecture: an unpublished treatise à la Galilei in 1650 Florence, Firenze University Press, 2005). Yes, it would seem more logical to categorise the Civil Architecture of Alessandro in the wake of this Tuscan tradition, rather than making of it a precursor of things that would come half a century later. And this certainly does not mean to diminish its importance. 

On the different role that Italy could have played in Europe following the publication of the Treaty of Galilei, it is obvious: Italy, or rather, pre-unification states at that time, were pure periphery. Ideas may circulate and in turn influence other ideas if they are supported by a strong society and economy; both realities that had not belonged any longer to our country since immemorial time. Hard to believe, in this sense, that the failed publication was a missed opportunity. This does not mean that the 'Made in Italy' did not sell well. It is no coincidence that Alessandro went to England in the wake of the previous successful experience of other Italian artists. It is not a coincidence that the Civil Architecture itself is translated into English, for possible publication. While in England, Alessandro is faced with two formidable examples: the cult of Palladio and Giacomo Leoni, who in 1715-1716 successfully published the first English translation of the Four Books of Architecture. Hard to think that he did not aim at taking advantage of those success stories, offering his interpretation of the matter.