ENGLISH VERSION Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Il "Vitruvio Magliabechiano", Gonnelli editore, 1985

Francesco di Giorgio,
The Vitruvian Man (Trattato di architettura)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION


Francesco di Giorgio Martini
Il "Vitruvio Magliabechiano"
A cura di Gustina Scaglia

Gonnelli editore, 1985

[On Francesco di Giorgio Martini see in this blog also: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, The translation of Vitruvius’ De Architectura, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2002, Part One and Part Two; Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Treatises of military engineering and military art, Il Polifilo, 1967.]

[N.B. On Vitruvius see in this blog also: Vitruvius, On Architecture, Edited by Pierre Gros. Translation and Commentary by Antonio Corso and Elisa Romano. Essays by Maria Losito, Turin, Einaudi, 1997; Giovanni Mazzaferro, Rare Books and a Great Discovery: a Specimen of Vitruvius' De Architectura Annotated by Cosimo Bartoli; El Greco. The miracle of naturalness. The artistic thought of El Greco through the margin notes to Vitruvius and Vasari. Edited by Fernando Marías and José Riello, Rome, Castelvecchi, 2017; The Annotations by Guillaume Philandrier on Vitruvius' De Architectura. Books I to IV. Edited by Frédérique Lemerle, Paris, Piccard, 2000; Marco Vitruvio Pollione's Architecture, translated and commented by the Marquis Berardo Galiani. Foreword by Alessandro Pierattini (unabriged reprint of Naples edition, 1790), Rome, Editrice Librerie Dedalo, 2005; Claude Perrault, Les Dix Livres d’Architecture de Vitruve, Corrigez et traduitz nouvellement en françois avec des notes et des figures, Paris, Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1673; Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture. The Corsini Incunabulum with the annotations and autograph drawings of Giovanni Battista da Sangallo. Edited by Ingrid D. Rowland, Edizioni dell’Elefante, 2003; Massimo Mussini, Francesco di Giorgio e Vitruvio. Le traduzioni del 'De architectura' nei codici Zichy, Spencer 129 e Magliabechiano II.I.141, Leo S. Olschki, 2003; Francesco di Giorgio Martini, La traduzione del De Architectura di Vitruvio. A cura di Marco Biffi, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2002; Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Il "Vitruvio Magliabechiano". A cura di Gustina Scaglia, Gonnelli editore, 1985.]

[1] In addition to this volume, the following notes are derived from issue no. 8 (Sept. 1978) of Studi e documenti di Architettura, a periodic journal founded and directed by the late Luigi Vagnetti (1915 – 1980).

[2] Francesco di Giorgio Martini "was among the first to accommodate the suggestions recognising the widespread need for a vernacular translation of the text of Vitruvius; he started this endeavour already probably around 1470, perhaps even with the collaboration of a yet unidentified associate ... "(see Studies and Documents ..., op.cit. , p . 27).

[3] The vernacular translation of Vitruvius' De Architectura appears in the second part of the ms. Magliabechian II.1.141 the National Library of Florence. Unfortunately, the translation is not complete: in essence, Martini and his eventual partner did not manage translating into Italian the entire treatise of Vitruvius.

[4] The Italian translation of De Architectura in the version by Francesco di Giorgio Martini had not yet been printed until this publication. Publication, however, that came to light after a long and tiring gestation. Luigi Vagnetti, in his presentation of the monograph issue of Studi e documenti dedicated to the work of Vitruvius helps us to shed light on this aspect. The Vitruvian Committee had approved the publication of the translation of Martini in 1973. The text had been transcribed, studied and commented by the Italian-American scholar Gustina Scaglia. "And, as the survey compiled from her was written in English, ... [ editor's note The Committee] committed the Italian translation to a specialist scholar, Professor Alessandro Gambuti member and secretary of the Committee itself. Gambuti performed its job in full agreement with the authoress of that critical work "(p. 6). However, due to financial difficulties the entire project evaporated, in the fall of 1976. 

[5] Only a few years later a way was found to print the work, in the volume now under review, with date 1985. However, compared to the previous state of the work, something different is immediately evident: the comments by the curator (i.e. Ms Scaglia) are published in English (and not in the Italian translation of Gambuti), a symptom that there may have been some disagreement between the Italian-American researcher and the Vitruve Committee (and perhaps the difficulties hindering publication ten years before were not only of a financial nature). In the Gonnelli edition, therefore, the input by Ms Scaglia is in English, and the only use of Italian is limited to the vernacular translation made by Martini more than five hundred years ago. 

[6] A second critical edition of the translation by Martini of the Vitruvian masterpiece was published by Marco Biffi in 2002. It is entitled Francesco di Giorgio Martini, La traduzione del De Architectura di Vitruvio (The translation of Vitruvius' De Architectura) (Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa). 

[7] Text of the strip : 

" The scholars of history of Renaissance architecture do not certainly ignore the existence of the "Vitruvius Magliabechiano", i.e. the translation of Vitruvius' De Architectura, personally handwritten by Francesco di Giorgio Martini and stored in the second part of the code Magliabechiano II I 141. But who can claim to have been able to use it in full for a comparison with the passages of the several Renaissance treatises which certainly have drawn from Vitruv? Indeed, who can even say to have read it in full? It would have been impossible without a transcript and a critical edition of the text, fraught with many difficulties, which, however, was present at the desk of the main architects compiling treatises between the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Now, the consultation of "Vitruvius Magliabechiano" will be made easier thanks to the edition prepared with great care and philological conscientiousness, a rich comment and full glossary, by Professor Gustina Scaglia, whose studies represent the most thorough investigation on the dissemination of the work of Vitruvius in the early Renaissance. They specifically display the figure of Martini, who - in addition to merits as an architect, sculptor, painter and essayist - is placed in the foreground with this work as a humanist and a scholar of antiquity”.

[8] This was not an issue printed in numbered copies. The work, however, had a "very limited edition" (see last page of the volume) and this helps explain the rather expensive price (200,000 lire in 1985).