ENGLISH VERSION Nicola Aricò. Libro di Architettura. GBM Messina, 2007

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Nicola Aricò
Libro di Architettura [Book of Architecture]

Preface by Richard Bösel
GBM Messina
2005-2006 [but September 2007]

The College of the Jesuits in Messina in 1700 (Architect: Natale Masuccio). Destroyed by the 1908 earthquake

[1] Work in two volumes. The texts of the strips of Volume I and Volume II respectively are reported below.

Strip of Volume I:

"In the late eighties and early nineties of the sixteenth century, an anonymous Sicilian of the Society of Jesus elaborates on an ambitious project: to write a book to teach architecture. The initiative was inspired by the need to overcome, with the formation of new architects, many of the problems that had slowed and sometimes hindered the planning and construction of the Order in Sicily. As in the practice of the Jesuits’ pedagogy, the textbooks to be used were selected among already published works, which were however submitted to appropriate amendments in order to accommodate those works to the Ignatian [note of the translator: the founder of the Jesuits] principles. For architecture, the selected guiding work was the Treaty of Leon Battista Alberti in the vernacular translation by Cosimo Bartoli. Alberti’s [note of the translator Latin] text, translated into vernacular, was at times being copied, at times synthesized and thereby censored or at times integrated by our anonymous author with original contributions even differing from the fifteenth century lesson, sometimes with loans from Palladio. The threat of the Counter-Reformation and, in particular, the discipline with which Antonio Possevino had benchmarked the good Christian architect to the will of Sixtus V, had led to the exclusion of the Treaty of Sebastiano Serlio's from the books recommended in Possevino’s Bibliotheca selecta [n.d.t. Selected library]. But this recommendation had come far too late. The treatise of the author from Bologna [note of the translator: Serlio] was everywhere and never before pages of architecture had "invaded" Sicily so much as his Third and Fourth Books. The anonymous author knew the work of Serlio from a time prior to his reading of Alberti and Palladio. Though encrypted, his lesson had in fact flowed into the new textbook.

Other contingencies moved from Messina. The historical site of the Collegio Prototipo [n.d.t. the Prototype College] in the city on the Sicily Strait [note of the editor: Messina] had been the first college managed by the Jesuits in collaboration with a city government, being open to all those who wished to learn. This had spread the idea of experimental teaching: why not try to teach even architecture, in a time of important new negotiations between the Senate of the town and the General Curia of the Jesuits’ Order? In 1589 the city architect Andrea Calamecca passed away and, perhaps not coincidentally, on the side lines of the Jesuits’ initiative conducted by our anonymous author, the Sicilian Jacopo Del Duca arrived from Rome. Certainly, he seems to occupy a role: not in the drafting of the textbook, but with reference to his high professional mastery, which can be clearly recognised, although in a few pages. Then an unexpected event, such as the probable death of our anonymous author, interrupted the initiative, leaving it incomplete and unimplemented, thus fuelling the Cinquecento utopia to teach architecture from the benches of a school, as it had already happened in Siena with Baldassarre Peruzzi."

Strip of Volume II

"The study of an anonymous manuscript (deprived from the origin of any title), preserved at the Regional Library of the University of Messina, has allowed us to uncover the identity of the work through a method of philological investigation, supported by a focused archival research.

Having identified the leading text from which the anonymous author of the manuscript had structured its own writing - the vernacular translation by Cosimo Bartoli of the De re aedificatoria by Leon Battista Alberti, in the Venetian edition of 1565 – Bartoli’s edition of Alberti has been considered as the fundamental "witness" for the philological reading.

The criteria of manipulation, adopted by the Society of Jesus at the onset of the teaching, have hereby become evident. They were designed to adapt to the Jesuits’ own pedagogical discipline the selected texts, which had been chosen because readily available on the book market in those years. While agreeing with the chosen texts, it was however necessary for the fathers of the Order to homologate them to the teaching activity, according to a design by no means devoid of the climate of the Counterreformation.

The analysis conducted permitted to draw an indirect connection with the Bibliotheca selecta [n.d.t. Selected Library) by Antonio Possevino and, through this, to go back to the most important figure of the Jesuits’ architecture of the second half of the sixteenth century, the father architect Giuseppe Valeriano.

It was moreover identified - and made available to scholars via printing – the part of the manuscript which had been copied from Bartoli’s vernacular translation of Alberti, distinguishing it from the summarized parties and from important original contributions. Moreover, it was recognised the presence of Palladio’s Treaty as well as of the Libri [n.d.t. Books] of Sebastiano Serlio. The latter, fell out of favour in Jesuits’ circles, was well known to the Sicilian drafter and was therefore circulating encrypted through the pages of the manuscript.

The philological investigation also included a careful reading of the watermarks and collations, analysing and deducing the history of use and the different hands that penned the cards.

An authentic mine of information turned out to be also the linguistic heritage that converged here, experiencing the confluence of Florentine vernacular, Serlio’s "Tuscan", some echo of Venetian through Palladio and those complex Sicilian terms where Greek, Latin, Arabic, French and Catalan are often layered to form dissimilar dialects in different areas of the island. For this reason it was decided to prepare at the end of the critical edition, a short glossary of Sicilian building terms.

The parallel archival research has allowed us to fill in some gaps, but first of all has provided the legitimacy to attribute the work to a Sicilian Jesuit brother. From a restless illiterate newcomer, with carpenter's tasks, he will become - if only for a short period - the vibrant Jesuit architect of the island, protagonist of an authentic educational utopia."

[2] Life is beautiful, because it allows you to change opinion and correct your own mistakes. At the very end, this is what Aricò writes in his introduction (Vol. I, p. 11-13). He was the one who, around 1982, had run into the FV code 29 of the Regional Library University of Messina, and had convinced himself, in a wave of enthusiasm, that the Libro di Architettura (Book of Architecture) was the work of Jacopo del Duca, a pupil of Michelangelo Buonarroti. However, the initial enthusiasm cooled over the years, the further the examination of the pages of the manuscript progressed. Aricò recalls having submitted the transcript of the first pages of the code and the apparatus of the drawings to Manfredo Tafuri (his teacher), who did not fail to point out the low-quality of the graphic apparatus and the overall modesty of the text of the code. The sense of despair meant that for a few years the examination of the manuscript was abandoned. In 1990, however, Aricò presented during a conference in Milan an essay in which he explained the discovery of the code and maintained the attribution to Jacopo del Duca. The essay was later on published in 1992 under the title “Un Libro di Architettura di Jacopo Del Duca nel Collegio di Messina” (A Book of Architecture by Jacopo Del Duca in the College of Messina) in L’architettura della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia XVI-XVIII secolo (The architecture of the Company of Jesus in Italy in sixteenth-eighteenth century), edited by Luciano Patetta and Stefano Della Torre, Genoa, Marietti publishers, 1992. Simultaneously, the idea advanced that the real importance of the manuscript was not so much on a conceptual plan, but as a testimony of the production of textbooks adapted to both the practical and the theoretical needs of the Company of Jesus. In sum, the hypothesis of a theoretical treatise drafted by Del Duca was fading, especially for the apparent discrepancy between the stature of the architect born in the town of Cefalù [note of the translator: in Sicily] and the modesty of the manuscript. The hypothesis of a "possible" textbook compiled within the Jesuit’s circles started to gain credibility. We could simply state that this critical edition of the manuscript, conducted with a rare philological scrupulousness and based on extensive archival research, is basically the result of this reversal of perspective.

And yet, one has to deal with a further factor. In 2004, Francesca Paolino, following up on a previous communication during a conference in Genoa, published a commented edition of the manuscript (Giacomo del Duca, L’arte dell’edificare,. Regional Library of the University of Messina. Ms. FV29) in which, while placing the manuscript in the context of the Jesuits’ educational and informative activity, mentioned the intervention of Aricò in 1992 and assigned the code just to Jacopo del Duca. There is, therefore, throughout the unfolding of the arguments by Aricò, a “stone guest”, which is the book by Mrs Paolino. Looking at the text, it can be said that the latter work was in fact ignored by Aricò (only two citations in the footnotes, the most significant of which is the following on p. 134 of the first volume: "The many years elapsed between the announcement of this discovery and this philological reconstruction of the text have authorised Francesca Paolino to publish the code in 2004. On the scientific value of her studies ... please allow me a witticism: we have certainly studied different codes". However, we would not be surprised if several pages of the work had been drafted by Aricò with the express purpose of replicating to Paolino (just think of the paragraph entitled: Why the author of the epitome is not Jacopo Del Duca, Vol. 1 p. 134-142). It seems to us, in all honesty, that the arguments proposed by Aricò not only clarify definitively who is not the author of the manuscript (in fact Del Duca), but produce sufficiently firm evidence to suggest that, without any reasonable doubt, the authorship of the work must be referred to Alfio Vinci.

Loggia of the Merchants (Messina). Work by Giacomo Del Duca. Destroyed by the 1783 earthquake

[3] Paolino’s thesis is that there is no doubt as to the authorship of the work ... "in the wording accompanying the drawing of a fort in masonry (folio 110) is contained, in fact, the statement: “They are seen by me, Sir Giacopo Duca... [note of the translator: da me ser giacopo]". This statement, with absolutely certainty, indicates Giacomo Del Duca as the author of the Compendium. To the same conclusion, moreover, lead all the references contained therein relating to works and circumstances relating to Cefalù, birthplace of Giacomo, and Messina, the city where he lived and worked in the last decade of his life (1589-1600)" (Paolino, 2004, p. 63). Without replying directly, Aricò reads the same passage of the text as "are seen by Sir Giacopo Duke... [note of the translator: da miser giacopo]" (Vol. 2 p. 239). Aricò also notes that the vernacular term ‘misere’ [note of the translator: like Mister or Monsieur, here translated Sir] appears in other folios of the iconographic section (Vol. 1 p. 138), but particularly in the sixteenth folder of the code (folios 106-113) which is also assessed as originating from circles close to Del Duca, because there appear exactly testimonies and experiences precisely attributable to misere [Sir] Jacopo Del Duca. The anonymous author of the manuscript, therefore, cites Del Duca with the same respectful title (misere) with which Del Duca quoted his master Michelangelo. What is absolute certainty for Paolino, is awareness for Aricò that the code has been drafted by one third person compared to the architect from Cefalù and that an investigation based on uncertain clues only (and not on certain proofs) must be conducted to identify the author. In this type of investigation Aricò really gives the best of himself. The reading of the first two sections of the first volume (Codex – Code and Historia - Story) really has the taste of a detective novel, in which the offender (the author) is discovered almost to the end. The name of Alfio Vinci only appears on page 132 and the attribution of the work to his hand is on page 148. In the impossibility to cite all elements of evidence, we propose below the identikit of the alleged perpetrator, as Aricò presents it. The entire first and second sections of the first volume, as we said, demonstrate (more than convincingly) that the identikit is the one of Alfio Vinci:

• Land of Origin: Sicily, Messina, but not by birth and education;
• Generation: Next generation following the one of Del Duca;
• Social origin: Strongly popular lineage for class and cultural curiosities;
• Religious affiliation: Adept of the Society of Jesus, but certainly not in the office as "father", but rather as "brother";
• Temperament: active and leading figure in the contemporary cultural landscape, however sometimes bragging and boasting;
• Education: he comes to architecture from a craftsman training;
• Intellectual profile: avoids erudite abstractions, preferring material knowledge;
• Professional skills: unfamiliarity with drawing, compared to a considerable experience of the construction site;
• Documented tours: He knows Rome well, where he had resided several times, and was also in Naples ;
• References and Examples: he uses the treaties of Alberti, Palladio and Serlio as sources;
• Presumed death: The epitome remains unfinished in the early nineties of the sixteenth century.

And yet, we dare to say that almost for superstitious reasons, having already once given a name incorrectly, Aricò not only carefully avoids mentioning the name of Vinci on the cover, in the title page or in the strips of the volumes, but continues to speak, in them, of an "anonymous Sicilian Jesuit."

[4] The last section of the first volume (Architectura - Architecture) contains an extensive theoretical reflection on the theoretical assumptions of the architecture by the Jesuits and the extent to which the manuscript of Vinci accommodates it, or may instead be considered as "subversive" compared to their assumptions. In all honesty this section seems less convincing, in the first place because basic documents are objectively lacking (the sources of reference on the subject would be two: on the one hand, the Bibliotheca selecta (Selected Library) of the Jesuit Father Antonio Possevino, of which are commendably proposed chapters XVI-XVIII of Book XV, dedicated to architecture; on the other hand the manuscript treatise of the father architect Giuseppe Valeriano (who met several times Vinci during the latter’s trip), unfortunately lost.

Napoli. Church of Gesù Nuovo (New Jesus) - Internal view- Work by Giuseppe Valeriano)

To be precise - Aricò says on p. 197 - "there is no direct dependence from the Bibliotheca selecta to the Libro di architettura, while both - and certainly with different suggestions - drew contemporaneously in their drafting phase from a common cultural pragmatic source: that of the father Jesuit architect [note of the editor: Giuseppe Valeriano]”. The loss of the Treatise by Valeriano seems, in our view, to expose Aricò to a number of assumptions and suppositions which are objectively too risky. On the other hand, these assumptions do not always convince the reader. One example: the fact that the (really impressive) philological examination of the manuscript by Vinci brings out traces and influences from Serlio, when it is known that Serlio author was an unwelcome author to the Jesuits (on this topic, see below). This would show – according to Aricò – a willingness to filter and hid Serlio’s influence, not to reveal its presence (to avoid censorship). This is perhaps a too complicated explanation. In fact, if this solution were true, it would once again call into question the identikit of the author of the manuscript. Based on the portrait of Vinci that is provided, it does not appear very likely to the reader that the brother from Syracuse might have been able to come up with a so clever and erudite simulation. Probably the explanation is much simpler: despite the ostracism of the Jesuits , Serlio’s language - its architectural grammar that determined its success throughout Europe - was so acquired even in the Sicilian architecture that it is unknowingly be subject to citation (on the extraordinary success of Serlio in Europe see: Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie. Volume 1. Le Traité d’Architecture de Sebastiano Serlio. Une grande entreprise éditoriale au XVIe siècle (Sebastiano Serlio in Lyon. Architecture and printing. Volume 1. The Treatise on Architecture of Sebastiano Serlio. A great editorial enterprise in the XVI century), edited by Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, and in particular the Section Les rééditions et traductions du Traité d’architecture de Serlio – The re-editions and translations of Sebastiano Serlio). A digression to explain us better: we could be (and in the end we are) staunch defenders of the Italian language and yet (as citizens from Bologna, albeit imported originally from other regions of Italy) we could happily use the term "rusco", which is a pure local dialect expression, as exact synonym of the Italian "pattume" (garbage), since the belief in Bologna that "rusco" must be an Italian lemma seems to be universal. All of this explains that in the end often the easiest and most likely solution is also the most correct one. Again on Serlio and the Jesuits: the reasons for censorship are correctly indicated by Aricò at page 246 (from visits with unorthodox French circles to the alleged evangelism underlying the Extraordinario Libro – Extraordinary Book- see about it Mario Carpo: La maschera e il modello. Teoria architettonica ed evangelismo nell’Extraordinario Libro di Sebastiano Serlio (The Mask and the model. Architectural Theory and Evangelism in the Extraordinary Book of Sebastiano Serlio); but even here the most trivial reason in our opinion is omitted, namely the extraordinary publishing (and therefore theoretical) success, which Serlio had known in the reformed countries, in part against his own will, because he was a victim of plagiarism - (see Krista De Jonge. Les éditions du Traité de Serlio par Pieter Coecke van Aelst – The editions of Serlio Treatise by Pieter Coecke, always in the collective work edited by Sylvie Deswarte-Rose). In conclusion: Serlio could not be and should have not been the model for the architecture of the Jesuits, at a time when he had become a reference point for those who had chosen to adhere to the Reformation.