Massimo Mussini. Francesco di Giorgio e Vitruvio. Le traduzioni del 'De architectura' nei codici Zichy, Spencer 129 e Magliabechiano II.I.141. Leo S. Olshcki, 2003

Francesco di Giorgio.
The Human Body inscript in a column

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Massimo Mussini

Francesco di Giorgio e Vitruvio

Le traduzioni del 'De architectura' nei codici Zichy, Spencer 129 e Magliabechiano II.I.141

[On Francesco di Giorgio Martini see in this blog also: Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Magliabechi’s Vitruvius, Gonnelli editore, 1985; Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Treatises of military engineering and military art, Il Polifilo, 1967.]

[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] The volume was published a few months after the publication of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, The translation of Vitruvius' De architectura, curated by Marco Biffi. The time gap between the two was so close, that Mussini was keen to point out not to have been able to keep any account of it in his work. In fact, the two works can be considered as complementary to each other: on the one hand, the critical edition of the Code Magliabechiano II.I.141 (the second one – it is to be remembered - after that by Gustina Scaglia); on the other hand, the comparative transcription of three versions of the Vitruvian’s work, conducted by Francesco di Giorgio as it appears in the codes Zichy (previously unpublished), Spencer 129 and (again) Magliabechiano II.I.141. Compared to what stated by Biffi, the time sequencing of Martini’s manuscripts is quite different. The one proposed by Mussini is the following :

• Code Zichy Budapest;

• Treaty I;

• Code 129 Spencer; 

• Translation of De architectura Magliabechiana; 

• Treaty II. 

According to Biffi, the Code Spencer comes after the Magliabechiana translation; however, it should be recalled that the crucial sequencing of Martini’s work (i.e., the Treaty I first, the translation of Vitruvius second and the Treaty II last) had already been established in 1967 by Corrado Maltese in Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare (Treaties of architecture, engineering military art).

[2] To be precise, Mussini’s work displays in sequence (in the second volume) the texts of the translation of De Architectura, as resulting respectively from the Zichy, Spencer and (second part of) Magliabechiano II.I.141 codices. The codes are not transcribed in their entirety, but only for those parts that directly correspond to the translation of Vitruvius. Also in sequence is finally transcribed the Cod Urb Lat. 293 of the Apostolic Vatican Library (one of the witnesses of Vitruvius’ fatigue), which the author believes to have identified as the manuscript on which Francesco di Giorgio run his translation from Latin into vernacular. 

[3] It is no coincidence that Mussini identified in a manuscript originating from Urbino the exemplary on Martini worked. The fundamental thesis of his book is that the entire work by Francesco di Giorgio should be chronologically framed in the years of his stay in Urbino, between the second half of 1475 and 1487. It is only after his move from Siena (a city immersed in the late Gothic culture) to Urbino of Federico da Montefeltro (a much more evolved town and more attentive centre to the new humanistic ideas), that Francesco di Giorgio transformed himself from "an artisan artist" to "a humanist artist." Mussini’s theses collide, from this point of view, with those of Gustina Scaglia, who instead had identified in the university of Siena the environment that moved Martini to take interest in the Vitruvian text (according to Scaglia, the Treaty I was produced in Siena). In all sincerity, Mussini’s arguments (developed in the first volume in the form of a critical essay and in the second with the presentation of the texts mentioned above) seem complete and convincing. We leave him the floor: after having arrived in Urbino “without the necessary humanistic culture to understand a difficult Latin text as Vitruvius, Francesco di Giorgio boldly tackled the translation with his approximate knowledge of medieval Latin and reconstructed the sense of the most difficult passages by relying primarily on the comprehension of some keywords, circumventing the problems of translation through direct use of Latin terminology ... The work, which probably started already in 1476, enabled him to translate more or less extensive excerpts from the first to the seventh book of De architectura. Through a continuous revision of the text to better penetrate its meaning, Francesco di Giorgio came to the idea of combining the description of ancient architecture, derived from the Latin treatise, with a series of notes on modern architecture "(p. ix). To these notes Mussini assigned the name of Proto-Treaty; the Proto-Treaty and the first partial translation of Vitruvius are contained in the Zichy Codex. After 1476, Martini lays down in the years between 1480 and 1482 the Treaty I (see the notes to the edition edited by Corrado Maltese). 1483 is in turn a critical year: a manuscript copy of De re aedificatoria of Leon Battista Alberti arrives in Urbino. It was commissioned three years before by Federico da Montefeltro, who had died in the meantime. "Alberti's work contributed to undermine the treaty model used by Martini, as it made its archaic setting manifest. It does not seem wrong, therefore, to think that, as from that date, Francesco di Giorgio started revising his work, enhancing his studies of Latin and ancient ruins to improve his ability to understand difficult Vitruvian text. A new model of the Treaty, more exemplified along the one by Alberti, is in fact already partially outlined in Opera di Architettura (Work of Architecture) [editor’s note: Spencer Codex], in which Francesco di Giorgio has used a translation of Vitruvius now largely reviewed and almost coinciding with the Magliabechiana" (pp. 229-230). It must be said that the Work of Architecture is the most difficult text to place in the evolution of Martini's translations, because of its substantially fragmented nature. Mussini dates it to the year 1486 (p. 230). Definitely only a few years later (and - as I said earlier – by 1487 at the latest, according to Mussini), Martini produced the Magliabechiana translation of De architectura, extended for the first time to all ten books of the work (but still incomplete: see the notes to the critical edition of Biffi). 

[4] The Zichy Codex is kept at the Municipal Library of Budapest with mark Ms.09.2690. The Zichy family, belonging to the Hungarian nobility, owned a palace in Venice; exactly in Venice, Count Ieno Zichy acquired in the nineteenth century the manuscript on the art market; the code remained first in Venice, then was brought to Budapest, where at the beginning of the twentieth century the Zichy heirs reached it to the local municipal library. The manuscript "is a collection of texts and drawings gathered at different times by the Venetian Angelo Cortivo [editor’s note: Angelo dal Cortivo], cartographer and surveyor of the Serenissima"(p.115). From internal evidence it appears that the contents of the manuscript were copied there before 1535. As you can see, the existence of the code was actually known for some time, but the attention of scholars had focused mainly on the first part of the paper, which collects a series of Italian lyrics of the XV-XVI century. Scholars had studied much less the second part, which in fact contains "a transcript of extensive excerpts from an architectural treatise [editor’s note: Mussini calls it Proto-Treaty] and a translation of Vitruvius, which Francesco di Giorgio both derived from an original, or more probably from a copy"(p. 116). The transcription of these texts, presented by Mussini, represents the first one to be published (at the bottom of the first volume is posted a photographic reproduction of the transcribed folios and related drawings). 

Francesco di Giorgio
A page from Code Zichy

[5] The Code 129 Spencer is instead at the New York Public Library, Spencer Collection. We do not know who extended it, except that the handwriting appears to be from the sixteenth century. The presence of the Opera di Architectura was known to Gustina Scaglia, who made the first transcript in 1976 (Gustina Scaglia, The Opera de Architectura of Francesco di Giorgio Martini for Alfonso Duke of Calabria in Napoli nobilissima, The Work of Architecture of Francesco di Giorgio Martini for Alfonso Duke of Calabria in the noble Naples, XV, V - VI (1976).