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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
[N.B. On Vitruvius see in this blog
also: Francesca Salatin, An Introduction to Fra Giocondo's Vitruvius (1511); 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] What makes unique the copy of the incunabulum of Vitruvius’ De Architectura (On Architecture) which is preserved with Ms. Corsini F.50.1 mark at the Accademia dei Lincei? Quite simply: the stunning illustrations which Giovanni Battista da Sangallo called il Gobbo (the Hunchback) endowed to it. The Accademia dei Lincei kindly granted me the permission to reproduce five of them. I am doing it right away. After the pictures, you will find the review of the book.
Fig. 1 Human figure inscribed in a circle (Vitruvian Man)
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| Giovanni Battista da Sangallo called il Gobbo Human Figure Inscribed in a Circle (Vitruvio III, 1, 3) Ms. Corsini F.50.1 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei |
Fig. 2 Interior of a theatre
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| Giovanni Battista da Sangallo called Il Gobbo Interior of Roman Theatre (Vitruvio V.5.1-5) Ms. Corsini F.50.1 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei |
Fig. 3 The baths of the Romans
Fig. 4 Optical Effects
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| Giovanni Battista da Sangallo called il Gobbo The Baths of the Romans (V.10.1-5) Ms. Corsini 50.F.1 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei |
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| Giovanni Battista da Sangallo detto il Gobbo Optical Effects (Vitruvio VI.2.1-4) Lower left: 'Scena dipinta in tavola piana' Lower right: 'Refraction of oars in water' Ms. Corsini 50.F.1 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei |
Fig. 5 The five types of cavaedium, interpreted as a Renaissance cortile
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| Giovanni Battista da Sangallo detto il Gobbo The five types of cavaedium, interpreted as a Renaissance cortile (Vitruvio VI.3.1-2) From top to bottom: cavedium toscanicum, cavedium corinto, cavedium thetrastilo, cavedium, displuiato, cavedium testudinato Ms. 50.F.1 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei |
[2] The first printed edition (in Latin) of the De Architectura of Vitruvius is, as well-known, by Giovanni Sulpicio da Veroli. It is an incunabulum of 1486 (technically, the term incunabulum identifies any book printed during the fifteenth century). The work has a fundamental characteristic: that of being conceived as a modern "work in progress". Sulpicius, a professor of grammar at the University of Rome, admits, with great courage, not to be able to interpret all passages of the Vitruvian text as they had been transmitted until the fifteenth century. Centuries and centuries of transcriptions of manuscripts had in the first place meant that ten of eleven illustrations originally accompanying the work of Vitruvius went lost; equally, three Greek poems went astray (later retrieved and published by Fra Giocondo in the second and subsequent edition of 1511). Moreover, in different points the original Latin text was difficult to reconstruct. Sulpicio fully realises it and therefore prepares an issue with wide margins on each page, so that the same readers can supplement the text, make corrections and provide it to the illustrations. He also leaves a blank space for the Greek poems lost.
[3] The
years elapse; in the meantime new editions come out (we have already quoted that
in Latin by Fra Giocondo, but we must at least remember the first Italian
edition of Cesare Cesariano of 1521). Only a translator, however, at the turn between the late '20s of the
sixteenth century and 1548 seems to pick the solicitation by Giovanni Sulpicio.
It is Giovan Battista da Sangallo, called 'il Gobbo' (the Hunchback), who, in that long
period of time, includes loges, comments and especially illustrates with specimen
of magnificent drawings a copy of the first printed edition, the princeps. The incunabulum is now
preserved at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, in the Corsiniana library with
Ms. Corsini 50.F.1 mark. The illustrations by Giovan Battista are not unpublished.
A good part of them was published in 1988 by Gabriele Morolli in L’Architettura di Vitruvio: una guida illustrata. Rilettura delle «Institutiones novae» accompagnata da inediti disegni
sangalleschi e corredata da una biografia e da un indice dei principali termini
architettonici (The Architecture
of Vitruvius: An Illustrated Guide. Rereading the "Institutiones novae', accompanied by previously
unpublished drawings by Sangallo and accompanied by a biography and an index of
main architectural terms).
But it is in 2003 that, for the first time, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
allows the 'Edizioni dell’Elefante' to reproduce photographically the entire
incunabulum on which Giovan Battista worked. The result is a simply magnificent
publication, to which the introduction by Ingrid D. Rowland makes a worthy
setting, one of those introductions that only the Anglo-Saxon world has
traditionally been able to prepare, excellent for clarity, synthesis and
reconstruction of the Roman environment in the early sixteenth century. We refer
to it for the compilation of these notes.
[4] The love among Sangallo and Vitruvius lasts for decades. The elder brother of Giovan Battista, i.e. Antonio the Younger, had tried to translate the De Architectura (starting probably a little before 1530). The result had been disappointing: it appears that only the Proemio had been drafted, edited by Paola Barocchi in Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento (Writings of the sixteenth century). Giovan Battista, instead, went far beyond and translated the treatise in full. In fact, to be fair, there are even two copies of translation by Giovan Battista; quoting Nicola Pagliara at the item Cordini Giovanni Battista (Battista da Sangallo detto il Gobbo) in volume 29 (1983) of Dizionario biografico degli italiani "(Cordini Giovanni Battista - Battista da Sangallo said the Hunchback - volume 29 of the Biographical Dictionary of the Italians (1983)" the oldest copy ( Cors. 1846) is also the largest: it stops at chapter X of book XII of the book, and is almost entirely hand-written by Cordini, on papers with watermarks used in Florence in 1514-29. Dissatisfied with this version, Cordini produced a second one (Cors. 2093), which reaches the end of Book VI, also written almost entirely by his own hand on folios with watermark in use in the third decade of the century." Both in the Dizionario as well as in the monograph entitled Vitruvio da testo a canone (Vitruvius from text to canon) Pagliara mentions the project of a publication of Battista’s translation by Roberto Peliti and Franca Petrucci Nardelli, with an introduction by Armando Petrucci: a draft was completed in 1969, but never published. Also according to Pagliara: "The translation, despite the strong commitment by Sangallo, cannot be defined as a success. The great practical experience as an architect was not sufficient to compensate the lack of knowledge of the Latin language, and many times the text was not really understood." The annotations that Giovan Battista transcribes on the Corsini incunabulum now re-printed are similar, but not identical to the text of Sangallo’s integral translation.
[5] If the attempt to translate Vitruvius in Italian cannot be appraised as particularly fortunate, what makes quite unique the specimen in question is the apparatus of the illustrations, simply magnificent. Here we leave the word to Ingrid Rowland (p. 24): “But what the Tuscan builder could claim in compensation for his scholarly shortcomings was an extraordinary powerful visual imagination (…). Battista da Sangallo was able to imagine ancient Rome as if it were a real place. His city of the Caesars is no archaeological abstraction; it is alive with people, from the fat little actor gesticulating from the front edge of a long projecting stage (…), to the energeting bathers who splash themselves from basins, wrestle in the palaestra, or sit in the tub, discussing with extravagant motions of their arms and hands. (…) Nor is Battista da Sangallo’s Rome only made of people. His trees are as carefully characterized by their appearance as they are distinguished in Vitruvius by their uses. His city walls are set in real landscapes of hills, valleys, and tortuous terrain (…). His Roman streets do not belong to some white-columned dream world; they are as scruffy and haphazard as a Roman street in his own day”
[6] How did Giovan Battista manage to illustrate the edition of Sulpicius? Quite simply: he picked up a copy and took out the binding. Then, besides annotating and illustrating the pages of most interest, he just added some additional folios for the designs of most interest. It seems certain that this operation was made and remade more than once, with some error in the binding. For example, in the last binding three full-page drawings, that clearly had to be inserted into the Book V, were omitted and only bound at the end of the work. It should be clarified that notes and drawings do not relate to the whole work, but are mainly concentrated in the books from III to VI. It is very likely - given the quality of reproduction - that the modern edition has been conducted in a similar way: the sheets have been freed, reproduced and bound again.
[7 ] As written by the curator , notes and illustrations of the incunabulum appear to have been drawn up at least in three different times (cf. p . 34). A first step was probably already in the 20s, and a second at the end of the '30s and / or early in the next decade, and finally a third between 1546 and 1548.
[8] We thank Dr.ssa Ada Beccari, General Director of the Accademia dei Lincei for her kind permission to reproduce the images.
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