ENGLISH VERSION Francesco di Giorgio Martini, La traduzione del De Architectura di Vitruvio. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2002

Francesco di Giorgio
The Human Body into a Basilica Plan

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Francesco di Giorgio Martini

La traduzione del De Architectura di Vitruvio 

A cura di Marco Biffi

Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2002

Isbn 88-7642-116-5

[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.]

[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] Before discussing in more detail the ‘Magliabechiana’ translation of Vitruvius' De architectura, it is worth recalling briefly the taxonomy of Martini’s manuscripts proposed by Corrado Maltese in the critical edition of the Treaties, published by ‘Il Polifilo’ publishers in 1967 (for further details please refer to the notes of the data sheet). Maltese had offered a chronological reconstruction of this type:

• Treaty I (codices Torinese Saluzziano 148 and Laurentian Ashburnhamiano 361). Presumed date of composition: 1478-1481;

• Translation of Vitruvius’ De architectura (second part of the code Magliabechiano II.I.141). Presumed date of composition: 1481-1489;

• Treaty II (Senese codex S.IV.4 and the first part of the Magliabechiano codex II.I.141). Presumed date of composition: 1487-1489. 

The taxonomy proposed by Maltese needs to be somewhat corrected, nearly fifty years later, but in essence still holds up. Corrections are dictated by the discovery (after 1967) of two important Martini’s codices: the Spencer 129 codex (New York Public Library ), and the Zichy codex in Budapest. 

The Spencer 129 codex is a copy of the mid sixteenth century containing the Opera di architectura (Work of architecture), that already in the second folio of the manuscript makes explicit Martini’s authorship. Beyond the content of the Opera (see p.XXXI), the most important thing here is that virtually all scholars placed chronologically such writing between 1484 and 1489 (see p.XLVI). If one does not want to think that Francesco di Giorgio - in addition to his artistic accomplishments – had worked at the same time to the drafting of three burdensome writings (the translation of De architectura, the Opera di architectura and the Treaty II), this time allocation makes it necessary to move forward chronologically the completion of the Treaty II, which would have occurred in the last years of the Sienese artist's life (Martini died in 1501). 

The real importance of the Hungarian Zichy Codex (from the name of its last owners, the Zichy Counts, before entering the Szabó Ervin Könyvtár Library in Budapest in 1904, where it is retained with mark ms. 09.2690) has been only recently understood. The codex is particularly[editor’s note: by Martini] in close reference to the Vitruvian Treaty as edited by Fra' Giocondo in 1511 .... The translation violates therefore the narrative prepared by Francesco di Giorgio, who ... in some cases had deliberately skipped some parts of the treaty, either cutting or synthesizing them, and then rearranged them in far removed morpho-syntactic structures from those of the Latin text of departure" (pp. CVIII - CIX). And in this connection it is to be remembered that the translation of De architectura is not complete: in particular, of Book I a vulgarization of only brief excerpts is offered; the area covered by the translation is a bit larger for the second book; the translation is then almost integral with respect to books ranging from III to VII; the text proposed by Francesco di Giorgio is at times a free translation against the original Latin, but in essence it does not omit any of the topics discussed by Vitruvius. Biffi’s explanation is as follows: "probably first thought as a ‘container’ for the main Vitruvian passages, which had been laboriously translated in various previous attempts [editor’s note: Zichy codex and Treaty I], the endeavour became progressively more attentive and respectful of the original, becoming a full translation, although with different methods depending on the Vitruvian books addressed "(p. CV). Returning to Scaglia’s work, Biffi does not neglect to point out (actually, a bit ungenerously) errors of interpretation of the text, inaccuracies, and at times omissions or additions of words.

[3] The linguistic and lexical aspects addressed by Biffi merit a separate discussion: there is no doubt that this is one of the greatest strengths of this edition. The curator’s starting point is a firm one: the Magliabechiano Vitruvius is not "just " a work on architecture, but it is also a piece of literature. The linguistics approach is fundamental: we are facing the first attempt to translate into vernacular a Latin text which was in itself full of technicalities and sometimes very obscure as the De architectura. This attempt, moreover, is witnessed in a series of stages that had taken at least a decade chronologically, ranging from the Zichy code (of which Massimo Mussini presented an unedited transcript immediately after the release of this volume in Francesco di Giorgio e Vitruvio. Le traduzioni del «De Architectura» nei codici Zichy, Spencer 129 e Magliabechiano II.I.141 (Francesco di Giorgio and Vitruvius. The translations of "De Architectura" in the Zichy, Spencer 129 and Magliabechiano II.I.141 Codices), Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2003) to the Treaty I and the Magliabechiana translation (then included in the Treaty II). Each of these stages marks a clear progress in the quality of the translation. We have the chance to witness the formation of a technical vocabulary of architecture, still absent in Italy before Francesco di Giorgio. Under this point of view, the Indice lemmatizzato dei termini della traduzione - Lemmatised index of the terms for the translation (pp. 519-639) is of particular importance. It displays the basic material for a possible comparison with the other versions of the translation and in any case for the analysis of Martini’s lexical terminology. 

[4] As a result of studies conducted on the work, Biffi believes it can reach three important conclusions (pp. LXI - LXVI): 

• The Magliabechiano Vitruvius is not the result of a dictation by a third person, as Maltese had stated in his edition of the Treaties of 1967 (see relative notes), and as it was somehow also not excluded from Vagnetti in Issue no. 8 (Sept. 1978) of the Studi e documenti di Architettura (p. 27). So, it is not the work of a humanist friend of Martini, but the fruit of his own genius. This is proved by the very strong ties with the Zichy codex and Treaty I; 

• "The Magliabechiana translation looks like a version performed by Francesco di Giorgio for personal use, in order to have the Latin text easily at disposal and to be able to use it without the fatigue of the tongue, in his original works... The focus of Francesco di Giorgio is focused on what pertains to strictly architectural and engineering issues. This is the reason why he almost always skip any philosophical digressions ... Of some chapters ... he maintains above all the first part only, almost to summarize briefly the subjects included in the parts not fully translated and thus to have a complete view of the substance of De architectura" (p. LXIV ); 

• It is not possible today to identify the Latin manuscript against which Francesco di Giorgio conducted the Magliabechiana translation. Indeed, it is probably wrong to discuss the issue from this angle. Given that the Sienese artist began his translation exercises in the Zichy code, the correct critical approach is to ask what was the manuscript used on that first occasion, and then to investigate whether, in the later stages , Martini had the opportunity to consult other codices and which ones in particular.