Vitruvius, On Architecture. Edited by Pierre Gros. Einaudi, 1997

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Vitruvius
De Architectura [On Architecture]

Edited by Pierre Gros
Translation and Commentary by Antonio Corso and Elisa Romano
Essays by Maria Losito

Turin, Einaudi, 1997

Rome, The Coliseum

[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] According to an almost unanimous opinion, the one edited by Pierre Gros, published by Einaudi in 1977, is the best Italian translation of De Architectura of Vitruvius.

[2] Text of the strip:

"This edition of the De Architectura of Vitruvius, the first complete and scientifically cured after that of Marini (1830) [Editor's note: according to Mr Vagnetti and his Regesto cronologico (Chronological summary) the edition of Marini is dated 1836] and the important but incomplete edition by Ferri (1960), is part of the complex process, started two decades ago at the international level, to revaluate and systematically review a text whose unique historical and cultural importance could hardly be confined.

Dedicated to Augustus, written between 30 and 20 BC and divided into ten books, De Architectura, the only work of a large classical tradition of technical texts to have come down to us, is both a workshop text, a referential work to ideal theory, an undisputed canon of architectural classicism, which blends in his treatment elements derived from various disciplines such as arithmetic, geometry, design, music, astronomy, optics, medicine, law, and philosophy.

The fortune of the Vitruvian Treaty was immense: appreciated by Pliny the Elder, used by the architects of the late antiquity and also in the age of Charlemagne, he reached its apogee during the Renaissance, inspiring Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Filarete, Raphael [note of the editor: who commissioned a personal translation to Fabio Calvo], and Palladio.

This edition of De Architectura, entrusted in the general conception to Pierre Gros, the main European specialist on the subject and the co-curator of the French critical edition, aims at providing the reader with a scientifically reliable text of the Latin treatise. It includes a general introduction and a series of thematic essays, and provides an introduction to each of the ten books and a rich comment set in both a philological archaeological, technical, historical, and architectural sense. Enhancing all the elements available to the scholars, the critical apparatus - accompanied by a large iconography always strictly linked to the text and based on the most updated graphical documents in the various fields of architecture, gnonomics, astronomy and engineering - allows to appreciate concretely a work whose reading is often made difficult by the uniqueness and vastness of the subject as well as the irremediable loss of the original illustrative corpus.

The illustrations outside text provide readers with different figurative cycles of high quality (for example, the French [note of the editor: sic] one by Perrault of 1684), or some eighteenth-century reproductions of monuments evoked by Vitruvius, in order to offer the reader a concrete representation of the scientific evolution of many issues and the great traditions regarding the design in architecture."

[3] At the end of the second volume, two essays by Maria Losito:

1. La ricostruzione della voluta del capitello ionico vitruviano nel Rinascimento italiano (The reconstruction of the volute of the Ionic Vitruvian capital in the Italian Renaissance) (1450-1570)

2. L’analemma vitruviano e il IX libro del De Architectura di Daniele Barbaro (The Vitruvian analemma and the ninth book of the De Architectura by Daniele Barbaro) (1556-67).

[4] The twelve illustrations between pages 482 and 493 are from the second edition of "Les dix livres d'Architecture de Vitruve" (The ten books of Vitruve’s architecture) by C. Perrault, Paris, 1684. The sixteen illustrations between pages 1250 and 1251 are from "The Antiquities of Athens" by Stuart and Revett (vol. I, London, 1762, chap. III).

[5] We are displaying below the text of two reviews on this work, published in the dailies Corriere della Sera (signed by Cesare De Seta) and La Repubblica (signed by Vittorio Gregotti) respectively. The original article of De Seta (unfortunately no indication of the date of publication) is retained within the volumes. The article of Gregotti (dated December 17, 1997) is taken from the Cd-Rom Gli anni de La Repubblica 1997 (The years of La Repubblica 1997).

Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian man

CORRIERE DELLA SERA – The Treatu of Classical Harmony Comes Back

Vitruvius Architect of the Gods. An Ideal City for Augustus

by Cesare De Seta

No text in the history of Western architecture has exerted such an influence and experienced such a good fortune as the De architectura of Vitruvius: from the Augustan age until the nineteenth century, Vitruvius was a paradigm, an invaluable source of reference, the handbook for any building making, a technical repertoire [note of the editor: see for all Pier Nicola Pagliara, Vitruvio da testo a canone (Vitruvius from text to canon)]. The architect drafted it in his late life, in order to fulfil a duty that seemed fitting the end of his active professional life as an architect-engineer, and builder of hydraulic and war machinae (machines). The treaty is dedicated to Augustus, the emperor who took advantage of Vitruvius in different circumstances as it can well be deduced from the ten books that make up the treatise. We know little or nothing of the life and of the professional activity of Vitruvius, who was already active in the Republican era under the service of Julius Caesar. Under Augustus, he was definitely engaged in the review and management of the war machines that were part of the Roman legions; later on - thanks to the support of the emperor's sister – he had much more significant roles. Augustus and Agrippa had transformed the capital of the empire - from that time on caput mundi, the capital of the word - in a huge construction place and Vitruvius had been able to conquer a space in it, so much that he could state in the introduction to the text that thanks to this activity he did not fear anymore poverty in the old age. The only certain work which he built was the basilica of Fano (the information is taken from the introduction to the fifth book).

The De architectura must be considered a great synthesis of all what the architectural culture and building technology in the Greek and Roman civilizations had produced; however, he also stands well on a number of theoretical principles that are the very foundations of Western architecture. Indeed, the most creative contribution of the Vitruvian treatise is to have conferred a theoretical status to a practice that had not yet a firm taxonomy of reference: architecture, for Vitruvius, is indeed a science, not a technique. To form an architect is therefore not only technical knowledge to be necessary, but also a ratio – a method– which requires knowledge of design, optics, acoustics, music, medicine and astronomy.The architect designed by Vitruvius is an intellectual who must know how to forge the space for the humans in the light of a knowledge which is based on the triad of firmitas, utilitas and venustas [note of the translator: strength, utility and beauty]: parameter and measure of all architecture is the human body, which is the reference scale of each built space. In this foundational frame consisting of structure, functionality and beauty, architecture must meet other requirements: the ordinatio [note of the translator: organisation] ensures rhythm and proportion of the parts and the ensemble; the dispositio [note of the translator: arrangement] ensures that every architectural element is properly prepared; the eurythmia and symmetria [note of the translator: eurythmia and symmetry] ensure that the architectural elements are rhythmic in height, length and width and that their compliance and their balance to the ensemble are ensured; decor and distributio [note of the translator: beauty and distribution] constitute the last precepts: the meaning of the first is inherent in the choice of canonical orders - doric, ionic and corinthian - which are for the first time clearly associated with the nomenclature of the gods in Olympus.

Certainly much more controversial is the interpretation of the concept of distribution, that does not only have a so to speak functional character, but has a value that - for explicit statement of the author - refers to what the Greeks call oikonomia [note of the translator: economy]. So the concept of distributio consists of the affirmation of functional reason, but there is also what we would call attention to the analysis of costs and benefits. Symmetry is not only meant to be the most recent bilateral geometry, but the relationship among the parts and of each part with everything: the classic case is the golden section with which the Greek temples were built. There is no doubt that each of the terms mentioned - and many others - are key leading terms of difficult use for each interpreter and each translator: beginning with Caesar Cesariano who first translated in full the Treaty in 1521 and of which Alessandro Rovetta offered us an updated critical edition (edited by Vita e Pensiero publishers [note of the editor: De Seta refers here to the volume Cesare Cesariano e il classicismo di primo Cinquecento (Cesare Cesariano and the classicism of the early sixteenth century), in which appears the only critical edition of Book I of the translation of Cesariano. 

Certainly, A. Corso and E. Romano, who drafted a new Italian translation of Vitruvius, with a rich commentary to the text have passed the exam with full honours. The new edition, edited by Pierre Gros, recently released by Einaudi Publishers in the series of the Millenni, is definitely a major contribution to the studies and appeals all those who believe that classics are not due to fill empty display cases, but are alive bodies that are renewed over time and take on new meaning with the passage of time. In fact, the De architectura - the reading of which was operating in the Middle Ages - was rediscovered as a whole in the Renaissance: from Alberti to Serlio, from Palladio to Perrault, to the Enlightenment tradition and beyond, Vitruvius was seen as the summary of classical culture. Their treatisies are all grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Vitruvius. Each of them read it in its own way and thought of being able to interpret and amend it at his will, operating distortions of the text which we were often mot minor. This version is the daughter of philology and allows a new reading of the text, especially in those passages that particularly Cesariano had helped to confuse.

Vitruvius, De Architectura, edition by Daniele Barbaro, 1557

LA REPUBBLICA 

The return of a classic - All authors of great treatises depend on him. The integral republication of his works is an editorial event

Our Father Architect Vitruvius

by Vittorio Gregotti

As it is known, the treatise De Architectura of Vitruvius, written between 20 and 30 BC, is the only dissertation of both theory and practice that has come to us from Greek-Roman antiquity.

Despite having been transmitted without illustrations (and the many illustrated editions that have materialised over the centuries are the several historical interpretations of the text), the Treatise of Vitruvius was founder and point of reference for almost all treatises of European architecture for more than a millennium: from Alberti to Philibert de l'Orme, from Serlio to Palladio, from Francesco di Giorgio to Milizia. The monumental edition (1500 pages, probably the first integral one) that the publisher Einaudi released is curated by Pierre Gros, a specialist in Roman Archaeology who teaches at the University of Aix-en-Provence and that, in the introduction, provides with philological care an exciting picture of the social group to which the author belonged, of the public (mainly state officials) to which he addresses the content of the treaty, of the cultural environment in which Vitruvius moved, of his sources of inspiration (especially Hellenistic) and interpretation of the meaning of some of the terms he used, first of all the simmetria (symmetry) (however Vitruvius uses it as the term commodulatio, i.e. proportion, in Latin) and finally of the literary language used by the author.

There are, I believe, above all two main questions that the publication of the Vitruvian text imposes to the architectural culture of our times. Why the tradition of the architectural treatise has been interrupted and what may replace it today, as thinking capable of providing a summary of the theoretical fundamentals and the conditions of artistic practice of architecture? Of course, the Treatise is not the only way in which project-driven thinking has been handed down to us. There is the ‘ought’ tradition from utopian thinking, the apodictic form of "manifesto" of vanguards and finally the tradition of advice, exhortations, suggestions provided in many different ways (but, in my opinion, of great interest) consisting, for example, of written reports to solve specific issues, reports sometimes taking on a general interpretative value (the debate around the lantern of the Duomo di Milano [note of the editor: see the writings of Leonardo, Bramante and Francesco di Giorgio] that took place in the late fourteenth century, for example) or to give constructive and aesthetic suggestions, as in the case of the famous sheets of Villard de Honnecourt, or "opinions" like that by Fra Giocondo on the church of St. Peter, or general thoughts on the architecture according to, for example, the poetic style of the contribution of Auguste Perret [Note of the translator: Contribution à une théorie de l'architecture.] However, there is a large set of reasons that make it very difficult in our years to develop a discourse on architecture which possesses the features of synthesis, orientation, and reflection on the foundations and their effect on the practice that are characteristic of the tradition of the Treatise.

First of all, just the progress of criticism and history of architecture as independent disciplines. The Treatise is, by its nature, a work of reflection conducted by whom, as an architect, is leading the project and its construction. Therefore, he must compare the special relationship that he proposes, through his work, between theory and experience with those critics who develop professionally theories and interpretations. Secondly, the area of ​​architecture has become very complex and includes activities ranging from planning to the design of industrial products, from environmental ecology to graphics, from the problems of traffic and transportation to urban design. And this has also given rise to real professional specializations offering also very different optics on architecture. Even the teaching of architecture has often become a separate profession, as well as architectural magazines today are made by journalists and not by architects and the influence of the media weighs stronger and stronger (and at times in an inaccurate way) on opinions about architecture. It is true that even the architects of antiquity and the Renaissance were in turn at the same time hydraulic, sculptors, painters, mechanics, surveyors, etc. etc., but of course the fields of specialized knowledge were more knowable, not only in technical terms but also in the physic-mathematical and geometric fundamentals, while the specialist collaborations that correspond to today's complex architectural operations offer the final, operational part to the discussion among the different disciplines, and certainly not their foundations. Even the usefulness and the validity of the "manual" (the son of the Encyclopédie, namely reflecting the will to provide to the public the rational foundations of professions), which in the nineteenth century has often replaced the practice of the treatise, is now in jeopardy either by the loss of stability of building types, or by the huge amount of products and semi-finished products made available by the market (and with great rapidity continually replaced by it), and finally by the need to propose systems connected to the planning of the building as an economic good.

Therefore, around architecture are established sets of cultures poorly communicating with each other. Curiously, this need ends up coinciding with the effort to confine the function of the architect in the production of the building cycle to purely aesthetic and decorative tasks (or, as we say today, "image tasks"), subtracting him to his technical universe and then making even more difficult the task of organising a unitary discourse on architecture. In this regard, the irruption of photography and video in communication has played an important role in the discourse of how making architecture. This method is strongly supported, in the tradition of the Treaty, by the demonstrative illustration of the projects, in general through autographs. The four motivations that underlie all talks about making architecture (as we would now define the content of the Treatise) - namely (i) the verification of the consistency between theory and practice, (ii) the transmission of experience, (iii) the battle of ideas and points of view on the discipline and (iv) the clarification of the conditions of production of architecture - make it increasingly difficult to find a single frame for expression. The four points frequently need to rely on fragmentary and often abusive transpositions from the thought of the theorists from other more scientifically organized disciplines, so that the writings with theoretical architectural aspirations very often appear as by-products of scientific or philosophical reflections, with its related abusive transposition of language. Although this is often the case in history (remember the famous book by Erwin Panowsky on the relations between the Gothic architecture and the thought of the Scholastic), it has acquired in recent years a mechanical nature and an accelerated mutability, justifying many suspicions of weaknesses in respect of the specific thought that supports our business and its ability to offer a critical distance to the world. But those who today want to design a treatise would be faced with an even more complex issue, i.e. to decide whether the search for some definition of a universal language of architecture, as it has been for centuries the classical language of architecture or as has become, against all its premise, the style of modernity, is still an important foundation or if in our time it has lost its usefulness. The oscillation between the truth of the specific case, the very foundations of the essence of architecture and its dissolution in the media coverage of global visual communication build up the real contradictions that make today difficult every draft treaty. Difficult but perhaps because of this, particularly interesting.