Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSIONCosimo Bartoli
(1503-1572)
Proceedings
of the International Conference
Mantua,
November 18 to 19 and Florence, November 20, 2009
Edited by Francesco Paolo Fiore and Daniela Lamberini
Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2011
N.B.: About Cosimo Bartoli see in this blog also: Giovanni Mazzaferro, Rare Books and a Great Discovery: a Specimen of Vitruvius' De Architectura Annotated by Cosimo Bartoli
About Daniela Lamberini see also: Daniela Lamberini, Giovan Battista Belluzzi, called the Sanmarino, as military architect and treatise author of the 16th century
The figure
of Cosimo Bartoli (best known for translating Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria into vernacular Italian
and for having cooperated to the publication of both editions of Vasari's Lives) is so multifaceted that, in all fairness, the risk of losing track is
high. This volume, which contains the proceedings of an international
conference held in Mantua and Florence in 2009, attempts to take stock of the
state of affairs.
The
reference book on Cosimo is undoubtedly a monograph written by Judith Bryce in
1983 [1]. And indeed Judith Bryce, 25 years later, was tasked to hold the
inaugural speech which opened the conference and the volume. Her text, first of
all, notes that the literary activity of Cosimo was actually of a threefold
nature. On the one hand Bartoli was the author of several works, such as a
biography of Frederick Barbarossa, the Del
modo di misurare le distantie (On the way to measure distances) (1564) [2],
the Ragionamenti accademici sopra alcuni
luoghi difficili di Dante, con alcune inventioni e siginificati (Academic reasoning
over some difficult passages of Dante, with some inventions and meanings)
(1567), and the Discorsi historici universali (Universal Historical
Discourses), written probably in the early fifties, but published in Venice in
1569. Cosimo lived in Venice as an agent of the Medici between 1562 and 1572,
and it is precisely there that he published the majority of his works. Daniela
Lamberini, who edited a special essay on the issue, believes that the
manuscript codex called Raccolta di varie
macchine e disegni di vasi antichi (Collection of various machines and
drawings of ancient vases) was Bartoli’s work (although the manuscript is anonymous)
and that Cosimo had planned its publication.
Next to his
own works, there is also the whole (key) series of translations. And here,
following the chronology, we must begin with the translation he made in her youth of Albrecht Dürer’s Institutiones geometricae (Geometric institutions). The translation was still unknown
when Bryce wrote her monograph in 1983, as it was brought to the attention of the
scholars later on by Giovanni Maria Fara [3]. However, the lion's share was played
by the vernacular translation of Leon Battista Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria (a first edition was published in Florence in
1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino; a second was released in Venice in 1565 in Francesco
de Franceschi’s printing house). Nor can we overlook that, also in Venice and
again thanks to de Franceschi, the fifteen Opuscoli
morali (Moral brochures) by Leon Battista Alberti were published in 1568.
Eleven ones were translated by Bartoli from Latin into vernacular; the original
of the remaining four ones were already in vernacular. Between Bartoli’s eleven
translations we can also track down the De Pictura (On Painting) and De statua (On Statue), so that it is legitimate to say that Bartoli translated all art treatises
by Alberti [4].
 |
| Frontispiece of the translation into italian of Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria Florence, 1550 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Taking moreover
into consideration the writings where, in various forms, Bartoli assumed the
role of a modern editor, one should certainly remember Vasari's Lives (the Torrentiniana edition in 1550
and the Giuntina edition in 1568). Carlo Lenzoni’s In difesa della lingua italiana, e di Dante, (In defence of the
Italian language, and of Dante) should also be added. Lenzoni had failed to
complete his work, and, on his deathbed (1551), had left the task to
Pierfrancesco Giambullari. In turn, also Giambullari had passed away before the
script was printed, so that the bulk of the publication was done by Cosimo. Finally,
it is not to be overlooked that Francesco Paolo Fiore believes that the edition of the Treatise on Architecture by Sebastiano Serlio published in Venice in 1566, and amended both in terms of the format as
well as in regard of the text, was also a work by Cosimo Bartoli.
All this
frenetic editorial activity, and indeed - more generally - the whole life of
Cosimo, had a political connotation. Alessandro Nova recalls it clearly in the
closing pages of the book: "To fully understand the figure of Bartoli, he
must be included in the context of the fights to establish the Florentine
Academy and to promote the vernacular language as a means of scientific
research, a project that was lucidly pursued, assisted and partly imposed by the
great political mind of Cosimo I. [...] Bartoli’s tireless work as a translator
[...] was not only a manifestation of great culture and dissemination of
knowledge, but also part of a wider political design. [...] The will to encode
a technical and architectural vocabulary, through the hard work of translating
a capital work like Leon Battista Alberti’s De
re aedificatoria - published in 1550, but performed, apparently, between
1543-44 and 1546-47 – was part of the culture policy of the Duke of Florence,
aware of the power it was granted and guaranteed to him by the control over the
transmission of knowledge. In this wider context, one of Bartoli’s great merits
was to promote, through the vernacular dissemination of the works of Leon
Battista Alberti, the inclusion of architecture in the history of the questione della lingua [note of the
translator: the dispute on the choice of the language to be used a common means
of communication in Italy]" (pp. 416-417 ).
Bartoli was
therefore a champion of Florentinism; and especially a champion of loyalty to
the policy of the Duchy (Grand Duchy from 1569). So much that he spent, for
example, ten years in Venice in what he described as "exile", with
the task of daily reporting what happened in the Republic, including through espionage
duties (the correspondence with the Medici testifies his attempts to sketch the
Venetian boats under construction or at anchor in Venice’s Arsenal). Cosimo will
return from the golden exile in the Lagoon only on the intercession of Vasari with
the Grand Duke, but will die just a few weeks later.
 |
| Translation of Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria , Venice, 1565 Souce: http://www.gonnelli.it/it/asta-0013/alberti-leon-battista-larchitettura----trado.asp |
The essays in the volume
Hereafter
are listed the essays in the book. We are offering a brief
description of some of them.
Judith Bryce, Prolusion
Parte prima: Bartoli Translator and the Treatises
Nicola Aricò, The De re aedificatoria according Cosimo Bartoli
 |
| Translation of Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria, Venice, 1565 Source: http://www.gonnelli.it/it/asta-0013/alberti-leon-battista-larchitettura----trado.asp |
The author
firmly anchors the translation of De Re
Aedificatoria within the experience of the Florentine Academy, which was created
in 1541 and was a direct emanation of the Academy of the Humidi [note of the translator: literally, the wet ones] (1540), of
which Bartoli was part. In fact, the Academy was controlled by Duke Cosimo I,
who also decided its concrete programs. What stood out, specifically, was the
commitment to translate texts of a scientific and architecture nature into the Florentine
language, to allow technicians to access them without knowing Latin. The
translation of architectural texts had a practical implication through the
intense activities of construction (often aimed at the modernization and
creation of new fortifications [5]) which were promoted by the Duke in his
possessions. Cosimo’s support to the Medici policy is evident in the title he
gave to his work: "The Architecture of Leonbatista Alberti translated into
Florentine language by Cosimo Bartoli ...".
Indeed, to
be precise, that support is evident even more from the choice of the work to be
translated. He did not translate the Latin Vitruvius - who yet was the subject
of studies that had led to the Latin princeps
(first publication) at the end of '400 and the first Italian edition (by
Cesariano) in 1521 - but the truly Florentine Leon Battista Alberti, who, in
the previous century, had been a supporter of vernacular too, to the point that
he had published a vernacular Grammatichetta
(literally: small grammar).
It would be
incorrect, however, to speak of a mere translation. This is true not only in a philological
sense (in fact, no translation may ever be the fully correct transposition of
the original) but also because here it is evident that the Italian translation
of the work was also accompanied by an adaptation of the same, which aimed at
updating it and making it "competitive" in the market of the architecture
treatises. One cannot forget, for example, that Serlio published the first two
books of his treatise on architecture between 1537 and 1540, "inventing"
the illustrations accompanying the text (the summary table of the orders is his
own invention). For these reasons, Bartoli’s work unfolds in three directions:
a) to translate the De Re Aedificatoria
from Alberti’s Latin in the language of the Florentine workshops, often having
to set forth a new lexicon; b) to revise Alberti’s substantial
"atheism" (despite the fact that he was a priest) according to the
directives of the Counterreformation; c) to create an iconography apparatus
which accentuates the didactic spirit of the work. It should be remembered, moreover,
that Bartoli published two editions of Alberti's treatise, one in Florence, in folio,
in 1550 (with a circulation of 1,500 copies, which was quickly sold out) and a
second in quarto, i.e. in a smaller and cheaper size, in Venice in 1565. On the
latter occasion, it was also necessary to review and redistribute the
iconographic apparatus, precisely because of the different size on which he had
to work.
Francesco Paolo Fiore, The edition of Sebastiano Serlio's Treatise, reviewed by Cosimo Bartoli
Fiore
refers in particular to the edition of Serlio’s Treatise published by Francesco de Franceschi in Venice in 1566 [6] It is, to be correct, the same operation
performed by the printer in the previous year for Bartoli’s translation of De Re Aedificatoria. The format of Serlio’s
Treatise - which includes all books published up to that point, i.e. from I to
V and the Extraordinario Libro (Extraordinary
Book) - is reduced from the in folio format
to the smaller in quarto one, with the adaptation
and reproduction of images, as well as with targeted interventions to correct the
grammar of text. But where the action appears more noticeable (if only because it
is 'dissonant' with the rest of the work) is the introduction of a lexical
terminology that is the language of the Florentine workshops and the subsequent
abandonment of all latinisms which had been previously entered in the text by
Serlio. It was noted that the language used in the new edition of Serlio’s
Treaty is that of Bartoli’s translation of De
Re Aedificatoria. Yet not everyone has considered this a sufficient
argument to establish that Bartoli was the editor of that version. Fiore is however
convinced of it, even if he does not exclude that Bartoli may have had
collaborators during his stay in Venice. Nevertheless, he believes that the intervention
of the Florentine scholar can be safely assumed, because the lexical and
grammatical corrections are "so careful and calibrated... that such a
demanding job must have been necessarily delivered by a both expert and reliable
hand, so that we believe to be that of Cosimo Bartoli" (pp. 48-49).
Finally, I should be remembered that in the following next year (i.e. in 1567),
Francesco de Franceschi completed his own special publishing operation, delivering
this time Vitruvius’ translation operated by Daniele Barbaro (whose first
edition had been released in 1556) in
quarto. Although this time the text by Barbaro was not subjected to the
lexical processing aimed at using the language of the Florentine workshops, it
must be said that de Franceschi credited himself as the publisher of the paperback
version of architectural treaties: Bartoli’s Alberti, Serlio and finally Barbaro’s
Vitruvius.
Sabine Frommel, Alessandro Farnese’s Commentaries of Various Rules and Designs of
Civil and Military Architecture (Ms. 32.B.14, Cors. 663) and the fortune of
De Re Aedificatoria translated by Bartoli
 |
| Otto van Veen, Portrait of Alessandro Farnese, 1592 Source: Wikimedia Commons |
To be
examined is the manuscript titled Commentarii
di Varie Regole e Dissegni di Architettura Civile e Militare con altre
Istruzioni e Precette (Commentaries of Various Rules and Designs of Civil
and Military Architecture, with other Instructions and Precepts), preserved at
the Corsiniana Library in Rome with signature Ms. 32.B.14 (Cors. 663). The
manuscript, of small size, is attributed by the authoress to Alexander III
Farnese. The authoress also presents her notes pointing out that the critical
edition of the treatise was about to be printed (to be remembered, the volume
that we are reviewing was released in 2011). Unfortunately, at the end of 2015
that critical edition was not published yet. On the website of the researcher
(whose fame is international) appears a pdf presentation of the project
(largely indebted to what is written in this paper of her) in which some parts
of the project would seem to still have not been allocated and, therefore,
would lead to think of a not so imminent publication. All this to say that the
fact that the author of the Commentaries
is Alessandro Farnese seems to be corroborated by a bit unsteady evidence. Ms Frommel
combines two known facts: on the one hand Farnese’s knowledge of architecture,
in particular in the field of military architecture. This is undoubted and well
witnessed by sources; equally, there is no doubt that Alessandro had masters such
as the military architects Francesco Paciotto and Francesco De Marchi, real
authorities on the topic. On the other hand, the nature of the manuscript
suggests that it was not the preliminary publication of a treaty (and thus rules
out the possibility of the work of a professional architect), but rather a miscellany
on architecture, whose author extrapolates the aspects most affecting him from
various treaties; and evidently performs this operation to the extent that it
becomes aware of and reads them. The authoress believes that the Commentaries were therefore the result
of thirty years of cumulating work, which would testify the continued interest
of the author for architectural disciplines. And she is also of the view that
this author can only be a prince-architect, with a unique culture in the field
of military architecture, but also a civil and religious background. Hence her
attribution to Farnese.
Three-quarters
of the work are dedicated to military architecture. The rest covers topics of
civil and religious architecture. As to civil architecture - and this is why
this essay appears in this volume - it is clear that four sources were used by
the pseudo-Farnese. In chronological order, they are Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria in the folio translation
by Bartoli 1550, Pietro Cataneo’s I
quattro libri di architettura (Four Books of Architecture) (1554), Barbaro’s
translation of Vitruvius (1556) and Palladio’s Treaty of architecture (1570). It
is evident that, in his personal elaboration of the themes proposed by Alberti
and translated by Bartoli (reorganization that did not follow the order
proposed in the De Re Aedificatoria)
Farnese - or whoever he was - neglected the issues related to antiquity, rather
looking for models linked to contemporary architecture and in particular the
study of civil buildings for the use of the prince.
Part Two: The Technical-Scientific and Musical Culture
Marco Biffi, Cosimo Bartoli's technical vocabulary
 |
| Bartoli's edition of Alberti's Opuscoli morali published in Venice in 1568 |
The author
questions the effective role of Cosimo Bartoli inside the Florentine Academy:
whether he simply shared the translation
program in vernacular of the scientific literature, advocated by Cosimo, or whether,
and to what extent, Bartoli was able to direct the activities of the Academy. On
the results obtained by Bartoli as a translator of scientific texts there is no
doubt: besides De Re Aedificatoria, the
Florentine scholar translated also eleven of the fifteen Opuscoli morali (Moral Brochures) by Alberti – including in
particular De Pictura (On Painting) and
De statua (On Statue) – as well as
works of Boethius and Orontius Finaeus. But the most interesting aspect is
undoubtedly made up of the translation he made in his young age of Albrecht
Dürer’s Institutiones geometricae (Geometrical
Instructions). That endeavour took place before the birth of the Academy of Humidi (1540) and its
transformation into Florentine Academy, implying that Bartoli joined the
program of the Medicis not simply by coincidence, but because this was in line
with his earlier developed inclinations; and he suggests that "the linguistic
setting of Bartoli materialized already before the birth of the Florentine
Academy" (p. 96). Biffi obviously mentions Giovanni Nencioni, who was the
author of pioneering studies on the language of humanistic and Renaissance
architecture. Just Nencioni demonstrated how, in practice, Bartoli’s lexicon precisely
adheres to that of the Florentine workshops. "A strict adherence [...]
that is emerging as the greatest loyalty of the translator to the translated
author; or perhaps [...] as the continuity of the legacy of a master: as
Alberti had rewritten the Vitruvian Treaty using a homogeneous language,
eliminating the frequent grecisms of the ancient text to build a Latin language
of architecture, so Bartoli played the same for Florentine"(p. 100). The
operation by Bartoli was crowned by temporary success (as demonstrated by the
rapid depletion of the copies of the first edition of 1550); in an absolute
sense, it was nevertheless destined to a defeat. At the end of the century the
"question of the architectural language" saw an eclectic vocabulary
imposing itself, which drew on latinisms by Vitruvius and combined them with
entries of a technique derivation not only from Florence, but also from Siena.
And yet it was an operation performed in a uniform manner: Bartoli used, in
substance, the same kind of vocabulary in all his writings in which he speaks
of architecture; and this language was not built in a laboratory, but in fact
drew abundantly from Florentine workshops so that the words he used, while
becoming peripheral in the national language, continued to be witnessed for
centuries in the local area.
Giovanni Maria Fara,
 |
| La prima edizione dell'opera (2008), a cura di Giovanni Maria Fara |
Giovanni
Maria Fara owns the merit of publishing for the first time the translation of Albrecht Dürer’s Institutiones geometricae (Geometric institutions) by Bartoli. We are referring to the review we published in this
blog [7], as well as to the one relating to Albrecht
Dürer in the ancient Italian sources: 1508-1686 [8], by the same author,
because it is in the two books mentioned (as well as in the present
contribution) that he describes a crucial juncture in the 40s in 1500: the
abandonment of Albrecht Dürer as a reference figure of the Florentine artistic
world and the contemporary take-off of the "myth" of Michelangelo.
Michael Fend, Cosimo Bartoli and the language of musical experience in sixteenth-century Italy
End of Part One
Go to Part Two
NOTES
[1] Judith Bryce, Cosimo
Bartoli (1503-1572). The Career of a Florentine polymath, Geneva, Droz, 1983.
[2] A
discussion of the work, with the presentation of excerpts that relate to the planimetry
only, is provided within Daniela Stroffolino, La città misurata. Tecniche
e strumenti di rilevamento nei trattati a stampa del Cinquecento (The measured
city. Techniques and detection
tools in printed treatises of the sixteenth century), Rome, Salerno Publishers,
1999, present in the Mazzaferro library.
[3] See in this blog the review to Albrecht Dürer - Cosimo Bartoli, Institutiones geometricae – Igeometrici elementi di Alberto Duro – (Cosimo
Bartoli, Geometrical institutions - The geometric elements of Alberto Duro),
by Giovanni Maria Fara, Turin, Nino Aragno Publishers, 2008.
[4] See Lucia Bertolini, Cosimo
Bartoli e gli Opuscoli morali
dell’Alberti (Cosimo Bartoli and the Moral Brochures
by Alberti) in Nel cantiere degli
umanisti. Per Mariangela Regoliosi (In the construction site of the
humanists. Writings in praise of Mariangela Regoliosi), edited by L. Bertolini,
D. Coppini, C. Marsico. Florence, Polistampa Publishers, 2014.
[5] See in
this blog the review to Daniela Lamberini, Il
Sanmarino. Giovan Battista Belluzzi architetto militare e trattatista del Cinquecento (The Sanmarino. Giovan Battista Belluzzi military
architect and author of treatises of the sixteenth century), Florence, Leo S.
Olschki Publishers, 2007.
[6] See in
this blog Manuela Morresi and Andrea Guerra, Les rééditions vénitiennes des livres de Serlio (The Venetian
reprints of Serlio’s Books) in the second part of the review of Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie (Serlio in Lyons. Architecture and Printing). Vol. I, by Sylvie Deswarte Rosa. Also Morresi and Guerra believe
that the Venetian edition of 1566 was most likely prepared by Bartoli.
[7] See in this blog Albrecht Dürer, Institutiones geometricae - Cosimo Bartoli, I geometrici elementi di Alberto Durero (Geometric Institutiones - Cosimo Bartoli, The geometric
elements of Alberto Duro), Nino Aragno Publishers, 2008
[8] Giovanni Maria Fara. Albrecht Dürer nelle fonti italiane antiche: 1508-1686. (Albrecht Dürer in the ancient Italian sources:
1508-1686.) Leo S. Olschki Publishers, 2014
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento