Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Bernardino Baldi
Descrittione del Palazzo ducale d’Urbino
[Description of the Ducal Palace of Urbino]
Edited by Anna Siekiera
Alessandria, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino - The Torricini Facade Source: Massimo Macconi via Wikimedia Commons |
The Descrittione del Palazzo ducale d’Urbino
(Description of the Ducal
Palace of Urbino) by Bernardino Baldi (1553-1617) was first published in 1590, within a
collection titled Versi e Prose di
Monsignor Bernardino Baldi da Urbino, Abbate di Guastalla (Verses and Prose by
Monsignor Bernardino Baldi from Urbino, Abbot from Guastalla), Venice,
Francesco de' Franceschi publisher, pp. 503-573. Quoted on several
occasions in essays devoted precisely to Urbino’s Ducal Palace, the current
seat of the National Gallery of the Marche, in fact the Description did not enjoy a particular fortune, so much so that the
last edition, before this date, even dated back to the end of the nineteenth
century. As clarified from the dedication, the work was written in 1587, while
Baldi was in Rome, and was dedicated to the Cardinal of Aragon. The recipient's
identity is not entirely sure. Most probably, the Cardinal of Aragon was Innico
d'Avalos, son of the most famous Alfonso III d'Avalos, marquis of Vasto, and commissary abbot of Procida. D'Avalos’ particular interest for the Ducal Palace
was perhaps triggered by two complementary reasons: first, the Palace in Urbino was the setting to one
of the most fortunate literary works of the sixteenth century, namely Baldessar
Castiglione’s Cortegiano (The Book of
the Courtier); second, d'Avalos was just designing the reconstruction of the
medieval castle of Borgo Murata in Procida. It is likely that the recipient wanted
to have more information about the building he planned to use as a model for restructuring
his castle.
In many
respect, Baldi applied the genre of ekphrasis to the world of architecture. A
linguist, Anna Siekiera, edited this most precious modern edition. Her interest
in the technical vocabulary is a natural consequence of her learning at the Accademia della Crusca, the historical institute
for Italian linguists and philologists, where Giovanni Nencioni (with the help
of Paola Barocchi) gave birth to a particularly productive stream of work (Ms Siekiera,
among others, was the author of Bibliografia
linguistica albertiana (Alberti's
linguistic bibliography) published in the National Edition of Leon BattistaAlberti's works).
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino - The uncompleted facade of Piazza Duca Federico Source: yannick_anne via Wikimedia Commons |
Bernardino Baldi
Bernardino
Baldi was a mathematician and poet. These are the two 'classic' terms with
which the figure is defined. It is just evident that these labels are most
reductive and the Description of Urbino’s
Palace confirmed they indeed are. Baldi was first of all a humanist, who
grew up in Urbino at the time of Federico Commandino first and Guidobaldo del
Monte later on. Commandino and del Monte are names that refer to the study of
sciences (especially applied sciences), thanks also to the recovery of the
cultural heritage from the classical world. Baldi, from this point of view, fitted
perfectly in the wake of his masters: he drew on ancient texts, thanks to his
uncommon linguistic knowledge (apart from Latin and Greek, he mastered German,
French, Arabic and Hebrew) and focused above all on the study of mechanics. In
1576, for example, he translated (with the title of ‘Macchine se moventi’ – Self Moving Devices) Hero's Automata. With great lucidity, the
curatoress wrote that for Baldi "mathematics
offered the theoretical basis for the study of phenomena and mechanical arts encompassing
automation, ship engineering and architecture. [...] In Baldi’s view, the
science of constructions was the point of excellence in the realization of
creative ingenuity, as the most representative of the blending of doctrine and
experience" (pp. 19-20). This explains the great value the Urbino
scholar assigned to the study of architecture and to the architect's role as a
designer, in the wake of a tradition that, drawing from Vitruvius, was revived
in the fifteenth century by Leon Battista Alberti. In this sense, it is in
particular worth stressing the technical lexicon used in his writings (and even
in this essay) by Baldi. This is perhaps the most important aspect of the Description and personally induced me (obviously,
on an entirely personal basis) to somehow draw a parallel between Baldi's
figure and that of Cosimo Bartoli (who preceded him by a few decades) [1]. In this sense, it is worth to
point out that Anna Siekiera presented, in the final pages of this book, a very
useful Index of the technical terms
used by the scholar from Urbino.
Baldi was,
then, surely a polygraph: he authored dozens of works, many of which are not
intended for publication and remained at the level of manuscripts. I would like
to point out a couple of them, in order to better understand his figure: on the
one hand, De verborum
vitruvianorum significatione sive perpetuus in M. Vitruvium Pollionem
commentarium (The meaning
of the words used by Vitruvius - a systematic comment to Marcus Vitruvius
Pollio) of 1612, a
series of studies that he began decades before on the lexically most obscure passages
of the Vitruvian treaty, confirming Baldi's architectural interests; on the
other hand Le vite de’ matematici (The lives of the mathematicians),
never published except in the modern age (a few years after his death, a summary
entitled Cronica de’
matematici -Chronic of Mathematicians - was published),
which, from the title, revealed the derivation of the idea from Vasari’s Lives.
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino - The arcaded courtyard Source: Leolalli via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino - The arcaded courtyard Source: sailko via Wikimedia Commons |
The Description
as piece of literature and as treatise
The first
thing that strikes the reader of the work is that the Description is still today
a very pleasant reading. Schlosser, in his Kunstliteratur,
defined it as 'Prunkstück', i.e. a mere
showpiece, probably because he emphasised the overwhelming praise to the
Montefeltro (and in particular Federico) and because he was disappointed with
the lack of accurate historical information on artists and works (Baldi only
recalled the famous 'License' provided by Montefeltro to Luciano Laurana, and
the possible interventions by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Leon Battista Alberti,
and Baccio Pontelli, but it is clear that he wrote without having first-hand
information). However, in my opinion, Schlosser completely missed the true
meaning of the writing, which was a praise of the ingenuity needed to build
'with judgment' in architecture. Urbino’s Palace
was the living demonstration hereof. It is no accident that Baldi, after
mentioning the issue of the paternity of the building, began to speak
generically about the choices of the "architect", without
distinguishing between the interventions of this or that architect. Simply, he
was not interested in establishing an attribution of individual actions.
Instead, he stressed that the Palace was
the practical translation of the principles of the great architecture treaties,
beginning with Vitruvius. In this sense, one must notice that the work remembers
those treatises in many respects; this is made clear as from the titles of its
XVII chapters ("Of the site of the palace", "Of the palace in
universal", "Of the foundation of the palace, "Of the vestibule
and the courtyard ","Of the stairs”, etc.). "In the Description, Baldi points out to the building
ingenuity - the iudicium of the Vitruvian architect, repeatedly evoked in the terms
«giuditio» and «giuditioso» -; to this end, he uses an essential writing, constructed with a linear
syntactic order and consistent with the difficulties of a technical
illustration, which aims both at describing large structures and constructive
details" (p.26). The requirements of clarity (typical of a treaty) prevailed
therefore on the finality to narrate the history of the building.
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino - Ducal apartments - Door of the bedroom Source: sailko via Wikimedia Commons |
A convinced classicist
There is no
doubt: Baldi's approach to architecture was that of a convinced classicist.
Vitruvius was the canon to be followed, and the problem was to interpret him
properly. With respect to the canon, Baldi condemned all eccentric
manifestations, namely Gothic on the one hand and Mannerism on the other:
"Going back to the architecture of
the palace, I am saying that there is a great imitation of the antique in all
parts and above all in courtyard, columns and capitals [...]. It is worth noting, however, that in this
palace we cannot see those cylindrical columns, that is, [...] with no belly, subtle, languid, excessively
long, or those that are twisted or doubled, which were used so gladly by the
architects of the past, not least those barbarized and rough capitals
[...]. Equally, I would like to mention that
there is no such licentious vagueness, which is full of the fabrics of our
times, in which, while architects make profession of imitators of antiquity,
they do not realize that they are depraving it. [...] So this palace is neither barbarian and gothic nor capricious and
modern, but similar to the ancient buildings, and among the ancient buildings it
does not resemble those fanciful, but the good-looking ones, and those usually established
in good fabrics" (pp. 100-103). I have displayed extensive excerpts
from Chapter XIII of the work (entitled Architettura
della fabrica - Architecture of the Fabric) because it deserves many comments.
Firstly, with regard to the architecture of previous ages, Siekiera reported
that the adjective 'Gothic' was here used for one of the very first times.
Previously, scholars wrote about 'barbarian', 'monstrous' or 'German' ways. It
was Vasari, in the Lives, to write
that "this way was found by the
Goths". From here, Bernardino Baldi turned to the term 'Gothic'. In
the case of Mannerism, instead, the author identified the cause of the
explosion of 'whims' (always meaning it in the negative), in the authority of
Michelangelo, who would have "taught
architects the use of whim as a rule, which would be very good if all brains
were of the quality of his own and if there were not so many architects around with
lame and monstrous minds" (p. 102). Thus, what might initially seem to
be a totally negative judgment about Buonarroti (and this is not surprising at
all: think about the similar positions of the contemporary Scamozzi) ended up
to integrate one of the qualities recognized to 'geniuses', that is, the
ability to take licenses that others are and should not be allowed to use.
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino, Intarsia paneling of Federico II's Studiolo Source: Silvia Blasio (a cura di), "Marche e Toscana, terre di grandi maestri tra Quattro e Seicento, Pacini Editore, 2007 |
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| Ducal Palace of Urbino, Intarsia paneling of Federico II's Studiolo Source: Silvia Blasio (a cura di), "Marche e Toscana, terre di grandi maestri tra Quattro e Seicento, Pacini Editore, 2007 |
Baldi and Vasari
It was said
- and it is logical that it is so - that Baldi read Vasari. If there is however
one aspect that did not convince me entirely, in Anna Siekiera's comment - and
it's really the only aspect that leaves me in doubt – is the (supposed but hidden)
polemical position of the Urbino’s scholar against Vasari. Baldi would thereby be
enrolled by the scholar in the community of the so-called 'anti-Vasari
reaction'. Let us understand: years (we are in 1587) and circles (at that time
Baldi was in Rome) would be right. Federico Zuccari, another excellent scholar
from the Marche region, had probably just written his rancorous margin comments
to Vasari [2]. A symptoms of Baldi's intolerance, in the chapter XIII which we
have partially reproduced above, would be according to the curator the
statement that ‘our Bramante' revived architecture from medieval ruins,
abandoning the Gothic and replicating the ancient. Bramante was referred to as
'our' “because he was born in Fermignano,
in the city of Castle, and not in Casteldurante [today Urbania, in
the province of Pesaro-Urbino but not part of the Montefeltro Duchy at that time]" (p. 100). The clarification seems to me to be a mere local claim, more
than any pretence of the superiority of a school over another. Baldi also
immediately stated that the mistake on the location of Bramante’s birth was
originally made by Serlio, who was followed by Vasari later on. The fact
remains that the Urbino scholar placed Brunelleschi in a secondary position
with respect to Bramente. Of course, other interpretations are possible;
however, in my view, it simply points out to a simple (and very human) desire
to glorify a 'little homeland' rather than organically oppose a world against
another. Baldi himself, however, seemed to realize that he had made a bold step
and a few lines later added: "Even before Bramante good architecture had been discovered and Gothic given up"
(ibidem).
I recognise it is only a personal feeling, and I may well be wrong.
What seems to me to emerge safely from Baldi’s Description is the figure of a high quality scholar who is now
underestimated, but would deserve to be better studied and known.
NOTES
[1] See in
this blog the review of Cosimo Bartoli (1503-1572). Edited by Francesco Paolo
Fiore and Daniela Lamberini.
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