While interest in Vitruvius and the De architectura among architectural historians, particularly of the Renaissance, has always been strong, the renewed engagement among classicists and classical archaeologists with this important text makes the appearance of this substantial volume particularly welcome and timely. After the short introduction, the 26 chapters are divided unevenly over five themes of ‘Transmission’, ‘Translation’, ‘Reception’, ‘Practice’ and ‘Vitruvian Topics’, although, as is common with such collected works, several could have been assigned to more than one section. Additionally there is considerable overlap in terms of material between different papers, most notably between Chapters 10 (B. Kulawik) and 19 (F. Marcorin). Aided by the three extensive indexes, however, this generally enriches a reading of the volume as a whole; for example, while there is no separate chapter on the influence of Fra Giocondo’s groundbreaking illustrated edition of 1511, he warrants about the same number of citations in the index as Palladio.
Rowland’s leading chapter on the transmission of Vitruvius’ text, ‘Vitruvius from Manuscript to Print’, sets up one of the common threads which run through the volume: the constant struggle to understand the text and to create a comprehensible and useful translation. This is due to the many variants between different medieval manuscripts, the disputed readings, the presence of words in both Latin and Greek not known from other sources and the absence of the original illustrations which Vitruvius included to explain difficult concepts, such as the continuing issue of the scamilli impares discussed – and possibly resolved – by T.N. Howe. These issues are present not only in the papers which make up the translation section (F.P. Di Teodoro; A. Rovetta and J. Gritti; P. Davies and D. Hemsoll) but also in many of the other papers across the remaining sections, including the important chapter by W. Verbaal on Vitruvius in the medieval world. Together these provide a salutary reminder that we do not, and probably never can, have a definitive version of the De architectura.
This was not for want of trying. The publishing project on Vitruvius and ancient Roman architecture described by Claudio Tolomei in a letter of 1542, discussed in Kulawik’s enlightening paper (‘Sangallo, Tolomei, and the Program of the Accademia de lo Studio de l’Architettura on Vitruvius and Ancient Architecture’), reads like a modern research proposal: a multi-volume interdisciplinary publication produced by a large group of scholars and practitioners, including a new edition of the text and illustrations based on the earliest available manuscripts, with a new Italian translation and commentaries, an annotated Latin lexicon, a dictionary of Vitruvius’ Greek terms and a dictionary of Italian words for Vitruvius’ architectural terms. Kulawik connects this to the similar programme in Antonio da Sangallo’s Proemio, previously thought to be unrelated, and is able to identify some of it in published works, particularly Philandrier’s Annotationes, a major contribution to the field. Only 11 of the proposed 24 volumes, however, were to be about the De architectura, the remainder to be devoted to practical aspects needed to understand ancient Roman architecture including a detailed measured study of the remains, the main aim of this proposed programme being to create ‘an architecture guided by clear rules’ (p. 261). Howe reminds us that the search for an absolute set of architectural rules or doctrines was still a serious concern for the Académie d’Architecture a century later, in the context of the rise of absolutism at the French court. But which rules?
The difficulty faced by Renaissance – and indeed post-Renaissance – scholars, architects, architectural historians and classical archaeologists in balancing the differing claims for pre-eminence between Vitruvian text and theory on the one hand, and the reality of the built architecture on the other, is the second major thread which runs through this volume. M. McLaughlin, in ‘Alberti and Vitruvius: Reception and Rejection of the Model in De re aedificatoria’, highlights the frustrations with Vitruvius’ text which led the fifteenth-century humanist Alberti to create his own De re aedificatoria adapted to his contemporary needs, fathering a long line of architectural treatises inspired by and drawing their authority from Vitruvius but rarely drawing directly on his precepts, from Filarete in the fifteenth century, to Serlio and Palladio (discussed by Marcorin) in the sixteenth and Guarini in the seventeenth (discussed by S. Klaiber). This was an important issue particularly as the columnar orders became increasingly prominent in contemporary architecture. A.C. Huppert shows how in the early-sixteenth-century Rome of Bramante Vitruvius became the touchstone for their proper design, to the extent that even examples of ancient orders were criticised for not following Vitruvius; yet, as Marcorin emphasises, less than 50 years later Palladio happily incorporated variations on the orders in his Quattro Libri, converting Vitruvius’ genera applied to ancient temple architecture to orders (ordines) applicable to any kind of building. Klaiber notes the same acceptance of variants on the orders in Guarini’s Architettura civile, which shows a real sense of Vitruvius’ place in the development of Roman architecture missing in earlier works.
One of the strengths of the volume lies in the decision by the editors to commission articles which look at the reception of Vitruvius outside of Rome. The Renaissance association between the De architectura and L. Vitruvius Cerdo, architect of the Arco dei Gavi in Verona, is explored in both chapters by Davies and Hemsoll (‘Who Was Vitruvius? A Renaissance Debate’ and ‘Verona and Vitruvius’), on the one hand in an entertaining investigation into the name of Vitruvius, and on the other in the creation of a specifically Veronese treatment of architectural orders and details based on the Arco dei Gavi by local architect Michele Sanmicheli, in the belief that this was the work of the ancient author. Rovetta and Gritti, in ‘On the Vitruvius of Cesare Cesariano’, set the translation and commentary by Cesare Cesariano in a specifically Milanese political and cultural context, exemplified by Cesariano’s use of the (Gothic) Milan cathedral to illustrate Vitruvius’ concepts of ichnographia, orthographia and scaenographia. The chapters on the reception of Vitruvius in Germany (W. Oechslin), Spain (V. Deupi), France (Howe) and Britain (V. Hart) throw light on the very different political and societal attitudes to the antique architecture of the Renaissance in countries outside of Italy with no direct connection to the major monuments of Rome and with architectural traditions, terminology and needs of their own, transmitted as much through the medium of Italian architectural treatises as through translations of Vitruvius into the local vernacular.
In keeping with the general trend in Brill’s Companion to Reception series, several papers are primarily concerned with Vitruvius and the De architectura in its ancient context rather than with just its post-antique reception. D.E. Harris-McCoy, in ‘Vitruvius’ Educational Program in Antiquity and the Renaissance’, throws interesting light on Vitruvius’ programme for the education of architects, relating it to Cicero’s De oratore, and finding parallels in later authors from Quintilian to Palladio. A. Becchi, in ‘Vitruvius’ Historiae and the Love of Learning’, focuses on one field of knowledge within Vitruvius’ description of the education of the architect: his use of exemplary histories to enliven the text and engage its audience. The fact that most of these are known only from Vitruvius yet have had, like the story of Archimedes and the bath, a long afterlife sheds a very different light on Vitruvius’ reception, as author rather than architect. In more practical fields, L.C. Lancaster, in ‘Vitruvius and Ancient Construction Method’, looks at how Vitruvius’ advice on construction was adapted in the later antique authors Faventinus and Palladius, as well as the problems of understanding Vitruvius on opus signinum when compared to Pliny the Elder on the same topic, especially as Pliny certainly had read and used the text of the De architectura. R. Godman’s scientific analysis of sounding vessels (echeia), Howe’s new interpretation of scamilli impares and G. Di Pasquale’s contextualisation of Vitruvius’ science of machines all address matters of interest to students of Vitruvius, but with little direct relevance to the reception of the De architectura.
The volume overall has a further importance, particularly for classical archaeologists interested in the ancient built environment broadly defined, in that it helps us understand the origins and trajectory of our own discipline. R. Taylor, in ‘Archaeological Perspectives on Vitruvius’, articulates through several case studies both how archaeologists have used Vitruvius and found him lacking in the interpretation of the physical evidence, and the degree to which his vocabulary still forms the basis of our current architectural terminology. The excellent papers in the rest of the volume go some way to explaining how and why this is still the case today.
