Editor’s Note

Abstract

An image from the Biblioteca Berenson’s copy of Daniele Barbaro’s 1556 translation of and commentary on Vitruvius’s De Architectura, illustrated by Andrea Palladio, seemed like a good fit for this fall issue. For one thing, a number of the essays deal directly or indirectly with architectural studies: the treatises of the architect Guarino Guarini, the shifting interior of Saint Peter’s during its renovation, the ruined ancient building in Leonardo’s unfinishedAdoration. For another thing, the putto wielding a wand or a rod from book 9 in a section dedicated to the invention of sundials and clocks (“Della ragione, et uso de gli horologi, et della loro inventione, et de gli inventori”) offers a figure of human ingenuity—creative work that might inspire in a time of crisis (fig. 1). In the proem of book 9, Vitruvius waxes expansively about Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Democritus, and (in Barbaro’s translation) “tutti gli altri Savi”who deserve resounding acclaim since their doctrines “hanno ottimi sentimenti della sapienza, & danno alle Città costumi della humanità, ragioni eguali, e leggi, lequai cose quando sono lontane, niuna Città può star bene.” But then Vitruvius goes on to characterize Plato as making a discovery fundamental to architecture: not only did he philosophize and give laws, but he invented the best way to measure a field. Accordingly, Barbaro, a Venetian aristocrat, ambassador to England, patron of Palladio and other artists, and leading scholar in the Serenissima, speaks confidently in his dedication to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este of “le belle inventioni de gli huomini” and the “piacer naturale di sapere” that led Vitruvius 1,500 years earlier to dedicate himself not only to architecture but to all the arts. For architecture “abbraccia tutto il bello delle inventioni, che si possa trovare a commodità, e diletto di chi ci vive.”