Architectural AnalysisThe legacy of Antiquity

Alberto Iacovoni, Marialuisa Palumbo | Cornell in Rome Fall 2016

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

0. On Analysis as Phylogenesis

Phylogenetic tree | Ernest Haeckel

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Phylogenesis (from Greek φῦλον phylon "tribe" + γένεσις genesis "origin") is the biological process by which a taxon (from τάξις, taxis = 'order', 'arrangement') appears.

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

01. On Principles and Foundations

Annunciation, 1344 | Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

It is not too much to claim that a pattern of tiles used in this sense represents the modern 'systematic space' in an artistically concrete sphere, well before it had been postulated by abstract mathematical thought… Once again this perspectival achievement is nothing other than a concrete expression of a contemporary advance in epistemology or natural philosophy... abandoning the Scholastic idea of a cosmos with the middle of the earth as its absolute center and with the outermost celestial sphere as its absolute limit; the result was the concept of infinity. The vision of the universe is detheologized.

Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form

The Geocentric model or Ptolemaic system

De Pictura (On Painting), 1435 | Leon Battista Alberti

Della Pittura | Leon Battista Alberti

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Ut vero de pulchritudine iudices non opinio: verum animis innata quaedam ratio efficiet...Allorchè giudichi della bellezza, interverrà non l'opinione ma una certa norma innata nell'animo

Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria, Libro IX

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Aedium compositio constat ex symmetria, cuius rationem diligentissime architecti tenere debent. ea autem paritur a proportione, quae graece ἀναλογία dicitur. proportio est ratae partis membrorum in omni opere totiusque commodulatio, ex qua ratio efficitur symmetriarum.The design of Temples depends on symmetry, the rules of which Architects should be most careful to observe. Symmetry arises from proportion, which the Greeks call ἀναλογία. Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and to the whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Vitruvius, De Architectura, III, 1

Ludi mathematici, 1450 | Leon Battista Alberti

Ludi mathematici | Leon Battista Alberti

Ludi mathematici | Leon Battista Alberti

De Re Aedificatoria (On the Art of Building in Ten Books), c.1450 | Leon Battista Alberti

De Re Aedificatoria | Leon Battista Alberti

I sette libri dell'architettura, c.1537 | Sebastiano Serlio

I sette libri dell'architettura, c.1537 | The Five Orders

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Far from leaving the orders out when they [the Romans] built vaulted amphi-theatres, basilicas and triumphal arches, they brought them in, in the most conspicuous way possible, as if they felt that no building could communicate anything unless the orders were involved in it. To them the orders were architecture... The Romans took this highly stylized but structurally quite primitive kind of architecture and married it to arched and vaulted multi-storey buildings of great elaborations. And in doing so they raised architectural language to a new level... ...all major Roman buildings other than temples were designed on the basis of arches and vaults, whereas the orders belong strictly to the more primitive system of 'trabeation'. To marry the two in the sense of giving the old types of temple column the job of carrying arches could work up to a point but it was never satisfactory... So what did the Romans do? The Colosseum at Rome answers the question at once... every row of arches is framed inside a continuous colonnade. The colonnades have no structural purpose – or very little. They are representations of temple architecture carved, as it were, in relief on a building which is not a temple, which is multi-storeyed and is built as a system of arches and vaults.John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture

I sette libri dell'architettura, c.1537 | The Colosseum

Palazzo Rucellai, c.1450 | Leon Battista Alberti

The Antiquities of Rome | Andrea Palladio

I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, 1570 | Andrea Palladio

The Four Books of Architecture | Dell'Atrio Corinthio

The Four Books of Architecture | Dell'Atrio Corinthio

The Four Books of Architecture | San Pietro in Montorio

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) 1543 | Nicolaus Copernicus

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon ... This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.

Martin Luther

Astronomia Nova, 1609 | Johannes Kepler

Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) , 1610 | Galileo Galilei

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687 | Isaac Newton

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

02. On the Human Body

If Nature, therefore, has made the human body so that the different members of it are measures of the whole, so the ancients have, with great propriety, determined that in all perfect works, each part should be some aliquot part of the whole; and since they direct, that this be observed in all works, it must be most strictly attended to in temples of the gods, wherein the faults as well as the beauties remain to the end of time.Vitruvius, De Architectura, III, 1

First illustrated edition of De Architectura, Venezia, 1511 | Giovanni Giocondo

Studies of proportions | Francesco di Giorgio

Studies of proportions | Francesco di Giorgio

Studies of proportions | Francesco di Giorgio

Homo ad circulum, c.1490 | Leonardo

De Homine, 1664 | René Descartes

Cartesian coordinate system | René Descartes

Théâtre de Besançon, 1784 | Claude-Nicolas Ledoux

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757

| Edmund Burke

03. On the Central-plan Church

De Re Aedificatoria | Leon Battista Alberti

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Deus est sphaera infinita, cuius centrum est ubique, circumferentia nullibi. God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

Nicolò Cusano, De Docta Ignorantia, 1440

S. Maria degli Angeli, Firenze, 1434 | Brunelleschi

Pantheon | Rome

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

Le più belle, e più regolate forme, e dalle quali le altre ricevono le misure, sono la Ritonda e la Quadrangulare... la Ritonda... sola tra tutte le figure è semplice, uniforme, eguale, forte e capace, faremo I Tempij rotondi....è attissima a dimostrare la Unità, la Infinita Essenza, la Uniformità, et la Giustizia di Dio.

Palladio, Libro I, cap 1-2

Temple of Vesta | Rome

Santa costanza | Rome

Temple of Minerva Medica or Nymphaeum at the Horti Liciniani | Rome

Sketches for central plan church, c. 1484 | Leonardo

Santa Maria delle Carceri, Prato, 1485 | Giuliano da Sangallo

Santa Maria delle Carceri, Prato, 1485 | Giuliano da Sangallo

San Pietro in Montorio, Roma, 1502 | Bramante

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

This building is a reconstruction by Bramante of an ancient Roman circular temple – or so it seems at first.He mounts it [the theme of the circular temple] on three steps and sets a continuous moulded plinth under the order. This plinth gives the little building a sudden and auspicious 'lift' – enough to ratify its sanctity. And each Doric column has an answering Doric pilaster on the wall of the inner building – what is called the cella. This cella rises higher than the colonnade and is covered with a hemi-spherical dome. Now, is this a literal reconstruction of a Roman temple or is not? Clearly not. It is an extension of an idea borrowed from the Romans. The plinth and the vertical penetration of the central cylinder up and through to a hemi-spherical dome are Bramante's inventions and highly successful ones to judge by the numbers of times they have been imitated.

John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture

San Pietro in Montorio, Roma, 1502 | Palladio's drawing

St Paul Cathedral, London, 1696-1708 | Christopher Wren

Bramante's design for St Peter Cathedral, 1506 | Serlio

Foundation medal for St Peter's, 1505 | Cristoforo Caradosso

Tempietto Barbaro, Maser (Treviso), c. 1570 | Andrea Palladio

Santa Agnese in Agone, Rome, 1652 - 1672 | Borromini

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1641-1667 | Borromini

Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Roma, 1658 - 1678 | Bernini

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

04. On the Church's Facade

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 1458-78 (facade) | Alberti

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

All the new elements introduced by Alberti in the facade, the columns, the pediment, the attic, and the scrolls, would remain isolated features were it not for the all-pervading harmony which formed the basis and background of his whole theory. Harmony, the essence of beauty, consists in the relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole, and, in fact, a single system of proportion permeates the facade, and the place and size of every single part and detail is fixed and defined by it. Proportions recommended by Alberti are the simple relations of one to one, one to two, one to three... which are the elements of musical harmony and which Alberti found in classical buildings...The whole facade of S. Maria Novella can be exactly circumscribed by a square. A square of half the side of the large square defines the relationship of the two stories. The main story can be divided into two such squares, while one enclose the upper storey. In other words, the whole building is related to its main parts in the proportion of one to two...

Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism

Santa Maria Novella, Florence | Alberti

San Francesco, Rimini, 1450 | Alberti

Arch of Constantine | Foundation medal for St Francesco

Sant'Andrea, Mantova, 1470 | Alberti

San Satiro, Milano, 1480 Bramante | Sagra di Carpi, 1515, Peruzzi

San Francesco della Vigna, Venezia, 1562 | Palladio

San Giorgio Maggiore, Venezia, 1566-1610 | Palladio

The Four Books of Architecture | Andrea Palladio

Chiesa del Redentore, Venezia, 1576-92 | Palladio

Chiesa del Gesù, Roma, 1575 | Giacomo della Porta

Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio, Rome, 1646 | Martino Longhi

Val-de-Grâce, Paris, 1645 | Francois Mansart

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1641-1667 | Borromini

Santa Agnese in Agone, Rome, 1652 - 1672 | Borromini

Facade of Santa Maria della Pace, Rome, 1656-58 | Pietro da Cortona

Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Roma, 1658 - 1678 | Bernini

Panthéon, Paris, 1758-90 | Jacques-Germain Soufflot

San Rocco, Rome, 1832 | Giuseppe Valadier

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

05. On Cities as Monuments

Merchants' meeting| miniature XIV century

Effetti del Buon Governo, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena,1337-1340 | Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Ideal City, c.1480 | Luciano Laurana / Piero Della

Francesca

Ideal Piazza | Luciano Laurana / Piero Della Francesca

Architectural Perspective | Luciano Laurana / Piero Della Francesca

Consegna delle chiavi, Roma, Cappella Sistina 1481 | Perugino

Ferrara, Herculean Addition, 1492 | Biagio Rossetti

Pienza, 1459 | Bernanrdo Rossellino

Urbino, Palazzo ducale, 1454 | Luciano Laurana

Piazza San Marco, Venezia | Jacopo Sansovino

San Marco's Library, 1537, Venezia | Jacopo Sansovino

Scuola di Atene, Palazzi Vaticani, 1509 | Raffaello

Capitoline Hill, view c. 1555 | Anonymous

Campidoglio, 1534-38 | Michelangelo

Michelangelo's Campidoglio, 1568 | Étienne Dupérac

Cosmological schema | Isidore of Seville

Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and tothe whole; on this proper adjustment symmetry depends.

The ancient Romans moved the umbelicus mundi figuratively from Delphi to the Forum, where it remained until medieval legend shifted it once more to the Campidoglio. Here it was permanently fixed in Michelangelo's pavement, which combined its zodiacal inferences with its mound-like forme. Marcus Aurelius, mounted at the center, might have been a foreign element if iconic tradition had not permitted his association with the umbelicus. As Kosmokrator, he succeeded to Apollo's position upon the mound, and since the ancient sculptor had not equipped him with the requisite attributes, Michelangelo placed around his base the corona of Apollo: the twelve pointed rays which also serve as the starting-points of the zodiacal pattern.

James Ackerman, The Architecture of Michelangelo

Piazza del Campidoglio, 1547 | Michelangelo