Tag: books

11. inn Polyphony

Alberti’s activities as architect, theorist and advisor, and his clear attempt to ‘cover’ the visual arts by writing a treatise on each of the principal three –architecture, sculpture and painting– perhaps give us an unbalanced sense of the order of his enthusiasms. We know that his literary activity was very diverse, and he was a literato before all else. But from his theoretical writings and from his artistic activities, it can easily seem that his primary sense was the visual. All the while, though, his literary voice is often most animated on the subject of music. Indeed, in the (auto)biography he claims for himself credentials as a musician as confidently as, in De pictura, he tells of his spectacular perspective demonstrations. He gives himself almost Orphic powers in the speech of Niccola de’ Medici in Profugiorum ab aerumna: ‘Troppo sarebbe forza qui in Battista, se potesse con suoi strumenti musici adducere gli animi in qual parte e’ volessi.’[1] Confirmation of his musical ability comes from Cristoforo Landino who, as has been seen, wrote in Apologia di Dante, ‘What branch of mathematics was unknown to him? He was a geometer, arithmetician, astronomer, musician, and in perspective he was a prodigy, greater than anyone over the centuries.‘[2] It is true that claims for a person’s mathematical expertise could not omit music while it counted in the Quadrivium (or here in the new ‘Quintivium’, with perspective added). But, equally, no person intending to be mathematically educated would neglect his music.

Alberti’s definition of beauty is placed within De re aedificatoria for the sake, obviously, of explaining architectural beauty. He states, ‘Nos tamen brevitatis gratia sic deffiniemus: ut sit pulchritudo quidem certa cum ratione concinnitas universarum partium in eo, cuius sint, ita aut addi aut diminui aut immutari possit nihil quin improbabilius reddatur.’[3] Of importance is his insistence that it applies also universally: ‘in whatsoever subject’ as James Leoni translates. It is the word concinnitas that is at the core of the definition. Alberti also wrote, in Book IX, Chapter 5: ‘Hi quidem numeri, per quos fiat ut vovum illa concinnitas auribus gratissima reddatur, hidem ipsi numeri perficiunt, ut oculi animus que voluptate mirifica compleantur.’[4] Harmony is, familiarly, an agreement of voice and ear: ‘Armoniam esse dicimusvocum consonantiam suavem auribus.’[5] Ear and eye attend to beauties possessing a common substructure that appears in art and nature. Musical and architectural harmony are interchangeable in his famous admonition to Matteo de’Pasti, his overseer on the project of S. Francesco at Rimini: ‘Le misure e le proportioni de pilastri tu vedi onde elle naschono: cio che tu muti si discorda tutta quella musica.’[6] The passages carry the assumption that the reader will understand beauty in architecture and in nature, through being already in possession of an understanding of beauty in music. To be sought in each context is ‘a harmony of parts.’ The beauty he talks of is essentially to be found in complexity.

However, it is important to note that not all music would supply a level of complexity sufficient to sustain the analogy and thence the definition. It has become something of a commonplace of Renaissance architectural historiography, since Rudolf Wittkower’s Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1951), to discuss musical harmonics and seek them out in the mathematics of architecture. Alberti himself followed Pythagoras, and explained musical intervals and the harmonic mean.[7] But these simple whole-number relations that can be used for proportioning buildings are only part of what he has in mind in his definition of beauty in De re aedificatoria and in a number of other notable utterances on music scattered throughout his writings.

The property of things whereby their parts fit together locally, quantitatively and qualitatively and they are integral objects is, in Alberti’s thinking, generically a mathematical characteristic. And his age held music to be a mathematical business alongside the other disciplines of the quadrivium, as was observed above. However, it is a more complicated mathematics than the arithmetic (with a little geometry) of harmonics and means that produces organic unity. In fact, it is so complex that Alberti is forced to state his definition in the form of a negative: ‘nothing could be added…’. Not so much beauty as the want of it is to be observed. Of collocatio, one of the parts of concinnitas, he says, ‘Ea magis sentitur, ubi male habita est, quam intelligatur per se, qui decenter ponenda sit.’[8] The ‘innata quaedam ratio’[9] by which we judge the beautiful, at the same time as being so deeply embedded that the human being’s very definition includes the faculty, paradoxically confesses in effect Alberti’s inability to locate it properly in reason, for to say that something is innate is to set it beyond enquiry.

The music that Alberti alluded to in the definition was of a particular kind. Like architecture, and Nature herself, it was complex. In fact, it was itself not so easy to define, and the seeker of an idea of musical beauty might, as readily, have used his/her given experience of a certain kind of formally consistent but complex architecture to help him grasp the nature of this special musical beauty. Goethe would later draw the connection.

It is only polyphonic music that can have the ‘harmony of parts’ that is the core of the definition. Alberti’s thought had an enormously important place for polyphonic music.

A statement in De familia gives a sense of music’s crucial position. In its passionate brevity and argumentative directness, and in its evocation of the catechism, it is the nub of Alberti’s creed – that statement that has been central to the discussion of several themes in Alberti’s thought. His interlocutor, Lionardo, voices it:

Most of all I praise the true and wise teachers who tell us that man was created for the pleasure of God, to recognise the primary and original source of things amid all the variety, dissimilarity, beauty and multiplicity of animal life, amid all the forms, structures, coverings and colors that characterise the animals. He was made to praise God together with universal nature, seeing in every living thing such great and perfectly matched harmonies of voice and verse and music combined in concord and loveliness.[10]

Nature herself is a polyphony. The speech encapsulates nothing less than a Natural Religion. Everything Alberti says must be consistent with it. Thus, the same passage, properly analysed, reveals his thought in different connections. The passages used to introduce the section above, on Faith and Belief, all rise, like this, to their ringing conclusions in celebration of aural experience –bird song or choral singing. The voice of the poet is more prominent than that of the rationalist at this point.

Alberti’s conception of polyphony is clearer than Gianozzo Manetti’s. When Manetti described the Lady Day service of 1436 in Florence Cathedral and talked of the singing, he lapsed into a facile simile: these voices were like those of angels.[11] [but read on. Manetti is much more elaborate than I’ve said (p.318) check para 26.] Maybe Dufay’s motet, Nuper Rosarum Flores, famously sung on the occasion, did not draw his attention or live in his memory. It is agreeable to fancy that Alberti is recollecting the same occasion and the singing of just that motet when, in the voice of Agnolo Pandolfini in Profugiorum ab aerumna, he praises the church, concluding, ‘Here, wherever you look, you see the expression of happiness and gaiety; here it is always fragrant; and, that which I prize above all, here you listen to the voices during mass, during that which the ancients called the mysteries, with their marvelous beauty.’[12] Agnolo is here continuing a passage describing the church as an evocation of Spring and the sound, poetically, evokes birdsong, making clear that polyphony, despite Manetti’s experience, does not emanate from heaven.

The kind of music that excited Alberti is to be identified by thinking through the simile. Birdsong is not plainchant. Birds do not sing in unison. The Bardi St Francis Master’s birds will give responses in unison; not those of the St Francis Master at Assisi.[figs] Just as it is the variety rather than the uniformity of nature that Lionardo makes the object of his piety, so, in art, it is variety that is to be achieved. In music, polyphony is proclaimed over plainchant. The single choral line indicates that faith is complete and entirely unassailable. That is the music that is angelic.   When Fra Angelico, by including angels playing instruments of different sorts in his scenes of heaven, invites the observer to hear music whose essential character is founded in variety, he does so only to make heaven a more agreeable place: his inspiration is to be found on earth rather than in heaven.

For Alberti, polyphony is the exemplification of something important, something more that just an abstractly satisfactory audible state of things. Nor, to repeat, is it a heavenly emanation (for there is no reason to think that angels would not sing in unison). Polyphony signifies something; it has a content. Here, it might be like architecture which, as we see, is more than just formally admirable and materially useful. Or else, its own principle is universal.[13]

The moving effects of church music, especially the Kyrie, are described, as Agnolo Pandolfini continues:

Che è a dire che tutti gli altri modi e varietà de’ canti reiterati fastidiano: solo questo cantare religioso mai meno ti diletta. Quanto fu ingegno in quel Timoteo musico, inventore di tanta cosa! Non so quello s’intervenga agli altri; questo affermo io di me, che e’ possono in me questi canti e inni della chiesa quello a che fine e’ dicono che furono trovati: troppo m’acquetano da ogni altra perturbazione d’animo, e commuovonmi a certa non so quale io la chiami lentezza d’animo piena di riverenza verso di Dio. E qual cuore sì bravo si truova che non mansueti sé stessi quando e’ sente su bello ascendere e poi descendere quelle intere e vere voci con tanta tenerezza e flessitudine? Affermovi questo, che mai sento in que’ misteri e cerimonie funerali invocare da Dio con que’ versiculi greci aiuto alle nostre miserie umane ch’io non lacrimi. E fra me talora mi maraviglio, e penso quanta forza portino seco quelle a intenerirci. E quinci avviene ch’io credo quello che si dice ch’e’ musici potessero essortare Alessandro Macedone ad arme cantando, e rivocarlo in cena.[14]

Alberti himself was not committed entirely to church music. Music had its charms in itself. For example, it was a means of gaining personal tranquillità dell’anima also elsewhere. In De iciarchia he noted that, ‘E’ Pittagorici filosofi soleano, prima che dormissero, componere la mente sua a quiete con qualche armonia musica.’[15] The practice recalls his own in what may be construed as a parallel context. In Profugiorum ab aerumna, he describes himself as calming his agitated mind by conceiving ‘qualche compositissimo edificio e disposivi piu ordini e numeri di colonne con vari capitelli e base inusitate…’[16]

Alberti is a dogmatic naturalist. The strength of his commitment can be guaged by setting against Lionardo’s speech, above, the famous statement of Abbot Suger (1081-1155):

Thus, when –out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God– the loveliness of the many colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the Universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.[17]

Both dwell upon diversity, but whilst Suger finds it above, Lionardo does, below. Lionardo’s statement is emphatically anti-platonic. He finds the grounds of faith in the things of nature: out of his love of the things of Creation comes his affirmation of the Creator. There is no direct experience of the numinous. It follows that, in Lionardo’s piety, God is not confined to His House. The practice of religion is not confined to Church premises. By extension, the Cathedral of Agnolo Pandolfini was an evocation of natural sensation. In Theogenius, the tone of the address to Microtiro is religious, and the event happens emphatically en plein air. Conjured up is a Franciscan sense of the natural world. Now, choral singing sounds best where the acoustic is best, and the church building is its most appropriate setting. But that does not mean that the singing itself necessarily supposes that its world is the building in which it is sounding. Polyphony, because of its complexity, requires a softer acoustic. The cavernous barrel and groin-vaulted church is not suitable. Practically speaking, polyphony has less control of the echo than plainchant. It is possible that elaborate ribbing shortens the echo and softens the acoustic. Generally speaking, timber roofing was better than masonry for audibility.[18] Alberti discusses acoustics in Book VIII, Chapter 9 of De re aedificatoria.   Plainchant carries the implication that there is no barrier between the celestial and the faithful. But polyphony –its variety a celebration of a beauty of nature– conceives itself as terrestial rather than celestial sound. Polyphony belongs with philosophical scepticism. Raised in praise, it prompts affirmation; but it does not contain certitude. It imitates nature. Rather as the observer of the altarpiece, which has replaced the gold ground with landscape, pictures the action as happening in time and space as opposed to the church (where the object is located) and heaven and eternity (where that which is represented may exist), the listener to polyphonic church music attends an event on earth. And, as the gold background disappeared even for celestial scenes, like the Coronations of the Virgin of Fra Angelico in the Louvre and of Fra Filippo Lippi in the Uffizi, so music seems to have begun to be conceived spontaneously in polyphonic form. Fra Angelico pictures something almost riotously musical, though perhaps without the human voice, in the Uffizi Coronation (fig).

Alberti’s interest and enthusiasm for music is proclaimed in the ‘Autobiography’.[19] It contains the claim that he was, through his education, one of the most distinguished young men of his generation, ‘Nam cum arma et equos et musica instrumente arte et modo tractare, tum litteris et bonarium artium studiis rarissimarumque et difficilarum rerum cognitioni fui deditissimus…’[20] He would rest from his literary studies in music, painting and physical exercise. Self-taught, he nonetheless received the applause of the experts, composing and performing instrumental and vocal works:

Musicam nullis praeceptoribus tenuit et fuere ipsius opera a doctis musicis approbata: cantu per omnem aetatem usus est, sed eo quidem intra privatos parietes aut solus, et praesertim rure cum fratre propinquisve tantum. Organis delectabatur et inter primarios musicos in ea re peritus habebatur. Musicos effecit nonnullos eruditiores suis monitis.[21]

He wrote elegies, eclogues and songs.[22] The ‘Autobiography’ does not reveal just what sort of music Alberti made and admired; but the impression given is that it was a lively musical society in which he moved. The likelihood must be that it was an inventive one.

The importance of music for culture in general is made clear in the prologue to Della pittura. Alberti recalls a lament that he used to make before his experience of Florence showed that it no longer had grounds. He listed the kinds of artists and intellectuals that he had believed were in short supply: ‘…pittori, scultori, architetti, musici, iometri, retorici, auguri e simili nobilissimi e maravigioso intelletti…’.[23] But now they proliferated once more. If he were to have listed musicians encountered in Florence, Guillaume Dufay, the composer of the motet Nuper Rosarum Flores, sung on the occasion of the dedication of the dome of Florence Cathedral on 25^th March 1436, would have been included.

The imitation of nature had to include the representation of her great principle of variety. The imitation of Nature as a creative process had to involve an exemplification of the principle.   It is possible to say that, for Alberti, Alcibiades was a polyphonic sort of person, appearing frequently in Alberti’s writings to exemplify the person who changes according to the circumstances in which he finds himself. And Alberti himself, in having his various voices –Libripeta, Lepidus etc.– did not speak with just one. It is tempting to think that, in adopting the name Leon, he was claiming kinship with the cameleonte, the cameleon. Landino took up the idea of Alberti’s cameleon-character in his Apologia di Dante.[24] To practise a great number of arts and crafts would be further to epitomise variety: ‘ingenio fuit versatili…’[25] And, if the principle is a natural one, ought it not to be also a social or political one? Alberti did identify a somewhat democratic property in variety, and it ties in with polyphony, in which there is no question of inferiority or superiority between types of voice. Apologo XLI tells of the crown of Hadrian. A pearl wanted to join a diamond and a carbuncle. The two gems did not want their splendour diminished by the near-presence of the pearl, which eventually found a place elsewhere in the crown, surrounded by the smallest and least valuable jewels.[26] Alberti’s point is that, if the diamond and the carbuncle had recognised the principle of variety, had seen that they themselves, in their difference, were the beginning of it, and that they suffered in no way as a result, they would have welcomed the addition of the new element of variety. Instead, the comparison that could now be made between the pearl and its immediate setting emphasised its beauty and value. Polyphony, like variety, is not hierarchical.

Variety is an important theme in De pictura/Della pittura. Like the historia, ‘Come ne’ cibi e nella musica sempre la novità e abbondanza tanto piace quanto sia differente dalle cose antique e consuete, così l’animo si diletta d’ogni copia e varietà.’[27] The Latin gives, for ‘abbondanza’, ‘exuberantia’. He wants copiousness, but it must be disciplined by variety (and appropriateness to the subject). Copia is a matter of the number of species in the historia, indeed the number of genera for, as well as animal things, there are cities and provinces in the copious historia. Varietà is a matter of quality. Members of a single species will be varied, first in their poses and eventually, since the movement of the body is an index of the movement of the soul, in their emotions. Clarity is consistent with variety. Too great a throng will confuse the action just as, round Varro’s dinner table, a number greater than nine will make for agitated rather than congenial proceedings. In contrasting copia with varietà, and dissoluta confusione with composizione [28], Alberti is, in effect, contrasting cacophony and polyphony. We can suggest that he is considering here two of the three kinds of ‘many’. The aggregation of lots of the same thing produces a uniform sort of ‘many’. Alberti’s thinking is about the many that consists of a number of different things with no organisational principle (copia) and the many that is composed and organised (varietà). [29] He would think on about the quality of what we could call organised multiplicity, and in De re aedificatoria it had become concinnitas. In music, it was polyphony.

In effect, Alberti is saying, through Agnolo Pandolfini describing Florence Cathedral in Profugiorum ab Aerumna, ‘We are not listening to angels (unless angels come down among us and disguise themselves as other flying, singing creatures).’ Not only does the comprehensibility of polyphony delight (though it would be wonderful for the musically skilled person to understand the organisation of the voices, and, axiomatically at least, polyphony is variety in unity); it works also through some other organ of reception. As Palladio said, ‘Sometimes we like the music but are unable to say why.’[30] Perhaps the ear is connected to the seat of delight by two routes, one through the head and the other through the heart.[31] Other theories could be offered: perhaps the organs of sense were active, themselves shaping data. In saying, in Profugiorum ab aerumna, ‘Per gli orecchi, entra la sapienza,’ Alberti is arguing that organs of sense receive things of reason.[32] But when Alberti heard Nuper Rosarum Flores, we can be sure that its evocative power was accessible prior to an understanding of its structure, for that is the whole tenor of delight in sound in nature.

That is, his enthusiasm might have been for a mathematically-based art; but pleasure did not consist in having broken the code. Consonant with his naturalism, music was intrinsically delightful. He wrote, ‘Nam, veluti in lyra, cum graves voces respondeant acutis et mediae inter utrasque ad concentum intentae resonant, fit ex vocum varietate sonora et mirifica quaedam proportionum aequibilitas, quae maiorem in modum oblectet animos atque detineat; ita et quibusque reliquis in rebus evenit, quae quidem ad movendos habendosque animos faciant.’[33]

The age brought forth two great innovations: polyphony in music and perspective in painting. They had something in common. The perspective system allows variety and copiousness without confusion, and so does polyphony. Polyphony represents the crucial property of creation, its organised profusion. Quantity out of control in painting is clutter, or horror vacui: in music, it is cacophony. Alberti uses the words tumultuare and tumulto in Della pittura/De pictura of this horror vacui. In nature it would be Hell.[34]

______

Of course, it’s a zeitgeist-lich enthusiasm (we could gather examples – Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Fra Filippo, Benozzo. Alberti seems the obvious intermediary between Nicholas and Fra Angelico in the papal chapel), Alberti does seem to have made it part of his philosophic system. (Federigo says that architecture is the offspring of arithmetic and geometry; but we’d expect him to have something to say about music too. Is there evidence that he was interested in polyphonic music?)

Is there any chance that the programme was changed in 1436?   Robert Mode gives a precis of the various arguments about the dates of the panels. He favours Pope-Hennessy’s interpretation of a document (26.08.34) giving a date of 1434.(Adolescent Confratelli and the Cantoria of Luca della Robbia, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 68, No. 1. (Mar., 1986), pp. 67-71) Pope-Hennessy’s argument depends upon the side panels being worth seven-twelfths of the front ones. Unfortunately, he seems to be right. The front panels are about 1.7 times the side 35 to 60 (florins) is 1.71. Dufay didn’t get to Florence till 1435

Luca della Robbia’s Singing Gallery started off as a straight representation of Psalm 150. When the side panels with the singers ( so much more brilliant in style) were added the programme was amplified, or changed. The gallery became capable of accommodating a polyphony of voices; it was converted from being a general idea of musical celebration and praise into an imitation of what actually went on there. The components of the musical performance are spelled out punctiliously in the panel of the from of the Cantoria. If the side panels are also illustrative it would be of the last line: ‘Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD’. Luca has represented the universe of praise by the variety of voices; treble, alto and bass. Actually, the instrumental complexity of the front is also quite polyphonic.

Worth comparing with Luca’s end panels are the two in the Bode Museum, Berlin, in one of which angels are attending to the tuning of a lute and in the other choristers are singing, but in unison.

There’s singing in Fra Angelico’s Fiesole altarpiece, but diffidently.

Angels in the trees in Gentile da Fabriano’s Madonna and Cild with a Donor have a variety of instruments. They are clearly like birds with a variety of sounds/calls.

[Now, there is evidence from elsewhere that Alberti believed that there was an intelligent and a affective response to things, so that the learned and the unlearned were, equally, able to take pleasure and instruction from the historia. Was the final sensation before the historia like that at a polyphonic choral performance? (check Della pittura for musical analogies) Did Alberti intend a parallel? Of his ‘demonstrations’, in the Biography, it is said, ‘…et erant eiusmodi, ut periti imperitique non pictas, sed veras ipsas res naturae intueri decertarent.’ [73] Della pittura: L’opera del pittore cerca essere grata a tutta la moltitudine.(p.104, 62) See also p.68, 40]

See, at the end of Florence Cathedral section, ref. to P. Weiss, p.81: Alberti on the musicians in attendance at the service of 25.03.36

———————-

It is truly marvellous to relate how the whole surface of the earth exulted with joy and praise when the goddess first set foot on land. Never mind how exhilarated the breezes, the springs, the streams and hills became at the approach of the goddess! You could see flowers bursting out of even the roughest flint, smiling far and wide at the goddess as she went by, bending down to do her homage, and breathing out every fragrance to fill her path with sweet odors. You would have seen melodious birds flying around her applauding with painted wings and greeting the visiting gods with their song.[35]

Oh, my dear Microtiro, how greatly was sweet friendship ever to be prized! […] But, if it would please you, let us sit here among these myrtles – this place no less delightful than your vast theatres and most sumptuous temples. Here, raised by nature, columns as numerous as the loftiest trees that you see around. Above us, the sun, – we, shaded most delightfully by these beech trees and firs; and all around us, at every turn, you see the thousand exquisite colours of the flowers in their profusion, woven into the vivid green of the shadows, more intense more limpid than the sky; and to please you, the most ravishing fragrances. And then, the joyful celebration of the little birds that throng about you in their brightest and richest plumage – who could not take delight? So beautiful they are as, again and again, they come to greet me with their fresh songs raised to the heavens.[36]

Agnolo Pandolfini: And certainly this temple has in itself grace and majesty; and, as I have often thought, I delight to see joined together here a charming slenderness with a robust and full solidity so that, on the one hand, each of its parts seems designed for pleasure, while, on the other, one understands that it has all been built for perpetuity. I would add that here is the constant home of temperateness, as of springtime: outside, wind, ice and frost; here inside one is protected from the wind, here mild air and quiet. Outside, the heat of summer and autumn; inside, coolness. And if, as they say, delight is felt when our senses perceive what, and how much, they require by nature, who could hesitate to call the temple the nest of delights? Here, wherever you look, you see the expression of happiness and gaiety; here it is always fragrant; and, that which I prize above all, here you listen to the voices during mass, during that which the ancients called the mysteries, with their marvelous beauty.[37]

[The passage continues. I can’t think that it’s Alberti’s own view that only church singing is not irritating.] Che è a dire che tutti gli altri modi e varietà de’ canti reiterati fastidiano: solo questo cantare religioso mai meno ti diletta. Quanto fu ingegno in quel Timoteo musico, inventore di tanta cosa! Non so quello s’intervenga agli altri; questo affermo io di me, che e’ possono in me questi canti e inni della chiesa quello a che fine e’ dicono che furono trovati: troppo m’acquetano da ogni altra perturbazione d’animo, e commuovonmi a certa non so quale io la chiami lentezza d’animo piena di riverenza verso di Dio. E qual cuore sì bravo si truova che non mansueti sé stessi quando e’ sente su bello ascendere e poi descendere quelle intere e vere voci con tanta tenerezza e flessitudine? Affermovi questo, che mai sento in que’ misteri e cerimonie funerali invocare da Dio con que’ versiculi greci aiuto alle nostre miserie umane ch’io non lacrimi.[the Kyrie?] E fra me talora mi maraviglio, e penso quanta forza portino seco quelle a intenerirci. E quinci avviene ch’io credo quello che si dice ch’e’ musici potessero essortare Alessandro Macedone ad arme cantando, e rivocarlo in cena.

Niccola: Siete voi, Agnolo, in questa opinione che queste conversioni e coniunzioni di voci possino levare gli animi e imporre in loro vari eccitamenti e commozioni? Troppo sarebbe forza qui in Battista, se potesse con suoi strumenti musici adducere gli animi in qual parte e’ volessi. Goes on to question Plato’s view that nouva ragion di canti always causes public disorder. It might be an effect, but not a cause.

[a few pages from the end] A me aggradono alcuni altri rimedi forse non dissimili da questi, ma più degni e più convenienti a uno uomo moderato e constantissimo. E in prima mi piace quello omerico Achille, quale per requiescere dalle molte sue faccende militari solea sedare l’animo cantando insieme col plettro e colla lira, instrumento musico. Quinci credo el nostro Virgilio introdusse quel suo Polifemo in antro, quem

Lanigerae comitantur oves; ea sola voluptas

solamenque mali de collo fistula pendet.

E certo in questo convengo io colla opinione de’ pittagorici quali affermavano che ‘l nostro animo s’accoglieva e componeva a tranquillità e a quiete revocato e racconsolato dalle suavissime voci e modi di musica. E provai io non rarissimo questo in me, che in mie lassitudini d’animo questa dolcezza e varietà de’ suoni e del cantare molto mi sullevorono e restituirono. E proverrete questo voi, se mai v’accade: mai vi s’avvolgerà pell’animo e mente alcuna sì cocente cura che subito ella non si estingua ove voi perseverrete cantando. E non so come a me pare che ‘l cantare mio qualunque e’ sia, più a me satisfaccia e più giovi che ‘l sonare di qualunque altri forse fusse ottimo ed essercitatissimo musico. Né fu senza commodo instituto quel costume antiquissimo, qual poi interdisse el concilio arelatense, che le escubie funerali si vegghiassero cantando. Credo io così faceano que’ buoni antiqui per distorre l’animo da que’ tristi pensieri del morire. Ma a questi nostri religiosissimi forse parse più utile el ricordarsi d’essere uomo simile a quel morto; e parsegli officio più pio riconoscersi mortale e d’ora in ora caduco che darsi ad alcuna levità e lascivia.(electronic)

Most of all I praise the true and wise teachers who tell us that man was created for the pleasure of God, to recognise the primary and original source of things amid all the variety, dissimilarity, beauty and multiplicity of animal life, amid all the forms, structures, coverings and colors that characterise the animals. He was made to praise God together with universal nature, seeing in every living thing such great and perfectly matched harmonies of voice and verse and music combined in concord and loveliness.[38]

Nam, veluti in lyra, cum graves voces respondeant acutis et mediae inter utrasque ad concentum intentae resonant, fit ex vocum varietate sonora et mirifica quaedam proportionum aequibilitas, quae maiorem in modum oblectet animos atque detineat; ita et quibusque reliquis in rebus evenit, quae quidem ad movendos habendosque animos faciant(p.69).’ ‘Just as in music, where deep voices answer high ones, and intermediate ones are pitched between them, and they ring out in harmony, a wonderfully sonorous balance of proportions results, which increases the pleasure of the audience and captivates them; so it happens in everything else that serves to enchant and move the mind.’(I,9) {the church also waylays the passer-by]

?

Adovardo, analysing amicizia in Book IV of Della famiglia is like Brunelleschi in the Prologue.

Prologue

Book IV of Della famiglia looks like an enlargement (for harmony with the other books) of a core text (the short piece?)

Alberti refers to the musical consonance of the columniation of the façade of S. Francesco at Rimini (Il misure e le proportioni tu vedi onde nascono) (is it the arch and pier system, or is it what’s planned at the east end?)

Squarcialupi, organist at the Cathedral (1417-80)

So also in IX, 5: ‘…a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body…’

VII,3 In the Christian basilica, altar, choir and trbune are grouped together. Otherwise, the church consists of nave and portico.

Practical acoustics – the Curia – De re VIII, 9.

Disappointingly, I find no section of De re where he was thinking about choral singing. In the passage on the basilica and that on the curia it’s clear that he is alert to what’s required for the spoken voice to be effective.

Alberti’s association with the choir of SS Annunziata. Choral music was very important at SS Annunziata. (Note perhaps that the rotonda at S Francesco at Rimini could have been for choral purposes. Was there at choir at the Pantheon?) The controversy of the early 1470s concerned the choir

See Robert L. Mode Article on the Confratelli and Luca’s Cantoria in Art Bulletin 1986 (detail in Lady Day quotes).

Fra Angelico wanted us to hear all the instruments of the orchestra.

There’s a band to the right in the Solomon and Sheba panel.

The central of the three figures immediately behind Solomon is in profile, and looks like Alberti (at any rate the Matteo de’ Pasti version). There are other portraits in this panel, for example the turbaned man behind and up.

Profugiorum (127): Per gli orecchi, entra la sapienza

Quintillian has music, the soul and number connected (1.1.72)

De iciarchia: E’ Pittagorici filosofi soleano, prima che dormissero, componere la mente sua a quiete con qualche armonia musica. Cf. Alberti making us buildings late at night( Poss. Footnote to passage in Alberti’s Way of Thinking)

Thinking about acoustics – V,8 end. Vaulted spaces no good for singing etc. see also, his discussion of the echo-breaking effect of the cornice in the curia.

See Alberti Notes

Profugiorum, Bk III, p.58: E certo in questo convengo io colla opinione de’ pittagorici quali affermavano che ’l nostro animo s’accoglieva e componeva a tranquillità e a quiete revocato e racconsolato dalle suavissime voci e modi di musica. E provai io non rarissimo questo in me, che in mie lassitudini d’animo questa dolcezza e varietà de’ suoni e del cantare molto mi sullevorono e restituirono. E proverrete questo voi, se mai v’accade: mai vi s’avvolgerà pell’animo e mente alcuna sì cocente cura che subito ella non si estingua ove voi perseverrete cantando. E non so come a me pare che ’l cantare mio qualunque e’ sia, più a me satisfaccia e più giovi che ’l sonare di qualunque altri forse fusse ottimo ed essercitatissimo musico.

[1] Leon Battista Alberti, Opere Volgari, a cura di Cecil Grayson, Vol. II, Bari: Laterza, 1966, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p.109, lines 10-12

[2] See above, Post Mortem 1, note 4 [Ref. get]

[3] L.B. Alberti, L’Architettura, a cura di G. Orlandi, Introd. P. Portoghesi (Milano: Polifilo, 1966), Book VI, Chapter 2, p.447

[4] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.823

[5] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.823

[6] Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti: L’opera completa, Electa: Milano, 1986, p.133. fig 135

[7] Alberti, De re aedificatoria, IX, 4 and 5

[8] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX,7, p.837

[9] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.813

[10]Reneé Watkins, 1969, p.134: ‘Ma sopra tutte lodo quella verissima et probatissima sententia di coloro, e quali dicono l’uomo essere creato per piacere a Dio, per riconoscere un primo et vero principio alle cose, ove si vegga tanta varietà, tanta dissimilitudine, bellezza et multitudine d’animali, di loro forme, stature, vestimenti et colori; per ancora lodare Iddio insieme con tutta l’universa natura, vedendo tante et si differentiate et si consonante armonie di voci, versi et canti in ciascuno animante concinni et soave…’ Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.162, l.1786-1794. Here, I use Watkins’ admirable translation. There will be occasions below where I offer my own translation instead. I do so in order to allow myself slightly more paraphrased readings of the passages. My translations are identifiable by my omission of the page references to Watkins.

[11] Eugenio Battista, Il Mondo Visuale delle Fiabe, Congresso Internazionale di Studi Umanistici, V, 1960, Umaniesimo e Esoterismo, pp.291-320, contains Giannozzo Manetti’s Oration (Iannozii Manetti oratio ad clarissimum equestris ordinis virum Angelum Accaiuolum de secularibus et pontificlibus pompis in consecratione Basilicae Florentinae habitis incipit feliciter), pp.310-20: ‘Interea tantis tamque variis canoris vocibus quandoque concinebatur: tantis etiam simphonis ad coelum usque elatis interdum cantabatur ut angelici ac divini cantus mirium audientibus apparerent: adeoque audientium aures mira variarum vocum suavitate titillabantur: ut multum admodum ceu de syrenum cantibus fabulantur obstupescere videnture: quod in coelis etiam quot annis hac ipsa solemnissima die qua principium humanae salutatis apparuit ab angelis fieri non impie crederim…’(pp.317-18) This was evidently a polyphonic piece and therefore more likely the motet of Dufay, which would, in any case, make a fine accompaniment to the appearance of the pope within the church. Manetti is equally delighted by the singing at the elevation of the host, but it was probably plainchant for he makes no mention this time of various voices.

[12]Christine Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism, (O.U.P.: New York & Oxford, 1992, pp.5-6 (translation); ‘E certo questo tempio ha in sè grazia e maiestà: e quello ch’io spesso considerai, mi diletta ch’io veggo in questo tempio iunto insieme una gracilità vezzosa con una sodezza robusta e piena, tale che da una parte ogni suo membro pare posto ad amenità, e dall’altra parte compreendo che ogni cosa qui è fatta e offirmata a perpetuità. Aggiugni che qui abita continuo la temperie, si può dire, della primavera; fuori vento, gelo, brina; qui entro socchiuso da’venti, qui tiepido aere e quiéto: fuori vampe estive e autunnali; qui entro temperatissimo refigerio. E s’egli’è, come è dicono che le delizie sono quando a’nostri sensi aggiungono le cose quanto e quali le richiede la natura, chi dubiterà appellare questo tempio nido delle delizie? Qui dovunque tu miri, vedi ogni parte esposte a giocondità e letizia; qui sempre odoratissimo; e, quel ch’io sopra tutto stimo, qui senti in queste voci al sacrificio, e in questi quali gli antichi chiamano misteri, una soavità maravigliosa.’ Grayson, II, p.107. Smith discusses this passage extensively in the light of rhetorical models (pp.80-97). She is interested principally in its aesthetic content, whereas the present paper is mainly interested in its moral content and its particular imagery:

[13] Rykwert et al, p.305; Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.823: ‘Hi quidem numeri, per quos fiat ut vovum illa concinnitas auribus gratissima reddatur, hidem ipsi numeri perficiunt, ut oculi animus que voluptate mirifica compleantur.’

[14] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p. 107-8, ’28-17

[15] Grayson, II, De iciarchia, p.242, l.10-12

[16] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p.182, l.4-5

[17] Get Abbot Suger passage. Panofsky

[18] See, Alberti, De re aedificatoria, VII,3.

[19] Renée Watkins gives a useful summing up of scholarly opinion on the question of the text being an autobiography or not. She herself makes a persuasive case for its being autobiography. Studies in the Renaissance, edited by M.A. Schaaber, Vol.IV, New York, 1957, pp.101-112.

[20] R. Furbini & A. Menci Gallorini, “L’Autobiographia di Leon Battista Alberti”, Rinascimento, Vol.12, 2^nd Ser., 1972[? check], [pp.68-78] p.68

[21] Op.cit., p.69

[22] Op.cit., p.70

[23] Grayson, III, Della pittura, p.7

[24] See above, Post-mortem 1, note 5

[25] Furbini & Gallorini, p.68

[26] L.B. Alberti, Apologhi, a cura di Marcello Ciccuto, Milano,: Rizzoli, 1989, p.85

[27] Grayson, III, De pictura/Della pittura, pp.68/69, para 40

[28] Ibid.

[29] Alberti returns to the matter of painting lots of different things. In the Italian he writes only about copia but in the Latin, about varietas too. Op.cit., p.102/3, para 60.

[30] Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura [get]

[31] In De amore, addressing Paolo Codagnello, Alberti, having begun by considering pleasure and pain in relation separately to soul and body, contemplates them in alliance: ‘Forse ancora sarebbe chi dicessi alcuni altri piaceri essere insieme e all’animo e al corpo gratissimi, come udire da ottimi musici e poeti cantare in presenza le laude tue e di chi tu ami, vedere onorar te insieme e i tuoi pregiati e lieti.’ Grayson, III, p.251

[32] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p.107, l.27

[33] Orlandi, L’Architettura, I,9, p.69; ‘Just as in music, where deep voices answer high ones, and intermediate ones are pitched between them, and they ring out in harmony, a wonderfully sonorous balance of proportions results, which increases the pleasure of the audience and captivates them; so it happens in everything else that serves to enchant and move the mind.’(Rykwert et al, p.24)

[34] Grayson, III, De pictura/Della pittura, p.68/9, 40

[35]L.B. Alberti, Momus, Book I, p.41/43, para 40: ‘Dea ut primum appulit ad terras, mirabile dictu quantum universa terrarum facies plausa laetitiaque gestiret! Sino quid aurae, quid fontes, quid flumina, quid colles adventu deae exhilarati sint. Videbas flores vel ipso praeduro ex silice erumpere praetereuntique deae late arridere et venerando acclinare, omnesque suavitatum delicias, ut odoratissimum id iter redderent, expromere. Vidisses et canoras alites propter advolitantes circim applaudere pictis alis, modoque vocis deos hopites consalutare.’(p.40-42)

[36]Cecil Grayson, Teogenio, in Opere Volgari, Vol.II, 1966, p. 57-8: ‘O Microtiro mio, quanto fu sempre da pregiare la dolce amicizia! […] Ma sediamo, se cosi ti piace, fra questi mirti, luogo non meno delizioso che i vostri teatri e templi amplissimi e suntuosisimi. Qui colonne fabricate dalla natura tante quante tu vedi albori ertissimi. Qui sopra dal sole noi copre ombra lietissima di questi faggi e abeti, e atorno, dovunque te volgi, vedi mille perfettissimi colori di vari fiori intessuti fra el verde splendere in fra l’ombra, e vincere tanto lustro e chiarore del cielo; e a gratificarti suavissimi odori. E poi la festività di questi quali tu in presenza vedi uccelletti con sue piume dipintissimi e ornatissimi, a chi non dilettasse? Bellissimi, che d’ora in ora vengono con nuovi canti lodano i cieli a salutarmi!’ The preference is expressed for the natural over the artificial. Charon, in Book IV of Momus, expresses, several times, the same preference. He dispraises the theatre and praises instead the flower: ‘…shall I admire stones? Everything about a flower is beautiful and pleasing. In these man-made constructions, you won’t find anything wondrous apart from the wondrous extravagance of misplaced labour.’ (p.313, para 48) *(one wonders is he has S. Maria del Fiore in mind) (p….)

[37]Christine Smith, 1992, pp.5-6: ‘E certo questo tempio ha in sè grazia e maiestà: e quello ch’io spesso considerai, mi diletta ch’io veggo in questo tempio iunto insieme una gracilità vezzosa con una sodezza robusta e piena, tale che da una parte ogni suo membro pare posto ad amenità, e dall’altra parte compreendo che ogni cosa qui è fatta e offirmata a perpetuità. Aggiugni che qui abita continuo la temperie, si può dire, della primavera; fuori vento, gelo, brina; qui entro socchiuso da’venti, qui tiepido aere e quiéto: fuori vampe estive e autunnali; qui entro temperatissimo refigerio. E s’egli’è, come è dicono che le delizie sono quando a’nostri sensi aggiungono le cose quanto e quali le richiede la natura, chi dubiterà appellare questo tempio nido delle delizie? Qui dovunque tu miri, vedi ogni parte esposte a giocondità e letizia; qui sempre odoratissimo; e, quel ch’io sopra tutto stimo, qui senti in queste voci al sacrificio, e in questi quali gli antichi chiamano misteri, una soavità maravigliosa.’ Grayson, II, p.107. Smith discusses this passage extensively in the light of rhetorical models (pp.80-97). She is interested principally in its aesthetic content, whereas the present paper is mainly interested in its moral content and its particular imagery:

[38]René Watkins, 1969, p.134: ‘Ma sopra tutte lodo quella verissima et probatissima sententia di coloro, e quali dicono l’uomo essere creato per piacere a Dio, per riconoscere un primo et vero principio alle cose, ove si vegga tanta varietà, tanta dissimilitudine, bellezza et multitudine d’animali, di loro forme, stature, vestimenti et colori; per ancora lodare Iddio insieme con tutta l’universa natura, vedendo tante et si differentiate et si consonante armonie di voci, versi et canti in ciascuno animante concinni et soave…’ Romano, Tenente, Furlan, p.162, l.1786-1794. Here, I use Watkins’ admirable translation. There will be occasions below where I offer my own translation instead. I do so in order to allow myself slightly more paraphrased readings of the passages. My translations are identifiable by my omission of the page references to Watkins.

[1]

July 14, 2025
6.2 Alberti Architectural Impiety

[Palmieri (Vita Civile) and Alberti (Momus and elsewhere) express their opposition to salvation as humankind’s end. It is selfish. It is inconsistent with altruism, amicizia and love. To act for the sake of one’s salvation must surely be sinful. Salvation must not be the moving cause, though it may very well be the consequence of action that is for the sake of others. Christ’s own act is here to be imitated. The thinking is no different from Paul’s and Luther’s. Thus, Alberti can be thought a figure of the proto-Reformation.]

Alberti’s view of the Church was a critical one. The other thread that runs through his thinking about religion is philosophical. It is his doubt. He seems to have been sceptical of many parts of doctrine, and to have subscribed only to a very pared-down version of the religion. Moreover, that scepticism seems sometimes to have flirted with atheism. At first, it might seem that such thinking could only represent a crisis for a church architect. Certainly, such thought would seem to occupy the gap that is the subject of this book, that between the thought proclaimed and argued, and the built work. Hypocrisy can be the solution to the problem of being of two minds. It remains to be seen if, as a church architect, he betrayed his own philosophy.

In the absense of religion, does there remain any spiritual content to life? Or, is there a spiritual quality to life outside of or alongside religion? For Renaissance students of non-Christian culture, it became clear that the absence of ‘true’ religion had had no very deleterious effect upon spirituality. And moral life, which is the part of spiritual life that dwells among men, was as studied in pagan antiquity (to say nothing of the infidel present in Greece, Constantinople and the Holy Land) as in the Christian era. Alberti, the humanist, had evidence before him that made it impossible to draw a line between Christianity and paganism coinciding with a line between the moral and the immoral and between the spiritual and the godless. The Christian, the pagan and the secular existed on a plane now without the old divisions. The moral fabric extended in all directions, indifferent to them.

Alberti’s purpose was, very importantly, to undermine categorical rigidities, especially those which sustained a decadent religious institution and an over-wrought theology. The requirement for a dedicated architecture came from clergy and institution: architecture, as always, was an instrument of politics. A religion, however, that was truly congregational was not so architecturally demanding. As has been seen, Moses, the shepherd, created a temple out of the essential moral elements, congregation and protection. It had no permanent material existence. For Alberti, building provided for human beings conceived in their moral relations. And, reciprocally, architecture had moral elements, as will be seen below. The architectural and the moral were metaphorically exchangeable. So long as architecture embodied its moral elements it would serve no venal master.

Metaphor and simile were essential to Alberti’s moral representation of things. They enabled him to point out similarities between distant categories and, indeed, to question their integrity and self-sufficiency. A very good example to give an idea of the force of his use of simile and metaphor is to be found in an ostensibly simple statement in De iciarchia. He writes, ‘Conviensi presuponere che la famiglia sia un corpo simile a una repubblica composto di te, e di questo, e di tutti voi; e sete alla famiglia come innati instrumenti e membri di questo corpo.’[2] When he says that a family is like a republic, he makes it possible for matter that is relatively modest and close-to-home to stand for the larger state of things that is perhaps beyond the intellectual horizon of someone without wide education. Thus, via simile, the small can serve for the larger. Into the centre of the simile, Alberti inserts a metaphor. Both family and republic are bodies; and their parts are integral to the whole as is the case with bodies, as opposed to aggregate things. The metaphor carries an implicit assertion then, that families and republics are more than just comings-together of people; they are constituted according to some rule or other. Battista explains this property that belongs to bodies as opposed to aggregations, and therefore to families: it is interdependency: ‘…ène el vincolo insolubile in quale l’uno sustenta ed e sustentato dall’altro.’[3] Armed with this definition of the body in general, he is able to distinguish between the healthy and the unhealthy. He can thus extend the simile, likening the republic to the successful family and to the healthy body. The ‘corpo sano’ is then likened to the ‘nave ben composta’[4] which, because it navigates perilous waters in seeking port, gives to the republic and family a goal or destiny.[5] Wherever ships, families or republics appear in his writings, one of the categories carries the others in its shadow. Wherever there are bodies – buildings for example – their principles of cohesion coincide with those that prevail in the human relations of a family and the political ones of a republic.

When a metaphor reveals its own mechanics it is, in effect a simile. Adovardo in Book IV of De familia offers a moral-architectural one, with a telling quasi: ‘If, as Cicero wrote to his brother, the face and visage be [‘quasi’] the door of our spirit and entrance thereto, let it never fail to be open to all, liberal and public of spirit.’ [6]

Battista says, in De iciarchia, ‘E dicono che la prudenza si è un muro tutissimo, quale non si può con macchine prosternere, né con perfidia e tradimento superare.’ Its foundation is ‘la buona mente’.[7] The metaphor as again so plain as to be like a simile.

Alberti’s habit of using simile and metaphor means that the reader becomes alert to hidden metaphor.[8] That is, a discussion can function perfectly well within its literal terms; but a reader attuned to Alberti’s most insistent themes will find his metaphorical meanings applicable to the case. The terminology of the house and building, that comes so readily to Cicero’s and Adovardo’s minds, is used in this way. Metaphor is not so much hidden as made the object of a puzzling game in the Intercenales. For example, Templum sees the stones of the building’s foundation given animation. They rail against the laboursomeness and indignity of their task of upholding the superstructural elements, and rise up in revolt, with the result that the temple collapses. By the stones, the audience is to understand social inequality (and see the futility of simple rebellion). Hedera tells of ivy dislodging the stones of the temple. Probity itself, we understand, is prey to unrestrained rapacity. As has been seen, Momus had disguised himself as ivy, in order to break into the temple and rape Praise. Suspitio is about a plant growing on an altar, stifling the sacred fire lit there. So far, the image is architecturally and ritualistically possible. As allegory, its leaves and branches assault all who would attempt to restrain it. Only at the base of its trunk is it vulnerable, for it has no roots. Grasped low down, it may be taken from the altar and out into the light. Then it disappeared, for it was suspicion; it thrived in darkness and died in the light of candour.[9] These stories function as fables.

The basic parts of the church building furnished Alberti with moral correlative terms in De familia. He wrote,

Ma come non si dirà tempio né basilica perfetta quella struttura a quale tetto, che cuopra chi entro al sacrificio fusse dal sole e dalle piove, e sponde mancasse, quali parte difendano da’ venti, parte la tengano segretata dagli altri siti publici e profani, e forse ancora manchandoli e’ dovuti a sé ornamenti sarebbe edificio non perfetta né assoluto, così la amicizia mai si dirà perfetta e compiuta, a quale manchi delle sue parte alcuna. Né sarà vera amicizia se fra gli amici non sarà una comune fede e ferma e semplice affezione d’animo si fatta, ch’ella escluda e fuori tenga ogni suspizione e odio, quale da parte alcuna potesse disturbare la dolce fra loro pace e unione. Né io reputerò perfetta amicizia quella quale non sia piena d’ornamenti di virtu e costume; a qual certo cose chi dubita la sola per sé benivolenza non valervi, se non quando sia e conosciuta e ricambiate?[10]

It is an ambitious passage, in which Alberti nearly achieves an integration of the functions of a building’s parts with a moral structure for society and Vitruvius’s categories for architecture. The basilica or temple is composed of three elements; roof, walls and ornaments. Via simile, they represent moral roles for the building understood as an institution. The roof is a matter of architectural necessity, providing shelter from the elements, specifically rain.[11] It belongs in the category of firmitas. The walls are both necessary and socially functional. They too defend, this time against wind. But they also serve as a barrier between the sacred and the profane (not necessarily perhaps the religious and the secular). They are things of commoditas. Urban space could also function as a barrier between the sacred and profaneIn Book VII, Chapter 3, he wrote, ‘Demum, ubi templum colloces, esse oportet celebre illustre et, uti loquuntur, superbum, et ab omni profanorum contagio expeditum. Ea re pro fronte habebit amplam et se dignam plateam, circuetur stratis laxioribus vel potius plateis disnissimis…’ (Orlandi, p.549; Leitch, p.195) Walls and surrounding space have common purpose in segregating the temple. Alberti amplified his thinking about walls in Book VII, Chapter 1 of De re aedificatoria. The ancients, he notes, dedicated the walls of their cities to gods: ‘The walls were therefore considered particularly sacred, bacause they served both to unite and to protect the citizens.’ As for the city, so for the temple. The passage has served as preface to discussion of the temple: ‘Who would consider a temple as anything but sacred?’[12] It would be an innane question were the reader not discover there the idea of a social sacredness in city and temple. The idea of fitness or decorum is also present here. The ornaments that are appropriate to the building hint at its possession of venustas. In addition, they are the defining parts of the building whereby it is a basilica as opposed to one of another sort. Thanks to ornaments or venustas, the basilica stands in its own right over and above need or utility: it has its virtù. Adovardo has it that the basilica is like friendship. Amicizia too consists in three parts. That which is necessary – the roof so to speak – is a binding trust. Acting as a wall, keeping out what might damage friendship is a strong and simple affection. They are the effective means of maintaining peace and harmony, and resisting envy and hatred. Corresponding with ornament are the honest courtesies that friends make to one another. The basilica for Alberti possessed the means to foster true friendship of this kind, as he would later go on to show in De re aedificatoria. In Adovardo’s speech, morality, architecture and Vitruvius do not yet seem to be fitted with clockwork precision; but Alberti’s intention is clear to see – to establish the analogies. He used the metaphor of the roof as a moral protection in his late dialogue, De iciarchia. Battista was admonishing his young listeners: ‘…e addussi loro essemplo che mai sarà chi abiti non male se non pone il tetto, onde e’ seguiti che le perturbazioni de tempi nulla offendino, e alle estuazioni dell’ animo nostro ambizione e cupidità meno s’accendino.’[13]

The basilica or temple, for Alberti, represents amicizia because amicizia is able to flourish within it very readily. But amicizia flourished also in other architectural circumstances. That is, it is also to be found across the boundary between the religious and the secular. From his understanding of the practices of the Early Christians Alberti took encouragement to undermine the division. Christian morality is contiguous with domestic morality in light of the fact that the early Christians met in one anothers’ houses. There, they ate together. So the altar in the church and the table in the house were much more closely related in Early Christian and Albertian thinking than in later Christian ritual. Battista, in De iciarchia says: ‘Questo apparecchio e lautizie della mensa ha in sé venerazione, e quasi possiamo dire che la mensa sia come ara sacrata alla umanità, e che ‘l convito sia in parte spezie di sacrificio e religiosa comunione a confederarsi con fermissima carità. E per questo dire’ io che ne’ conviti de’ giovani e’ vecchi vi bisognassero in luogo del sacerdote, come per altro, sì etiam per ornamento del convito.’[14] Again, there is a quasi establishing the simile. Moreover, it makes the parallel a measured one. So, Alberti really does think that the pater familias is like the priest and does think that the familial social communion of the dinner table is like altar service in church, if the latter is properly conceived. When Adovardo’s statement is supplied with historical justification, it becomes clear that, for Alberti, the secular world does not derive moral and spiritual value from the religious, but the other way about: religion is reenactment, in abstracted conditions, of the virtuous part of the common life. Around the table, intercourse is frequent and virtuous. Later on in De iciarchia, Battista notes how, at table, a sort of media aurea persists. The young are less boisterous and the old are less grave. They adapt to one another: ‘Ecci al bisogno nostro questa adattezza competente e conveniente all’uno e all’altro, ch’e’ vecchi si ritrovino spesso co’ giovani in lieta familiarità, massime alle cene. Non so donde sia che questo trastullo del motteggiare in mensa concili tanta grazia e domestichezza.’[15] In claiming not to know how this conviviality, he invites the reader to offer an explanation. Along with the equality of fraternity, that almost exists at this table (for the monarchy of the pater familias oversees proceedings) these are the parts of amicizia as explained in Book IV of De familia.

The person who, in Alberti’s writings, exemplifies Christian virtue in the secular world of the family and the republic is his kinsman Giannozzo in De familia. In Book III, Giannozzo talks at length to young Battista and Carlo, with Lionardo often translating his pronouncements into loftier terms, about maserizia, the economic running of the family. As such an exemplar, Giannozzo embodies Early Christianity reborn. It is Giannozzo who perhaps most easily inhabits simile as a way of thinking, for the consequence of his virtue is that he evaluates all things in a moral light and therefore does not distinguish between the material and the spiritual, the particular and the general. He himself is a simple uneducated man, as he repeatedly tells his interlocutors. He does not deal in abstractions. Yet, when he considers worldly things they become transfigured into something nobler. When he says, ‘Vorrei tutti i miei albergassero sotto uno medesimo tetto, a uno medesimo fuoco si scaldassono, a una medesima mensa sedessono’[16], his concern is for the health of the household accounts because: ‘…a due mense si spiega due mappe, a due fuochi si consuma due cataste, a due masserizie s’adopera due servi…’.[17] However, in light of the passages taken above from De familia and De iciarchia, the hearth, the table and the roof are more than that -–nothing less than moral objects and instruments. Corresponding with Giannozzo’s material and moral economy, under Moses there was one people, one temple and one altar.[18] The roof is a shelter where people gather in familial terms in De iciarchia, III: ‘Questo simile uso di vivere insieme e ridursi sotto a un tetto si chiama familiarità’.[19] A family, he explains, is the number of men who do this. They are also ‘contenuti da un volere.’[20] The table sees the family coming together in cheerful communion. In De iciarchia, Alberti treats at length the domestic table, where the elderly are informal, jocund and, one could say, youthful in their conduct. Whilst normally the young and the old are different from one another in demeanour, they are much alike at dinner.[21] The picture of familial harmony around the dinner table, where the youth restrains its exhuberance and age puts aside its severity must resemble the early Christian communion. [Get. The quotation from De re needs to go in.)

As it were to emphasise the point, the converse brings bad results. Being fed at someone else’s table – ‘pasciuti non della cucina sua’- says Alberti in De iciarchia [22](II, p.237, l.30-31), makes people lack probity. To be a hanger-on at court is to eat another’s bread; to be idle and dishonest: ‘Pasconsi del pane altrui, fuggono la propria industria e onesta fatica.’ (De familia, Furlan, , p309, l.3425-26) The mensa is properly the place of moral instruction and correction. One’s instructors maintain some sort of vigilance, so that we always think of ourselves as being observed -–applauded and shamed for our conduct. The table stands for foresight. The food has to have been stored. Momus criticises Jupiter for not thinking ahead. He should do so ‘so that he won’t some day have to live off someone else’s table, as they say.’ ‘…sed sua praesertim sibi vivendum sit (ut aiunt) quadra.’ [23]

Giannozzo explains that the family needs to have have three buildings; a town house, a villa and a bottega.[24] Lionardo sums up, for Adovardo, what Giannozzo has talked of: ‘Molte più cose: in che modo alla famiglia bisogna la casa, la possessione, la bottega, per avere dove tutti insieme si riducano per pascere e vestire, e come di queste si debba esserne massaio.’[25] Living together is not just practical, and economically prudent, however. Adovardo, near the end of Book IV, connects living together in society with moral wisdom, for it is the expression of fellow-feeling: ‘E niuna cosa tanto par propria agli amici, dice Aristotele, quanto insieme vivere’.[26] In Profugiorum ab aerumna, Alberti advised insistently against solitude, the enemy of peace of mind.[27]

A character that Alberti invents who is the opposite of Giannozzo is Neophronus in the Intercenale, Defunctus. His case makes Giannozzo’s the clearer by contrast. Neophronus, in Hades, recounts to Polytropus the many betrayals of his memory that are going on on earth. Wife, children, household and kinsmen mourn publicly but rejoice privately in his death. It becomes clear that among his vices was miserliness. He hoarded rather than used money and goods when appropriate. Neophronus had placed a hoard, which he wants his children to have after his death, in a culvert. Polytropus chides him: ‘You thought your money was safer, not entrusted to a friend, but stored on public land … and exposed to accidents.’ He goes on: ‘Since men were created for men’s sake, who can fail to see that our human duty is to offer our friends and fellow citizens all the aid and assistance that we can. What shall we think of a man whose avarice or other folly leads him to hide away money which is essential to maintaining the bonds between men and societies? […] Besides, by what fault does it happen that friendship, the most sublime, holy and, desirable of human relationships, should be valued so little that you trust walls more than friends?’ He had said, ‘Ought we to believe that bricks afford more loyalty, counsel, and diligence, or a surer defense against misfortune than does a friend?’[28] Here, the equivalence of building and friendship is denied. If the bricks have more than a material reality, in fact a metaphorical one, within the story, they constitute the building formed by shared human purposes but by an impersonal institution. In any case, though, comparability is the basis of the point. In other words, the simile stands.

Giannozzo would never have acted so foolishly. The essential economic rule that he adheres to is that money should be spent at the proper time. Acting in a timely fashion is the skill of a good head-of-family. The paterfamilias corresponds with the able ship’s captain. His skill is that he is best-equipped to know how to do what is needed.[29] Wealth should not be frittered away on trivial things; neither should it be hoarded when it can be put to good use. Among its uses is the assisting one’s friends and making new ones. A very good example of the pattern of Alberti’s moral thinking, where actions and their moral promptings exist side by side (so that, where we observe the one, we are also to construe the other) and where building, money and amicizia are connected, is to be found in an exchange in De iciarchia: “Disse colui: ‘desidero d’essere ricco solo per murare e donare.’ Degna risposta. Acquistasi col benificare mediante el danaio amici e fama.”[30]( p.14 electronic) The leaps from donare to amici and murare and fama are rather long, but Alberti does not need to explain the mechanics of connection. And, the other way about: ‘Chi desiderasse richezze per non beneficare a persona, sarebbe peggio ch’una fera immanissima.’[31]

Through Giannozzo, Alberti expressed his important aperçu; that the world of practical affairs must be one in which all things seek to be useful. Money can become morally animated when it can produce labour and reward. Bricks and mortar can work to husband society reduced to its smallest numerical component, brothers bound in amicizia. Buildings can gather together families. And architecture can bind the republic in peace and harmony. Florence Cathedral could ‘cover with its shadow the whole Tuscan people’ in a gesture reminiscent of early Christianity and Mosaic Judaism.[32]

The description of Florence Cathedral in Profugiorum is very telling.[33] Alberti’s delight in the church is invested with delight in like things. Simile and metaphor offer him an elision of the virtues of the Madonna and Venus. Springtime and the joys of villa-living invest the place. The building represented liberalità. In its material soundness, it represented a quality that Alberti repeatedly lauded, the ability to endure. The Cathedral was very instructive for Alberti. The lessons that he derived from it he could apply elsewhere himself. An obvious example is the lieto and eterno church of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua. Eterno and lieto ought to be incompatible in architecture. They are not in the description of the Cathedral nor in the project for Sant’ Andrea.

In eliding the secular and the religious and setting them both upon a plane of moral judgement –in finding common cause between Giannozzo and church builders– Alberti evaded the debilitating effects of anti-clericalism and doubt. A religious revival looking to the early Christians would find a clergy not yet corrupted by self-isolating vice –mostly pride– and a faithful not yet in pursuit of individual salvation. His cultural revivalism, then, does not encounter a watershed where the pagan gave way to the Christian: the culture of the ancient Romans and of the early Christians is to be revived. Where the decline started was where religious pride and selfishness replaced humility and fellow feeling. In secular terms, the corresponding point must be where the pomp of empire replaced the frugality of republic.[34] If this, Albert is of like mind with Poggio Bracciolini who, in his dispute with Guarino da Verona in 1433, deprecated Julius Caesar and the empire he inaugurated as the usher-in of cultural (particularly literary) decline. Chronologies might not strictly fit, but Alberti’s moral narrative does not set historical change after the model of rigid categories. Simile and metaphor had always insisted that boundaries could be transgressed.

The table, for Alberti, signifies peace and amity.   Eating clearly separates the Intercenales. They’re intermezzi. If ‘table’ is to do with living together so are the intercenales. There is a literal and material – and necessary – sustenance. It has a counterpart at the level of virtù. First, it is moral, consisting in the emotion of conviviality; then it is intellectual. To find agreement is preliminary to acting in a politically considered manner.

Amicizia is a very prominent concept for Alberti; it is the name in the secular sphere for something equally important in the religious context. It also corresponds with a law of Nature, concinnitas, which, in turn, forms human artifacts. (Concinnitas is a principle of assembly of parts so that they combine harmoniously. All harmonious assemblies are good –specifically, the family, and the society. In this way, architecture again has its moral character.)

Here, the building is pressed to serve as a moral emblem. The question is, does the building, by, as it were, its own will, act morally? In other words, does the simile order architecture as readily as it orders morality? The passage shows that it was Alberti’s ambition that it do so. [This to go below; reciprocally, the building embodies moral values. Eg. The early Christian basilica and private house. To go further down; moral values themselves combined in an architectural way. As last, we can have an odd thing, an architecture-less architecture. It is made up of the harmonious interactions of societies.]

Early Christian use of the domestic place

Family – the building block of civilization

Domestic virtue – the base of Christian virtue

(the moral ‘little wooden hut’)

The common meal               Table

For the discussion of Giannozzo as a husband, see Intercenale, ‘Maritus’.

Furlan, pp.255-56: ’credete a me, niuno puo durare in alcuna buona fortuna senza spalle e mano degli altri uomini.’

Francesco Alberti (Lirici Toscani del Quattrocento a cura di Antonio Lanza) is pretty close to Leon Battista on lots of matters. Selfish piety is the theme of his sonnet (LXI). The metaphor is commercial. Christ has left in pawn his precepts and examples with his disciples, and we may redeem them. Piety without works is damnable: L’ore sanza essercizio son perdute… (p.97, Vol.I)

A measure of Alberti’s robustness of temperament is his writing of De pictura in the light of what Vergerio said in De ingenuis moribus. The latter notes that the Greek curriculum was letters, gymnastics, music and drawing. Alberti (and Vittorino) contradict him on his dismissal of drawing.

Judith Ravenscroft, ‘The Third Book of Alberti’s Della famiglia and its two Rifacimenti’. Italian Studies, Vol 29, 1974, pp.45-53.

On the equation of altar and hearth (making hearth into a unity in faith), see the Intercenale, Suspitio.

On the theme of the good husband not watching over his wife and restraining her freedom for fear of her going astray, see Marriage (p.146) in Intercenales. Cf De equo animante (it’s dedicated to Piero de’ Medici)

On the etiquette of standing and sitting, see Platina, Vita di Vittorino da Feltre, a cura di Giuseppe Biasuz, Padove, Editoria Liviana, 1948, p.34. Lodovico and his brothers never ceased to stand in his presence.

On standing and being seated, Cena familiaris:

Francesco    Per confirmare el ditto tuo, Altobianco mio padre spesso mi

              referiva che per darsi quanto e’ doveva simile a’ sua

              maggiori, mai volle essere veduto sedere in publico presente

              messer Antonio cavaliere suo fratello e gli altri, dei quali

              uno * qui dottore e nel numero de’ cherici con offizii

              publici in degnitˆ non ultimo; mai presente, non dico alcuno

              padre e capo di famiglia, ma pi*, presente Lionardo, o

              Benedetto suo fratello consubrino per etˆ maggiore, mai fu

              veduto asedersi. E cos“ noi tutti sempre rendemmo reverenza

              a’ maggiori come a’ padri, e cos“ loro amorono sempre noi

              come figliuoli. (see copy in this computer)

On the young uncovering their heads before their elders, De iciarchia, II, p.17.

See also the beginning of De iciarchia. ‘Adunque su in casa sedemmo presso al foco noi tre, e circa noi stettero que’ giovanni in pié.’

On the family being like a palace, an ornament of the city – De iciarchia (web. p3); ‘,,,nostri maggiori (Alberti) … quali edificorono queste nostre case, onestamento della famiglia nostra e ornamento di questa città.

Here’s another blood a sweat passage. It’s in De Iciarchia (10 electronic) Alberti warns against ‘cure amatorie’, a problem for young people: ‘Quelle cose per quali tutti gli altri espongono el sudore, el sangue, la vita per consequirle e conservarle, tu le getti, e perdi la roba, la liberta, la tranquillita dell’ animo, solo per essere grato, ossequente e subietto a una vile bestiola piena di voglie, sdegno e stizza.’

Sudore                       roba                            grato                           voglia

Sangue                       liberta                         ossequente                sdegno

Vita                             tranquillita                subietto                      stizza

Morality and architecture. In Profugiorum, we had Florence Cathedral, where una grazia gave rise to una gracilita vezzosa e amenita. In Book II of De iciarchia, Alberti requires that we have virtu or bonta together with buon costume. Buon costume is ornament to bonta (which is like concinnitas. He writes: ‘Diremo cosi: per la bonta l’omo constituisce e afferma in se vera e perpetua tranquillita e quietudine d’animo, e vive a se libero e, quanto sia in se, utile agli altri, contento de’ pensieri suoi, vacuo d’ogni perturbazione. E’ buon costumi forse sono corrispondenti alla virtu come alla sanita del corpo el buon colore, e sono quasi ormamento della virtu, e acquistano all’omo presso agli altri bona grazia.’(Bk.II, 2 elec). He goes on to another simile; buon costume is like the mature apple, with its full flavour and odour: ‘…cosi il buon costume innato con la matura perfezione della mente, cioe colla virtu, porge di se amenita e grazia.’ The terminology seems to be interchangeable. The garden is still present.

De iciarchia II, p.17: Gli altri (ie those who are not indifferent to blame) per acquistarsi buona fama e grazia esposero la roba, el sudore, el sangue…’

De iciarcha II 22: talks of the ‘mensa civile’. ‘Questo apparecchio e lautizie della mensa ha in se venerazione, e quasi possimo dire che la mensa sia come ara sacrata alla umanita, e che’l convito sia in parte spezie di sacrificio e religiosa comunione e confederarsi con fermissima carita.’

Fraternity. See de iciarchia, p.12, elec.

‘There followed the practice of our own times, which I only wish some man of gravity would think fit to reform. I say this with all due respect to our bishops, who, to preserve their dignity, allow the people to see them scarcely once in the year of festivals, yet so stuff everything with altars, and even … I shall say no more. Let me simply state that within the mortal world there is nothing to be found, or even imagined, that is more noble or holy than the sacrifice. I would not consider anyone who wanted to devalue such great things, by making them too readily available, a person of good sense.’ What could be worse than an excess of altars? All I can think of is, idols. Is Alberti implying that, where the example and spirit are absent, only mumbo-jumbo can be present? As is clear from the episode involving Stupor and the other gods in Momus, Alberti was alert to the problem of idolatry. Where there was imagery, there God was emphatically absent. But the provocation to the moral imagination was most dramatically present. The faithful person, like the observer of the historia, is morally responsible. It is out of my own goodness of heart that I rejoice and weep for others. The idea that the virtu of God should exist in the material representation is, for him, ridiculous.

In Theogenius, he wrote, «Licurgus, dicono, statuì in Sparta facessero alli dii sacrifici non suntuosi nè tali che non potessero ogni dì continuarli. E a’ prudenti principi si vuol dare non cose pregiate dalle persone idiote e vulgari…»[35] This was to contradict the position that allowed Gianozzo Manetti to give the following account of Nicholas V’s motives for church-building:

            The immense, supreme authority of the Church of Rome can in the first place be understood only by those who have studied its origins and developments through the medium of the written word. But the masses of the population have no knowledge of literary matters and are without any kind of culture: and although they often hear men of learning and erudition state that the authority of the Church is supreme, and lend their faith to this assertion, reputing it to be true and indisputable, yet there is need for them to be awestruck by grandiose spectacle, lest their faith, resting as it does on weak and unstable foundation, might with the passage of time be finally reduced to naught. However, the grandeur of buildings, of monuments which are in a sense enduring and appear to testify to the handiwork of our Lord, serves to reinforce and confirm that faith of the common people which is based on the assertions of the learned, so that it is then propagated among the living and in the course of time passed on to all those who will be enabled to admire these wonderful constructions. This is the only way to uphold and extend the faith so that, preserved and increased in this way, it may be perpetuated with admirable devotion.[36]

Manetti identifies reading and reasoning, speaking and persuading, listening and acquiescing, and listening, seeing and acquiescing as the forms of piety of the learned, the preaching and the congregation. The addition of spectacle to the words of the preacher strengthen religion among the illiterate.

Matthew (6:6) expresses a distrust of the spectacle of piety and implicitly of its theatre, the church:

          But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when

          thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret;

          and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

[1]

[2]Leon Battista Alberti, Opere Volgari , Vol. II, a cura di Cecil Grayson, Bari: Laterza, 1966, De iciarchia , Book III,p.267, lines 16-19.

[3]Ibid., l.25-26

[4]Grayson, II, De iciarchia, Book III, p.268, l.3-4

[5]Grayson, II, De iciarchia, Book III, p.266, l.7-11. Battista connects the family and the larger grouping in explicit terms: ‘Atto principio a questi ragionamenti sarà intendere qual sia proprio quella qual noi chiamiamo famiglia. Quanto m’occorre dalla natura, pare a me che la città com’è constituita da molte famiglie, così ella in sé sia quasi come una ben grande famiglia; e, contro, la famiglia sia quasi una picciola città.’ He goes on to draw parallels and differences.

[6]Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.367,ll.1213-16: ‘…se, come dicea Cicerone al fratello suo, el volto e fronte, quali sono quasi porte dell’animo nostro e adito, mai saranno a persone non aperte, e quasi publice e liberali.’

[7] Grayson, II, De iciarchia, II, p.224, l.33-35

[8] De equo animante is an example of a treatise which would be more interesting if it had more than its ostensible sibject. The Equestian statue is an emblem of command and government. Equestrianism in itself should be about the same thing, on might suspect.

[9] David Marsh, pp.63-64

[10]Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.377

[11] Alberti described the roof in similar terms in De Iciarchia. The interlocutor, Battista’s, speech is summarized: ‘…addussi loro essemplo che mai sarà chi abiti non male se non pone il tetto, onde e’ seguiti che le perturbazioni de’ tempi nulla offendino…’ Grayson, II, De Iciarchia, Book I, p.189, l.22-23

[12] Leach, p.190

[13] Grayson, II, De iciarchia, Book I, p.189, l.23-25

[14]Grayson, II, De Iciarchia, Book II, p.257-58, l.32-38

[15] De iciarchia, Book II, p.257-58, l.31-2

[16]Ibid., III,1235-1237

[17]Ibid., III, 1273-1275

[18] See above, Impiety 1, note 5, Exodus, 25-27 and 35-40, Samuel, 2:1, Chronicles, 1:17

[19] Grayson II, De iciarchia, III, p.266, l.21-22

[20] Ibid., l.20

[21] De iciarchia, III, p.275, l.24-32; see also II, p.219, l.1-5

[22] De iciarchia, II, p.237, l.30-31

[23] Momus, I, 19, p.16. Beggary is the consequence of lack of foresight. In this passage, Alberti gives clear indication of the meaning of his motto Quid Tum, for it has been Jupiter’s inability to think ‘what next?’ that encouraged him to give a dominating role in the universe to Fate and give the gift of Patience to humankind whereby he himself could be defeated. “How much more suitably the state of the gods could have been governed,’ says Momus, ‘if his [jupiter’s] plans had been pondered with greater care.’’O quam commodius cum deorum republica ageretur, si maturius pensitarentur.’

[24] Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.260

[25] Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.301

[26] Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.421

[27] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, for example, Book III: ‘Ma perché pare, quando siamo soli, meno possiamo non repetere e’ nostri mali, e quando siamo non soli, più troviamo da consolarci co’ e’ ricordi e ammonimenti di chi ne acolta, però mi piace quel precetto antiquo che in tue infelicità e miserie sempre fugga la solitudine.’ (p.181, l.6-10)

[28] Marsh, p.119

[29] Grayson, II, De iciarchia, III, p.268, l.31-32

[30] De iciarchia, I, p.210, l.13-15

[31] De iciarchia, II, p.227, l.21-22

[32] Grayson, III, Della pittura: ‘…ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti e’ popoli toscani…’p.8

[33] See above [passage at the beginning of Profugiorum]

[34] Alberti wrote of the Roman Republican virtue of frugality: «Cum haec ita essent, placuit regum potentissimorum amplitudinem cum vetere frugalitate coniungere…». .L’Architettura…, ed. cit., VI, 3, p. 455.

[35]Opere volgari, a.c. di C. Grayson, Vol. II, cit., p. 55

[36] Paolo Portoghesi,Rome of the Renaissance, translated by Pearl Sanders, London, Phaidon, 1972, pp. 11-12 (for the English translation). Eugène Muntz, Les Arts à la Cour des Papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, Georg Olms, 1983, pp. 337-338 (transcription from Ludovico Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Milan, 1734, III, 2, col. 949): «Romanae namque Ecclesiae auctoritatem maximam ac summam esse, ii soli intelligunt, qui originem et incrementa sua ex literarum cognitione perceperunt. Ceterorum vero cunctorum populorum turbae literarum ignarae, penitusque expertes, quamvis a doctis et eruditis viris, qualia, et quanta illa sunt, crebro audire, eisque tamquam veris et certis assentiri videantur, nisi tamen egregiis quibusdam visis moveantur, profecto omnis illa eorum assensio debilibus et imbecillis fundamentis innixa, diuturnitate temporis ita paulatim elabitur, ut plerumque ad nihilum recidat. At vero quum illa vulgaris opinio doctorum hominum relationibus fundata, magnis aedificiis perpetuis quodammodo monumentis, ac testimonis paene sempiternis, quasi a Deo fabricatis, in dies usque adeo corroboratur et confirmatur, ut in vivos posterosque illarum admirabilium constructionum conspectores continue traducatur; ac per hunc modum conservatur et augetur, atque sic conservata et aucta, admirabili quadam devotione conditur et capitur.» Cf. also, Torgil Magnuson, Studies in Roman Quattrocento Architecture, in «Figura», no. 9, Stockholm, Almquist & Wiskell, 1958, pp. 351-362.; Christine Smith and Josepf F. O’Connor, Buidling the Kingdom: Ginnozzo Manetti on the Material and Spiritual Edifice, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Arizona, 2006, p.482. See Carroll Westfall (In this Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti, Nicholas V, and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447-55, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974) for discussion of Nicholas’ thinking about art and architecture and the role of Alberti in framing his plans. Manfredo Tafuri (Ricerca del Rinascimento: principi, cittá, architetti, Torino, Einaudi, 1992, Chap. 2, «Cives esse non licere. Nicolò V e Leon Battista Alberti», pp.33-88), bringing together a large quantity of more recent scholarship, draws attention to differences between the purposes and thinking of Nicholas and Alberti.

March 30, 2025

Tag: books

11. inn Polyphony

6.2 Alberti Architectural Impiety