Early Renaissance Architectural Theory and Practice in Antonio Filarete's Trattato Di Architettura

* This study was carried out with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship in Italy, 1956–1958 and supplementary grants from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Brief extracts of this article in Italian appeared in the Bollellino tecnico degli architetti della Toscana, 1958, no. 3/4, pp. 13–16. I am grateful to Dr. Bernard Degenhart, Munich, for his aid in procuring a photograph of the Pisanello drawing in Paris. Mr. Francis Booth of the Department of Architecture, Carnegie Institute of Technology, executed the line drawings.

Abstract

DISCUSSIONS of architectural theory in the fifteenth century usually begin and end with Leon Battista Alberti. His polished humanist Latin, the meticulous organization and scope of details, the sweep of architectural visions and aesthetic convictions of De re aedificatoria has excited and fascinated generations of scholars. Next to such exalted music, Antonio Filarete's attempt at architectural theorizing appears to be not only later and lesser, but rather grotesque, if occasionally amusing fiddling. Characteristic of its position within the Quattrocento spectrum is the fact that Antonio's Trattato di Architettura, written in the late 1450's and early 1460's, has yet to receive a definitive edition.¹ However, while the De re aedificatoria tells us much about Alberti, it is a poor primer of architectural theory and practice as it actually existed in the Early Renaissance. That Alberti's own buildings have only a remote relationship to his stated theoretical views, is a symptom of this discrepancy.