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Drawing Inspiration

Vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c.78-10 BCE), better known simply as Vitruvius, was a Roman architect and engineer of the 1st century BCE and author of a multi-volume treatise De Architectura ("On Architecture"), written around 27 BCE and republished during the Early Renaissance in 1486 influencing Italian Renaissance architects and artists.

Italian Renaissance architects based their theories and practices on Classical Roman examples. The Renaissance revival of classical Rome was as important in architecture as it was in literature. A pilgrimage to Rome to study the ancient buildings and ruins, especially the Colosseum and Pantheon, was considered essential to an architect’s training. Classical orders and architectural elements such as columns, pilasters, pediments, entablatures, arches, and domes form the vocabulary of Renaissance buildings. Vitruvius’ writings also influenced the Renaissance definition of beauty in architecture. As in the classical world, Renaissance architecture is characterized by harmonious form, mathematical proportion, and a unit of measurement based on the human scale.

During the Renaissance, architects trained as humanists helped raise the status of their profession from skilled laborer to artist. They hoped to create structures that would appeal to both emotion and reason.

Agrippa

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63 – 12 BC) was a Roman general, statesman, and architect who was an unwavering friend, son-in-law, and lieutenant to the Roman emperor Augustus. He was responsible for the construction of some of the most notable buildings in history, including the original Pantheon. Vitruvius was a Roman military architect and engineer during the reign of Augustus under the chief lieutenant and architect Agrippa. Agrippa laid the architectural foundations of the Roman Empire and Western Architecture. Agrippa was also the architect of the Basilica of Neptune, overhauled the Cloaca Maxima, built the theater in Ostia Antica, possibly the owner of the Villa Farnesina, and his ashes were interred in the Mausoleum of Augustus.

Vitruvian Man

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) a master of the arts, sciences, and everything in between, Leonardo da Vinci is often referred to as a “Renaissance man.”

Leonardo Da Vinci started with journals when he was 26 years old and continued to write an average of 3 pages a day producing well over 20,000 pages of notes and sketches spanning across 50 different notebooks related to whatever topics interested him – architecture, proportion, perspective, painting, philosophy, landscape, geography, geology and inventions, and other topics.

Leonardo drew the Vitruvian Man, known also as “The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius,” in 1492. Rendered in pen, ink, and metal point on paper, the piece depicts an idealized nude male standing within a square and a circle. ”The Vitruvian Man is based on De Architectura, a building guide written by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius between 30 and 15 BC. While it is focused on architecture, the treatise also explores the human body—namely, the geometry of “perfect” proportions—which appealed to Leonardo's interest in anatomy and inspired his drawing.

Ingeniously, Leonardo chose to depict the man with four legs and four arms, allowing him to strike 16 poses simultaneously. Intended to explore the idea of proportion, the piece is part work of art and part mathematical diagram, conveying the Old Master‘s belief that “everything connects to everything else.

Since 1822, the Vitruvian Man has been a part of the permanent collection of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy. As it's too fragile to be on display, the piece is rarely exhibited. However, even while concealed, the drawing remains a key part of their collection and, ultimately, one of the most important works of the Italian Renaissance.

 Brunelleschi

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) is widely considered the first Renaissance architect. Trained as a goldsmith in his native city of Florence, Brunelleschi soon turned his interests to architecture, traveling to Rome to study ancient buildings. Among his greatest accomplishments is the engineering of the dome of Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo). He was also the first since antiquity to use the classical orders Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian in a consistent and appropriate manner.

Although Brunelleschi’s structures may appear simple, they rest on an underlying system of proportion. Brunelleschi often began with a unit of measurement whose repetition throughout the building created a sense of harmony, as in the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Florence, 1419). This building is based on a modular cube, which determines the height of and distance between the columns, and the depth of each bay.

Alberti

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) worked as an architect from the 1450s onward, principally in Florence, Rimini, and Mantua. As a trained humanist and true Renaissance man, Alberti was as accomplished as an architect as he was a humanist, musician, and art theorist. Alberti’s many treatises on art include Della Pittura (On Painting), De Sculptura (On Sculpture), and De re Aedificatoria (On Architecture). The first treatise, Della Pittura, was a fundamental handbook for artists, explaining the principles behind linear perspective, which may have been first developed by Brunelleschi. Alberti shared Brunelleschi’s reverence for Roman architecture and was inspired by the example of Vitruvius, the only Roman architectural theorist whose writings are extant.

Alberti aspired to re-create the glory of ancient times through architecture. His facades of the Tempio Malatestiano (Rimini, 1450) and the Church of Santa Maria Novella (Florence, 1470) are based on Roman temple fronts. His deep understanding of the principles of classical architecture is also seen in the Church of Sant’Andrea (Mantua, 1470). The columns here are not used decoratively but retain their classical function as load-bearing supports. For Alberti, architecture was not merely a means of constructing buildings; it was a way to create meaning.

Donato Bramante

Italian architect Donato Bramante (1444-1514), Papal Architect for Pope Julius II, is known to have shared many ideas about geometry and construction with Leonardo DaVinci while both were working in Milan at the end of the 15th century. Both men were highly influenced by ancient Greece and Rome, specifically the writer Vitruvius, prescriber of proportion, and the work of Leon Battista Alberti, a writer, and architect who preceded Bramante and Leonardo.

The sacred diagram is exemplified in Bramante’s Tempietto, a commemorative martyrium in the courtyard of The Church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome, from approximately 1502. The Tempietto is perfectly circular in plan and the proportions of the dome in elevation hold both the sacred square and circle.

Andrea Palladio

Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) was the chief architect of the Venetian Republic, writing an influential treatise, I quattro libri dell’architettura (Four Books on Architecture, 1570; 41.100.126.19). Due to the new demand for villas in the sixteenth century, Palladio specialized in domestic architecture, although he also designed two beautiful and impressive churches in Venice, San Giorgio Maggiore (1565) and Il Redentore (1576). Palladio’s villas are often centrally planned, drawing on Roman models of country villas. The Villa Emo (Treviso, 1559) was a working estate, while the Villa Rotonda (Vicenza, 1566–69) was an aristocratic refuge. Both plans rely on classical ideals of symmetry, axiality, and clarity. The simplicity of Palladian designs allowed them to be easily reproduced in rural England and, later, on southern plantations in the American colonies.

Carlo Scarpa

Carlo Scarpa (1906 - 1978) was a virtuoso of light, a master of detail, and a connoisseur of materials. Today he is known as a 20th-century master of architecture. Scarpa was one of the second generation of Modern architects – however, as a son of Venice, he was sympathetic to that city's archaic culture, and made his name through a number of commissions and renovations in which he used Modern methods and spatial concepts to transform Venice, rather than crudely obliterate its ancient identity. He understood that the past is not dead and that we in the present must engage and intertwine with it.

Scarpa did not confine himself to Venice, however. Indeed, perhaps his most visited and famous work was the last he completed in his lifetime – the Brion Cemetery at San Vito D'Altivole, a small village not far from the Dolomite Mountains. It was Scarpa's task to devise an impressive memorial, with multiple features in the Modern style that was nonetheless respectful rather than overbearing. Between 1969 and 1977, he created a setting that was not only a fitting memorial but in its deployment of light, form, and space, also a place for the living to engage in contemplation. This is particularly evident in the magnificent meditation pavilion, set in a large square pool surrounded by a concrete wall and a band of colored tiles. It is painstakingly designed to guide our eye around its perfectly juxtaposed features – the ideal salute from one ingenious craftsman to another.