CHAPTER VIII¶
Where Columns Most Duly Made by the Ancients and Moderns Are Found Today in Italy, Critique of Leon Battista Alberti, and the Most Perfect Column in Venice at the Ca’ Grande (Frari).
I cannot fathom, my dearest disciples, why our fellow countryman Leon Battista Alberti of Florence (Leonbatista de li Alberti Fiorentino)—with whom I lived for many, many months in nurturing Rome during the pontificate of Pope Paul II Barbo of Venice, in his own house and at his own table and expense, always treated most generously by him (con lo quale più e più mesi nell’alma Roma al tempo del pontifice Paulo Barbo da Vinegia in proprio domicilio con lui a sue spese sempre ben tractato)—a man truly of the greatest perspicacity and learning in humanity and rhetoric, as appears from the lofty style of his work on Architecture (De re aedificatoria), failed in that work to observe the moral precept that bids every man contend for the honor of his homeland (pro patria)!
1. Critique of Alberti’s Italico More vs. Vitruvius’s Toscanico More
Instead of praising our native Tuscany (Toscana) at least with a word, Alberti largely extinguished the architectural honor attributed to her by others: for whereas Vitruvius in many places of his book magnifies Tuscany both for its columns and for other parts of temples—praising columns adorned Tuscanico more (“in the Tuscan manner”) and writing ut in Tuscanicis apparet (“as appears in Tuscan temples”)—our Leon Battista in those very passages substitutes Italico more, calling them Italic and never Tuscan! Truly this fills me with astonishment, seeing how greatly he and his family were always honored by Tuscany; wherefore I say to him with St. Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 11:17): Laudo vos, sed in hoc non laudo (“I praise you, yet in this I praise you not”)!
2. Critical Survey of Ancient and Modern Columns Across Italy: Florence, Naples, Pisa, Rome, and Venice
Just as Vitruvius, whenever a certain architectural feature was not to be found in Rome, openly wrote Sed Romae tale genus non habetur, sed Athenis vel alibi (“At Rome, however, this kind is not found, but at Athens or elsewhere”), so I shall tell you truthfully where the best-proportioned columns—both modern and ancient—are to be seen in Italy today:
Florence and Naples — Lorenzo de’ Medici, Giuliano da Maiano, Brunelleschi, and Michelozzo: In Florence I find this art of Architecture magnified above all other cities, especially since Lorenzo the Magnificent (el Magnifico Lorenzo de’ Medici) began to delight in it! He was himself most skilled in making architectural models—as I witnessed firsthand from a model that he fashioned with his own hands and gave to his intimate friend Giuliano da Maiano (Giuliano da Magliano) for the magnificent palace of Poggio Reale (detto Dogliuolo) in the city of Naples, where I was residing at that time [c. 1489] with our Catano Catani of Borgo Sansepolcro and many other merchants of our town. Today, whoever wishes to build well anywhere in Italy or abroad immediately turns to Florence for architects! Go through Florence and its surrounding villas, and you will find no buildings in Italy constructed with such diligence:
In Santa Croce, our Franciscan convent, at the Pazzi Chapel / Chapter House (al capitolo), you will find columns most worthily disposed in complete symmetry with every other part of that chapter house, one of the noblest buildings in Italy;
In Santo Spirito, a modern church [by Filippo Brunelleschi], there are many well-proportioned and admirably disposed columns;
And surpassingly, beyond all comparison, in the magnificent and ornate church under the patronage of the House of Medici, San Lorenzo [by Brunelleschi], which among all modern churches built in Italy in our day has no peer (non ha pare, ceteris paribus), where numerous columns are set with every law of symmetry and proportion!
Pisa — The Duomo: In the Cathedral of Pisa (nel Domo de Pisa) there are also fine columns, although they are of diverse kinds bunched together like a reed-brake (factone vn canneto), showing clearly that they were brought there as spolia from diverse ancient buildings.
Rome — The Pantheon, Old St. Peter’s, San Paolo fuori le Mura, and the Solomonic Columns:
In Rome, the giant columns standing in the portico before the Pantheon, though of stupendous mass (de grandissima mola), do not observe the exact ratio of height to their bases and capitals required by a strict judge of the art; and the same is said of many in St. Peter’s and San Paolo fuori le Mura (Sancto Paulo extra muros).
As for the twisted vine-scroll columns (facte a vite) standing before the high altar of St. Peter’s, which were brought from Jerusalem out of Solomon’s Temple—one of which possesses immense miraculous power against evil spirits (la Colonna Santa), as I have seen many times, because our Savior Jesus Christ leaned against it and touched it with His most holy hands—no fixed rule is given for their spiral twisting (viticcio), which may be made narrower or wider at the pleasure of the eye, but only for their overall height, base, and capital.
Venice — Piazza San Marco vs. the Single Most Perfect Column in Italy at the Frari (*La Ca’ Grande*):
The two great columns standing on the Piazzetta in Piazza San Marco in Venice, though huge and thick, do not observe true Vitruvian symmetry, for if you examine them closely, they taper too sharply toward the top (tendano fortemente in aguzzo e pontito).
The Most Perfect Column in Italy: But I declare to you openly that nowhere in all of Italy have I ever seen—nor do I believe there exists today—a more perfectly proportioned round column in its shaft, entasis, and capital (save only that it does not stand upon its own proper base, having been set upon an upside-down capital, in su vno capitello roverso, as it was doubtless brought from elsewhere) than the one standing here in the city of Venice in the Chapter House of the Second Cloister of our Convent of the Friars Minor, called the Ca’ Grande [Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari], where the sacred doctors lecture! When you come to Venice, I know it will not weary you to go and measure it with your cord and instruments, just as I myself did these past days with several of my disciples!