CHAPTER XI — Critical Commentary & Notes

On the Origin of the Letters of Every Nation, Egyptian Hieroglyphs on Roman Obelisks, the Anecdote on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and Tribute to the Late Cardinal Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere.

Historical & Mathematical Commentary

  • Egyptian Hieroglyphs Before the Pantheon: During the 15th and early 16th centuries, before Pope Clement VII and later Sixtus V moved them, the Piazza della Rotonda in front of the Pantheon contained an ancient Roman porphyry basin/sarcophagus (later reused by Clement XII as his tomb in the Lateran) flanked by two Egyptian black granite lions of Pharaoh Nectanebo I (now in the Museo Gregoriano Egizio at the Vatican) and a small Egyptian obelisk of Ramesses II (now at the Piazza della Rotonda fountain) covered in hieroglyphs! Pacioli's keen visual inventory of the hieroglyphic signs (feathers, knives, animals, sandals, birds, ewers) on Folio 0076 (f. 30v) reflects the intense Renaissance humanist fascination with Egyptian hieroglyphs (Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, printed by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1505, and Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 1499).

  • Cardinal Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere (1471–1507): Favorite nephew of Pope Julius II, appointed Cardinal Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli and Vice-Chancellor of the Roman Church in 1503–1505, and Bishop of Vicenza. His sudden death in Rome on September 11, 1507 at age 35 deprived Pacioli of his chief curial patron just as Pacioli was preparing his 1508–1509 Venetian publications (the 1508 lecture on Euclid Book V at San Bartolomeo di Rialto, the 1509 Latin edition of Euclid’s Elements, and the 1509 De Divina Proportione).

Constantin Winterberg’s Commentary (1889 Edition)

  • Winterberg Footnotes 1–2 (Arch. Cap. XI, p. 316): (1) Namely, the geometric figures in Euclid (scil. die geometrischen Formen im Euklid). (2) Read rimasi for the dialectal form romase. (Winterberg Fussnoten 1–2 (Arch. Cap. XI, S. 316): 1) scil. die geometr. Formen im Euklid. 2) romase wohl rimasi.)

Philological and Folio Apparatus

  • 1509 Paganini Witness Folios: 0076 (f. 30v–f. 30v)

  • Winterberg 1889 Italian Source: winterberg/02_architectura_italian/011_cap_XI.txt

  • Winterberg 1889 German Source: winterberg/04_architectura_german/011_cap_XI.txt

  • Marginal Woodcut Diagrams: 0 figure(s) extracted from the 1509 Venice witness.