CHAPTER XVIII¶
How Stonemasons and Sculptors Are Highly Commended for Placing the Regular and Dependent Polyhedra in Their Works, and How Phidias Placed the Icosahedron in the Temple of Ceres in Rome.
Having discoursed sufficiently for your needs, beyond all that we have said above, I remind you that your architectural and sculptural works will win the highest praise if, wherever it seems fitting to you, you place as a base, capital, finial, or ornament some of those mathematical bodies of ours (qualcuno de quelli nostri corpi mathematici, Plates I–LIX), which I have so often shown you in physical three-dimensional models!
Even though our Vitruvius makes no particular mention of these polyhedra, nevertheless they will bring the noblest commendation to your craft: for not only will they adorn the building to the eye, but they will offer deep matter for contemplation to learned men and philosophers (ali docti e sapienti daranno da speculare), seeing that they are always constructed with that Divine Proportion having a mean and two extremes!
Phidias’s Icosahedron in the Temple of Ceres in Rome (Read at the House of Baron Mario Mellini)
Indeed, I remember reading in Rome, in the house of my patron the Roman baron Messer Mario Mellini (in casa del mio Miser Mario Melini baron romano), in certain ancient Roman annals, how Phidias (Fidias), the supreme sculptor of antiquity, wrought a certain work in the Temple of Ceres in the district of the Circus Maximus in Rome (in Cerchi contrada de Roma nel tempio de Cerere), in which he placed the fourth regular body called the Icosahedron (Ycocedron), the figure of Water!
And the annals recorded that the philosophers praised that icosahedron above all else, and stopped to contemplate it longer than any other part of the entire temple, even though the rest of the work was also of supreme excellence!
Of these mathematical bodies made by my own hand, you have examples in the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome (in Cancellaria a Roma), in Florence [at the Palazzo Vecchio of Piero Soderini], and many here in Venice. Thus the very same praise will always be spoken of you if you incorporate some of them into your portals, capitals, friezes, and monuments, fashioning them according to the geometric canons I have taught you in this book!