The idea of order: symmetry and decor in Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio and Cesare Cesariano treatises

• Grant number: 12/50162-4
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Start date: May 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Mário Henrique Simão D'Agostino
• Grantee: Mário Henrique Simão D'Agostino
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Before the precepts stated by Vitruvius in his De Architecture, architects from the 15th and 16th centuries, absorbed in requalifying the architecture and the city, perceive symmetry and decor as excelling premises that embodied the perfect order and beauty of nature in the edificatory. The search of their meanings, despite the obstacles placed by the treatises exegesis, discloses new judgments about the senses of order extolled at that age. Antonio Averfino, Detto iI Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Cesare Cesariano treatises consolidate and multiply the possibilities of macro and microcosmic associations with the divine ordo, already settled in the ancient source through the analogy with the “homo ad circulum and quadratum”. Congeners to decor, such symmetry and the reasons of the “homo bene figuratus” determine required expedients for adequacy and variety inherent in the veracious architectural praxis. (AU)