HARTAIXX2016-V012700

Summary

The Renaissance's first ideal city, Sforzinda, was conceptualized by architect and sculptor Filarete. His treatise, though unpublished, influenced urban planning with its eight-pointed star layout, inspired by Vitruvius's hygienic city principles. Filarete's design, featuring a central public forum, integrated institutions like a church, prince's palace, and judicial authorities, pioneering multi-focal urban planning. The city's diagrammatic imagination and cosmological intentions reflect a blend of ancient authority and forward-thinking societal structure.

Takeaways

• 🏛️ The first ideal city of the Renaissance was conceptualized by the architectural theorist and sculptor Filarete, who wrote an influential treatise on architecture.
• 📜 Filarete's treatise was never published but remained in manuscript form, impacting his generation and those that followed.
• ⭐️ The city, named Sforzinda, was designed as an eight-pointed star enclosed in a circle, reflecting the Vitruvian principles and the concept of a hygienic city.
• 🏰 The city's design was commissioned by the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, and Filarete used the treatise to imagine a city that honored his patron.
• 📖 The treatise unfolds as a fiction, with the narrative of an archaeological discovery of a golden book describing an ancient mythical city, serving as the model for Sforzinda.
• 🏗️ Filarete emulated the ancients by inventing an ancient authority to legitimize his design, highlighting the importance of illustration in a textual context.
• 📐 Sforzinda's layout features a walled circle with intersecting quadrangles at its center, showcasing a triumph of diagrammatic imagination.
• 🌐 The city plan is highly geometric but not integrated into the topography, suggesting an abstract approach to city planning.
• 🛣️ Canals and streets in Sforzinda converge on the city center, although this is not explicitly shown in the plan.
• 🏙️ The city's central core begins to show a multi-focal city planning approach, with institutions finding their place within the city fabric.
• 🌀 The city's design compares the shape of the cosmos to the ideal city, with the architect alluding to cosmological intentions in the city's design.
• 🏛️ Sforzinda's central core follows the ancient Roman model, featuring a public forum or market as the center of business, judicial affairs, power, and spiritual authority.
• ✝️ The city plan includes a central plan church, a prince's palace, market activities, a bank, and judicial authorities, symbolizing the institutions of society.
• 🏫 Filarete envisioned separate schools for boys and girls, showing forward-thinking in educational planning.
• 🏢 The 'House of Vice and Virtue' represents Filarete's interest in the perfection of the citizenry and the importance of morality in society.
• 🎨 The illustrations in the treatise attempt perspective but combine and confuse multiple visual conventions, showing an approximation rather than a systematic approach.

Q & A

Who is Filarete and what was his contribution to Renaissance architecture?

Filarete was an architectural theorist and sculptor during the Renaissance period. He invented the concept of an ideal city, Sforzinda, through a treatise on architecture that, although unpublished, was highly influential in his time and for future generations.

What is the significance of the eight-pointed star in Filarete's city design?

The eight-pointed star in Filarete's city design symbolizes the Vitruvian principles of addressing the eight prevailing winds, suggesting a hygienic city layout that is counteracted by alternating streets and canals.

What was the context for Filarete's treatise on architecture?

Filarete was employed by the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, during the 1460s. The treatise was a fictional narrative in which the Duke asked Filarete to design a city that would honor him, hence the name Sforzinda.

What is the concept of 'mise-en-abîme' mentioned in the script?

The 'mise-en-abîme' is a literary device where a story within a story is used, creating a 'book within a book' scenario. In Filarete's treatise, an archaeological discovery of a golden book describing an ancient mythical city serves as a model for Sforzinda's planning.

How did Filarete use illustrations to support his architectural principles?

Filarete used illustrations as a means to carry and illustrate the principles of his design. The images served to visually communicate the abstract concepts and the relationship between architecture and its visual codes.

What is the significance of the walled circle and intersecting quadrangles in Sforzinda's design?

The walled circle enclosing intersecting quadrangles at the center of Sforzinda's design represents a highly geometric plan that is not integrated into the topography, suggesting an abstract, idealized city layout.

How does Filarete's city plan reflect the ancient Roman model of the public forum?

The central core of Sforzinda's plan, which includes a main piazza and smaller squares, follows the ancient Roman model of the public forum or market, serving as the center for business, judicial affairs, power, and spiritual authority.

What is the significance of the three squares in the layout of Sforzinda's city center?

The three squares in the city center symbolize the different institutions of society: the central one for spiritual authority with a central plan church, the northern one for judicial authorities, and the southern one for economic activities like markets and banking.

Why did Filarete envision separate schools for boys and girls in his city?

Filarete envisioned separate schools for boys and girls as a forward-looking idea, reflecting his interest in the perfection of the citizenry and the importance of education in shaping virtuous individuals.

What is the 'House of Vice and Virtue' and how does it relate to Filarete's concept of morality?

The 'House of Vice and Virtue' is a building designed by Filarete to emphasize the importance of morality in the social body. It functions on the principle of ascension, moving from the mundane to the intellectual, culminating in an astronomical observatory.

How does the drawing of the 'House of Vice and Virtue' attempt to use perspective?

The drawing attempts to use perspective in an approximation rather than a systematic or mathematically determined way. It combines multiple visual conventions, such as a plan circle on the ground floor, a section cut through the building, and a perspectival elevation of the tower.