Vitruvian
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Latin Marcus Vitruvius Pollio; c. 80 BC-70 BC-15 BC) was an architect, Roman writer, engineer and treatise writer of the I century a. C.
Biography and work
He was an architect for Julius Caesar during his youth and upon retiring from service, he entered civil architecture, his only known work being from this period, the Basilica of Fanum (Italy). He is the author of the oldest surviving treatise on architecture and the only one from Classical Antiquity, De Architectura , in 10 books (probably written between 27 BC and 23 BC)..). Inspired by Hellenistic theorists –it expressly refers to the inventions of the great Ctesibius–, the work deals with orders, materials, decorative techniques, construction, types of buildings, hydraulics, colours, mechanics and gnomonics (Book IX).
The last book is dedicated to machines: traction machines, water lifts and all kinds of war devices (catapults, crossbows, turtles, etc.). Vitruvius described the waterwheel very well in ch. X.5. Vitruvio's wheel was vertical and the water pushed it from below; some gears had the purpose of changing the direction of rotation and increasing the speed of the grinding wheels; It is estimated that with the energy produced by one of these wheels, 150 kg of wheat could be ground per hour, while two slaves only ground 7 kg.
De Architectura, known and used in the Middle Ages, was first printed in Rome in 1486, an edition by the humanist and grammarian Friar Giovanni Sulpicio de Veroli, offering the Renaissance artist, imbued with admiration for the virtues of classical culture so typical of the time, a privileged channel through which to reproduce the architectural forms of Greco-Latin antiquity. Subsequently, it was published in most countries and still today constitutes an irreplaceable documentary source, also for the information it provides on Greek and Roman painting and sculpture. The famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, the Man of Vitruvio, on the proportions of man is based on the indications given in this work. The drawing is now kept in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice. The great rediscoverer of Vitruvio was Petrarch, and after the dissemination by the Florentine of the work of this classical author, it can be affirmed that Vitruvio laid the foundations of Renaissance architecture.
The images that illustrate the work of Vitruvius, in his editions up to the XVIII century, not only clarify and embellish the Greco-Roman treatise, but are an expression of different intentions and uses that this book has had in European modernity.
Lucio Vitruvio Cerdón, an architect of uncertain times, could have been a freedman of his family.
De Architectura libri decem (De architecture) by Vitruvius
Vitruvius is the author of De architectura, known today as The Ten Books of Architecture, a treatise written in Latin and ancient Greek about architecture, dedicated to the Emperor Augustus. In the preface to Book I, Vitruvius dedicates his writings to giving personal knowledge of the quality of the buildings to the emperor. Vitruvius probably refers to Marcus Agrippa's campaign of public repairs and improvements. This work is a great book and the only survivor of the architecture of classical antiquity. According to Petri Liukkonen, this text "profoundly influenced artists from the early Renaissance onwards, as well as thinkers and architects, including Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo. (1475-1564)." The next important book on architecture was Alberti's reformulation of the Ten Books, which was not written until 1452.
Vitruvius is famous for stating in his book De Architecture that certain public buildings must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas – that is, they must be solid, useful, beautiful These qualities are sometimes called the Vitruvian virtues or the Vitruvian Triad. Since the 17th century, this Triad has been used to describe architecture in general, although the Vitruvian description of the discipline is very different.
According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature. Just as birds and bees build their nests, humans build homes out of natural materials, which give them shelter from the elements. To perfect this art of construction, the Greeks invented the architectural orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. They were given a sense of proportion, culminating in an understanding of the proportions of the greatest work of art: the human body. This led Vitruvius to define a canon of the human body, the Vitruvian Man, later adopted by Leonardo da Vinci: the human body inscribed in the circle and the square (the fundamental geometric patterns of the cosmic order).
Vitruvius is sometimes loosely regarded as the first architect, but it is more accurate to describe him as the first Roman architect to write surviving records of his field. He himself cites older works, but less complete. He was at least an original thinker or had the creative intellect of a codifier of existing architectural practice. It should also be noted that Vitruvius had a much broader scope than modern architects. Roman architects practiced a wide variety of disciplines; in modern terms, they could be described as the combination of engineers, architects, landscape architects, artists, and craftsmen. Etymologically, the word architect derives from the Greek words meaning "teacher" and "builder". The first of the ten books deals with many topics that now fall within the realm of landscape architecture.
Roman technology
Books VIII, IX, and X are the basis for much of what we know about Roman technology, now augmented by archaeological studies of extant remains, such as the watermills at Barbegal, France. The other major source of information is the Historia Naturalis compiled by Pliny the Elder much later, in AD 75.
Machines
The work is important for describing the different machines used for engineering structures, such as hoists, cranes, and pulleys, as well as war machines, such as catapults, crossbows, and siege engines. As a practicing engineer, Vitruvius should be speaking from personal experience rather than simply describing the works of others. He likewise describes the construction of sundials and waterdials, and the use of an aeolipile (the first steam engine) as an experiment to demonstrate the nature of atmospheric (wind) air movements.
Aqueducts
His description of the construction of an aqueduct includes the manner in which they are recorded and the careful choice of materials needed, though Frontinus (a general who was appointed at the turn of the I to manage Rome's many aqueducts) would describe them a century later, in much more detail about the practical problems involved in construction and maintenance. Surely, Vitruvius's book would have been of great help in this. Vitruvius wrote this in the I century BCE. C., when many of the best Roman aqueducts that survive to this day were built, such as those of Segovia or Pont du Gard. The use of the inverted siphon is described in detail, along with the problems of high pressures developed at the base of the siphon tube, a practical problem with which he seems to be familiar.
Materials
Vitruvius describes many different building materials used for a wide variety of different structures, as well as details such as stucco paint. Concrete (concrete) and lime receive profound descriptions, the longevity of many Roman structures being silent testimony to the Romans' skill in construction materials and design.
Vitruvius is well known and often cited as one of the oldest surviving sources for advising that lead should not be used to conduct drinking water, recommending instead clay pipes or masonry channels. He comes to this conclusion in Book VIII De Architecture after empirical observation of the apparent illnesses of the workers in the lead foundries of his time.
Vitruvius was the one who told us the famous story of Archimedes and his detection of adulterated gold in a royal crown. When Archimedes realized that the volume of the corona could be measured exactly by the displacement created in a water bath, he ran into the street shouting Eureka!, and the discovery allowed him to compare the density of the corona of pure gold. He demonstrated that the gold in the crown had been alloyed with silver, and the king had been deceived.
Dewatering machines
Describes the construction of the Archimedean screw in Chapter X (without mentioning Archimedes by name). It was a widely used device for raising water to irrigate fields and drain mines. Other water-lifting machines he mentions are the endless bucket chain and the reverse drain wheel. These remains of water wheels used for lifting water were discovered when old mines were reopened at Rio Tinto in Spain, Rosia Montana in Romania and Dolaucothi in West Wales. The Rio Tinto wheel is now on display in the British Museum, and the Dolaucothi specimen in the National Museum of Wales.
Surveying Instruments
Vitruvius must have been skilled in the art of surveying, and this is shown by his descriptions of surveying instruments, especially the water level or chorobates, which he compares favorably with the groma, a plumb-bob device. They were essential in all construction operations, but especially in the construction of aqueducts, where a uniform gradient was important for the provision of a regular supply of water without damaging the canal walls. He also developed one of the first odometers, consisting of a wheel of known circumference that dropped a stone into a bowl at each rotation.
Central heating
Describes many innovations introduced in the design of buildings to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants. The most important of these is the development of the hypocaust, a type of central heating, where air heated by a fire was channeled under the floor and inside the walls of public baths and villas. He gives explicit instructions on how to design these buildings to maximize fuel efficiency, such as the caldarium should be next to the tepidarium followed by the frigidarium. He also advises on the use of a type of damper to control heat in hot rooms, a bronze disc fixed in the ceiling below a circular opening that could be raised or lowered by a pulley to adjust the ventilation. Although it does not suggest it, it is likely that its drainage devices, such as the reverse-pitch waterwheel, were used in the larger baths to raise water to header tanks at the top of large baths, such as the Baths of Diocletian and those of Caracalla.
Rediscovery
The false legend, repeated so many times, that the book De architectura was rediscovered in 1414 by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini in the Montecassino library cannot be sustained today. During the year 1414, Bracciolini remained in the city of Constanza and it was probably not until 1416 that he found Vitruvio's Harleianus codex, then kept in the library of the monastery of San Gall, but this was not a rediscovery of the work, since during the In the Middle Ages, many manuscripts of the Vitruvian treatise were written, which were known in 1416. In fact, as early as the XIV century the early Italian humanists Petrarch and Boccaccio had dealt with Vitruvius's treatise. However, the criticism and dissemination of Vitruvius improved in the Renaissance due to the renewed interest in the writings of Greco-Roman Antiquity, and the analysis and knowledge of the architectural remains of Antiquity.
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) has the honor of making this work widely known in his fundamental treatise on architecture De re aedificatoria (c. 1450). The first known edition of Vitruvius was presented in Rome by Fra Giovanni Sulpicio in 1486. Translations followed in Italian (Como, 1521), French (Jean Martin, 1547), English, German (Walter H. Ryff, 1543), Spanish and other languages. The original illustrations had been lost and the first illustrated edition was published in Venice in 1511, with woodcuts based on descriptions in the text, probably by Fra Giovanni Giocondo. Later in the XVI Andrea Palladio provided illustrations for Daniele Barbaro's commentaries on Vitruvius (which appeared in the Italian and Latin versions). The most famous illustration, however, remains one from the 15th century century, da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
The surviving ruins of Roman antiquity, the Roman Forum, temples, theaters, triumphal arches, reliefs, and statues gave numerous visual examples of the descriptions given in Vitruvius's text. Therefore, this book quickly became an important source of inspiration for Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical architecture. Filippo Brunelleschi, for example, invented a new type of elevator to lift the great stones of the dome of Florence Cathedral and was inspired by De Architectura, as well as seeing the many surviving Roman monuments, such as the Pantheon and the Baths of Diocletian in Rome.
Legacy
- The small moon crater Vitruvius bears its name, as well as an elongated lunar mountain, the Mons Vitruvius. This crater is located near the valley that served as the landing site of the Apollo 17 mission.
- The Design Quality Indicator (ICD) is a set of tools to measure, evaluate and improve building design quality. It uses Vitruvio principles.
- The Assistant (Vice of Morgan Freeman), leader of the Master Builders in The Lego MovieHis name is Vitruvio.
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