On Architectural Practice and Arithmetic Abilities in Renaissance Italy

Abstract

The article examines the figure of the architect at work in RenaissanceItaly, when a major change occurred in the practice of design with thespread of arithmetic. This deep scientific, technical, methodological,and cultural shift involved the image of the architect and hisprofession, his relationship with the patron, as well as the culturalconception of architecture.The essay, crossing disciplinary boundaries, analyses some technicalaspects of architectural design in early modern Italy only marginallyinvestigated. If proportional systems and architecture's theoreticalquestions have been amply studied, the practical culture, the dailyprofessional practice and its working tools, such as the operativearithmetic actually known to architects, have been only sporadicallyanalysed.During the Renaissance, especially in Italy, an important development ofmathematics occurred and arithmetic was clarified and simplified so toallow its diffusion, but at the same time those disciplines remainedessentially despised by aristocratic and intellectual elites. What wasthe architects' role in this moment of deep change? Which was thearithmetic usually employed by them in the design process? When didHindu-Arabic numbers and fractions became familiar in the field ofarchitecture? In the secular battle between geometry and arithmetic,which system was used in what professional cases?The essay illustrates how architects with different backgroundsresponded to this change, through a comparative analysis of all thearchitectural drawings containing numbers and calculations made byMichelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481-1536),and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484-1546).