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Filarete
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Antonio di Pietro Averlino (c. 1400 - c. 1469), also "Averulino", known as Filarete (Greek for "lover of excellence"), was a Florentine architect, sculptor and architectural theorist of the Italian Renaissance.
"Filarete", as he is universally known, worked, and was probably born, in Florence, and may have trained under Lorenzo Ghiberti. Under a commission by Pope Eugene IV, Filarete, over the course of twelve years, cast the bronze central doors for the old St Peter's Basilica in Rome, completed in 1445; in the work, Filarete hoped to rival Ghiberti's great bronze doors for the Baptistery of Florence.
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Antonio di Pietro Averlino (c. 1400 - c. 1469), also "Averulino", known as Filarete (Greek for "lover of excellence"), was a Florentine architect, sculptor and architectural theorist of the Italian Renaissance.
"Filarete", as he is universally known, worked, and was probably born, in Florence, and may have trained under Lorenzo Ghiberti. Under a commission by Pope Eugene IV, Filarete, over the course of twelve years, cast the bronze central doors for the old St Peter's Basilica in Rome, completed in 1445; in the work, Filarete hoped to rival Ghiberti's great bronze doors for the Baptistery of Florence. In the following century, Filarete's doors were preserved when Old St Peter's was demolished; they were later reinstalled in the new St Peter's Basilica.
Leaving Rome for the patronage of Francesco Sforza in Milan, Filarete built the Ospedale Maggiore (c. 1456), the overall form of which was rationally planned as a cross within a square, with the hospital church, itself centrally-planned, at the center of the plan. Some of the surviving sections of the much-rebuilt structure show the Gothic detail of Milan's quattrocento craft traditions, which are at odds with Filarete's design all' antica (Murray 1963). Filarete also worked on the Castello Sforzesco, and on the Duomo di Milano.
Filarete completed his Trattato di architettura ("Treatise on Architecture") sometime around 1464. The book, which was drafted in 25 volumes, enjoyed a fairly wide circulation in manuscript form during the Renaissance. The best known and best preserved copy of the Trattato is a profusely illustrated manuscript known as the Codex Magliabechiano (probably drafted c. 1465; now held in the archives of the ). The fact that the Codex Magliabechiano is dedicated to Piero de' Medici and was conserved in Florence suggests that Filarete was well regarded in his native Florence despite his loyalty to Milan. The book, which is written as a fictional narrative, consists principally in a detailed account of the technical aspects of architecture (e.g., site and material selection, drawing, construction methods, and so on) and a sustained polemic against the Gothic style of Northern Italy, which Filarete calls the "barbarous modern style." Filarete argues instead for the use of classical Roman models. To alleviate the dryness of his topics and to clarify his position, Filarete offers a detailed account of the design and construction of an ideal city, which he names Sforzinda in honour of his patron. The city, which he compares to a human body, is described as being inscribed within an eight-pointed star of walls inscribed within a perfect circular moat. Sforzinda is often cited as the first of many star-shaped city plans entirely at odds with the reality of the medieval city, which was cramped and shaped according the accidents of topography and history. Eight towers were placed as bastions at the salient points of the star, and eight gates were the outlets of radial avenues that each passed through a market square, dedicated to certain goods. Other radiating streets had the parish churches and convents on them. A canal system connected with the river and the outside world, provided transport for goods. At Sforzinda's centre was the formally composed piazza, a double square that was a stadio long and half a stadio wide, with the duomo at its head, and a lookout tower. Filarete provides precise measure and proportions for Sforzinda's buildings, as well as careful notes on appropriate decorations, though he often relates how he "improves" upon his original designs during construction. Consistent with quattrocento notions concerning the talismanic power of geometry and the crucial importance of astrology, Filarete provides, in addition to hard-nosed advice on materials, construction, and fortifications, notes on how to propitiate celestial harmony within Sforzinda. One of the central events in Filarete's narrative concerns the discovery of a Golden Book that details the ideal proportions, measures, and decor of buildings of Antiquity. Also described in the book is a strikingly original design for a House of Vice and Virtue. Perhaps unfortunately, the tropes of Gothic Late Gothic courtly Romance, in which Filarete chose to clothe his knowledge about and opinions on architecture, violated the canons of good taste of the more rational 16th century taste that followed. Giorgio Vasari dismissed Filarete's treatise as "most ridiculous and perhaps the stupidest book ever written." Notwithstanding the book's more or less positive reception in its own age, it was not actually printed until the Codex Magliabechiano manuscript was partially transcribed and edited by W. von Ottigen in 1894.
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