Vitruvius
Roman architect and engineer · Italy · Architects · Lived 80 BC to 15 BC · aged 65
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Something wrong?The only architect from antiquity whose writings survived intact. His treatise - firmness, commodity, delight - became the blueprint every Renaissance master studied, and his notes on proportion gave Leonardo the Vitruvian Man.
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Photos 8
Busto di Vitruvio
A pariquadrata superficie humai corporis perdistincta eo naturali centro umbilici circulum excipere - et in eo quadratum minorem inscribere, fig. a LCCN2006681079
Ancient Greek bipod crane, Museum of ancient Greek technology
Ancient Greek tripod crane, Museum of ancient Greek technology
Architectural elements, floor plan, and elevation from handbook on classical architecture LCCN2004682214
Architecture, ou, Art de bien bastir de Marc Vitruve Pollion, autheur romain antique; mis de latin en francoys par Ian Martin MET mm74820
Bird's-eye view of a large scale water supply system showing tunnels and covered aqueducts LCCN2004682219
Commentaires sur vitruveIn their own words 10
, An architect ought to be an educated man so as to leave a more lasting remembrance in his treatises.
As for philosophy, it makes an architect high-minded and not self-assuming, but rather renders him courteous, just, and honest without avariciousness.
Philosophy treats of physics where a more careful knowledge is required because the problems which come under this head are numerous...
About this person
Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer in the 1st century BC who served as an artilleryman and army engineer, specializing in siege machinery like ballistae and scorpions, possibly under Julius Caesar's chief engineer. He wrote De architectura, a multi-volume work arguing that all buildings require firmitas, utilitas, and venustas - strength, utility, and beauty. The treatise circulated widely through the Middle Ages, then was "rediscovered" in 1414 at Saint Gall Abbey and published in print in Rome in 1486. Translations and illustrated editions followed across Europe, with the 1511 Venice edition adding woodcuts from the text's descriptions. Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio, and Vignola all studied it, making Vitruvius the ghost architect behind centuries of European building.
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