Filarete between utopia and reality

Antonio di Pietro Averlino, called Filarete(1400-1469)(Fig.1), this is lover of virtue, nickname that he has adopted during old age has been an architect and sculptor that written a treaty and he has imagined the build of a city, Sforzinda(Fig.2), name from his costumer, Ludovico Sforza. During lecture of this book, written between 1460 and 1464, they can find moments very realest as payment to workers with spending and number of workers, materials as lime, stones and measure of these, then Filarete think the utopic city but he must consider that reality; I think that this consideration he have took from both lectures, as Vitruvius and De Architectura of Leon Battista Alberti, and his personal experience. The costumer begins a dialogue to Filarete and he told very much steps, and reactions of workers. In fact we read a step, very daily: “In the evening and time for leave work…and so everybody gone to accommodations. And we accomplished the lord to his accommodation, and there he said to me that he want that I stay there and he want that had dinner, and he asked very much thing”, this episode we can think that is true and Filarete has dinner with him, but it is pure fantasy, but it is necessary to continue tell and this book. But we must consider that other times Filarete or other has had dinner with somebody, then Filarete has took from his memory and he has considered some dinner, and has told an episode that he has lived but with others persons, then this treaty is a document of architecture certainly, but also life during 15^th century; hierarchy of worksite, that he has mentioned almost during read of this treaty, and some episode that hasn’t inherence to worksite, but all is necessary to us to understand what was life during these works, a social document.

Alessandro Lusana 

 

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Between Greek and Latin manner: Cimabue

I want here consider a work that is attributed from Vasari to Cimabue (1240-1302), a painter that has seen and studied Giunta Pisano and he was master of Giotto too. But the plastic and characteristic physical presence of figures on Giotto painter, that we can see on painters of Assisi, has origin from Cimabue, and we can document this relevance plasticity on a work of Cimabue(Figs.1-3) that is a contradiction between will of costumer, because Greek manner is certainly will of costumer, and will of Cimabue, this is plasticity, that he has used both Madonna of Servi(Fig.4), Bologna datable around 1280-1285 and Madonna on the throne(Fig.1), datable around 1302, date of die Cimabue’s. We must consider that Cimabue has worked cloth of these Madonna with a freedom very much strong, because the figures of angels and lines of figures are very worked and plastics, and has passed the rigid line of Christ(Fig.5), because by now the Greek manner is memory of some less painter, by now, Giotto and his presence in Assisi has given form and plasticity to figures; certainly this judgment is right, but we must consider that the Madonna of Servi is former that Madonna of Louvre, and we can see both plasticity and form of same master, then we must consider that plasticity of Giotto is logic outcome of form that Cimabue has used former, although it isn’t so evident how Giotto.

Alessandro Lusana 

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