De Architectura - Survival and Rediscovery

Survival and Rediscovery

Vitruvius' work is one of many examples of Latin texts that owe their survival to the palace scriptorium of Charlemagne in the early 9th century. (This activity of finding and recopying classical manuscripts is part of what is called the Carolingian Renaissance.) Many of the surviving manuscripts of Vitruvius' work derive from an existing manuscript that was written there, British Library manuscript Harley 2767.

These texts were not just copied but also known at the court of Charlemagne, since his historian, the bishop Einhard, asked for explanations of some technical terms at the visiting English churchman Alcuin. In addition, a number of individuals are known to have read the text or have been indirectly influenced by it, including: Vussin, Hrabanus Maurus, Hermann of Reichenau, Hugo of St. Victor, Gervase of Melkey, William of Malmesbury, Theoderich of St. Trond, Petrus Diaconus, Albertus Magnus, Filippo Villani, Jean de Montreuil, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giovanni de Dondi, Domenico di Bandino, Niccolò Acciaioli bequeathed copy to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, Bernward of Hildesheim, and St. Thomas Aquinas. In 1244 the Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais made a large number of references to De architectura in his compendium of all the knowledge of the Middle Ages "Speculum maius".

Many copies of De architectura, dating from the eight to the fifteenth centuries, did exist in manuscript form during the Middle Ages and ninety-two are still available in public collections. But they appear to have received little attention, possibly due to the obsolescence of many specialized Latin terms used by Vitruvius and the loss of most of the original ten illustrations thought by some to be helpful understanding parts of the text.

Vitruvius' work was "rediscovered" in 1414 by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini, who found it in the Abbey of St Gallen, Switzerland. He publicized the manuscript to a receptive audience of Renaissance thinkers, just as interest in the classical cultural and scientific heritage was reviving.

The first printed edition (editio princeps), an incunabula version, was published by the Veronese scholar Fra Giovanni Sulpitius in 1486 (with a second edition in 1495 or 1496). But none was illustrated. The Dominican friar Fra Giovanni Giocondo produced the first version illustrated with woodcuts in Venice in 1511. It had a thorough philosophical approach and superb illustrations.

Translations into Italian were in circulation by the 1520s, the first in print being the translation with new illustrations by Cesare Cesariano, a Milanese friend of the architect Bramante, printed in Como in 1521. It was rapidly translated into other European languages – the first German version was published in 1528 – and the first French versions followed in 1547 (but contained many mistakes). The first Spanish translation was published in 1582 by Miguel de Urrea and Juan Gracian. The most authoritative and influential edition was publicized in French in 1673 by Claude Perrault, commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1664.

The first English translation followed in 1692, although John Shute had drawn on the text as early as 1563 for his book The First and Chief Grounds of Architecture. The 1692 translation was an abridgment based on the French version of Claude Perrault. It is interesting to note that English-speakers had to wait until 1771 for a full translation of the first five volumes and 1791 for the whole thing. Sir Henry Wotton's 1624 version The Elements of Architecture was more of a free adaptation than a literal translation, while a 1692 translation was much abbreviated. Thanks to the art of printing, Vitruvius' work had become a popular subject of hermeneutics, with highly detailed and interpretive illustrations, and became widely dispersed.