Friday, October 28, 2011

The Construction of the Urbis Corviniana: History and Role of the Architectural Treatise in Fifteenth Century Hungary

This entry is based on a section of a paper I wrote for Professor Tod Marder at Rutgers on Architectural Treatises in the fall of 2009. Its topic is, in contrast to earlier posts, strictly a Renaissance one, though one day, I hope to fuse it into my Ottoman interests by looking at how Renaissance architectural interests may have lived on into the Ottoman period. I aim here to introduce the problems of chronology with regards to the arrival of architectural treatises and all’antica decoration to the court of Matthias Corvinus. The second part of this entry, coming in November, addresses the actual presence of humanists and architects at the court.

Filarete, De architectura libri XXV, 1488, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, MS 2796, folio 5r detail

                In the last fifty years, roughly 600 codices from around the world were identified as part of the lost collection of the Matthias Corvinus library,[1] including two copies Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria and one of Filarete’s De architectura libri XXV.[2]   As products of the humanistic environment of fifteenth century Italy, these two treatises sought to at once revive and improve upon the methods and constructions of the ancients.  While scholars were busy trying to decode the cryptic Latin of the newly rediscovered text of Vitruvius, Alberti and Filarete each set out to create their own unique books on architecture. Alberti’s fluid Latin text, mimicking his predecessor in form, while often heavily criticizing him in the content, was written as an exercise in Humanistic literary studies.  Filarete’s text, in turn, abandoned the tradition and presented a narrative description of an ideal city in which the “correct” proportions of architecture were demonstrated through text and images.   As scholars grapple with the inconsistency between Alberti and Filarete’s texts and their extant architectural works, few have looked outside of Italy to see how fifteenth century theory and practice are related.  This entry examines the role of the architectural treatise at the court of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, suggesting that rather than being the catalysts of new architectural movements, they served to legitimize the all’antica ornamentation already in use.  Contrary to the opinions of earlier scholars, I suggest that the texts themselves were hardly, if ever, consulted, and instead, the architecture appeared through the exchange of humanists, artists, and architects decades before the arrival of the manuscripts.  Upon arrival, the manuscripts served to intellectualize the columns, windows, doors, and other decorative elements already in place.
                The two versions of Alberti’s treatise on architecture originally commissioned for the Corvina library are currently housed in Modena at the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria (Lat. 419) and in the State Archives of Olomouc (Cod. Lat. C. o. 330).[3]  Both lavishly illuminated manuscripts are typical of the Corvina library, littered with detailed heraldry, portraits, and painted pearls and jewels.[4]   Scholarship on the Modena 419 has centered largely on problems of attribution,[5] while the Olmouc 330 is signed by the Florentine miniaturist Attavante. [6]   Like Alberti’s original, neither manuscript contains architectural images or plans. The Corvina Filarete is now located in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. [7]     The text and images derive from the the Magliabecchianus Codex in the Biblioteca nazionale in Florence, which was loaned to the King in 1488 and then translated (in the loosest sense of the word) into Latin by a court Humanist, Antonio Bonfini.[8]  It too is a lavishly decorated manuscript with a large portion of the illuminated marginalia dedicated to heraldry.[9] 




                The problematic chronology of the arrival of these treatises is often glossed over in scholarship.  While the consensus is that none of them arrived before 1485, their exact dates and even their arrival at all has not been fully sorted out.  The first copy of Alberti’s De re aedificatoria (Olomouc 330), arrived sometime between 1485 and 1490.[10]  The reason for the commission of an illuminated manuscript of a book already in print, thirty-five years after it was written remains a mystery.   The second book to arrive, Filarete’s treatise, is well documented in the writings of its translator, Antonio Bonfini, who discusses the commission on numerous occasions in 1488.[11] By the time the translation and illuminations were finished and then placed into the collection, it was 1489, less than a year from the King’s death.[12] The second Albert, equally sumptuous, never made it to Hungary before the death of the King in 1490.[13] Additionally, one more copy of Alberti , largely unnoticed by scholars, was located in the Kingdom of Hungary between 1484 and 1485 in the collection Matthias’s brother-in-law, Cardinal Giovani d’Aragon.[14]
                The architecture of Renaissance Hungary is known largely through written primary sources and a small number of painstakingly reconstructed fragments located in from Visegrád and Buda.[15] The building projects begun in the early fifteenth century under Sigismund of Luxembourg’s reign are still in need of further study, however they reveal traces of certain all’antica architectural elements as early as the 1430s.[16]  According to archaeological evidence, the building projects undertaken in Visegrád began in 1474 and finished by 1484,[17] thus even before the arrival of the Alberti treatise owned by Giovanni d’Aragon.  The carved works in Visegrád were made of both the local red marble and Carrara marble imported from Florence.[18]  Excavations of the courtyard revealed a series of column fragments and balustrades.  




Renaissance column from the Royal Palace of Visegrad,
Matyas Kiraly Muzeum 70.24.2.1-3
The columns, each carved of three pieces of stone, have attic plinths, shafts with entasis, and unusual capitals.  The moldings above the lower astragal are divided by flutes with pipes and single tongue shaped leaves hang from the volutes on the four corners.   Scholars have called this capital a simplified version of the type used by Brunelleschi and Michelozzo.[19]  When comparing the Visegrád column to one from Bruneleschi’s Ospedale degli Innocenti or the courtyard in the Michelozzo’s Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the Hungarian capital is still far from the accuracy of its Italian counterpart.  Nonetheless, attempts were made to create a classicizing column based on Italianate models in the 1470s.[20] 

Capital from excavations of Buda castle


                The building projects in Buda were ongoing throughout the reign of Matthias, beginning in the 1460s and continuing unfinished through his death in 1490.  Overall, it can be established that the remodeling of the Buda Palace in the all’antica style was further reaching than in Visegrád.[21]  Written sources and excavated fragments reveal that during his reign, Matthias added a water organ with marble carvings including winged putti, a balustrade to the second level of his private gothic chapel that was very similar to the one in Visegrád , majolica tiled floors, a library, a series of loggias and arcaded walkways, hanging gardens, and a large number of carved marble doorframes, windows, and fireplaces.[22]  The column capitals found here are significantly more advanced than those from Visegrád and have clear links to the columns in Italy. The exact dating of specific capitals is currently impossible.
                Other royal residences underwent extensive construction during the period such as Tata, Diósgyőr, Komáriom, Bratislava, and a Hunting lodge in Nyék. Excavations in Tata have revealed only small fragments of columns, [23] in Diósgyőr, even less,[24] and the dating of the extant fragments in Nyék is problematic. [25]  In all, excavations of these residences have produced less pertinent remains than those in Buda and Visegrád.[26]  Outside of the royal patronage, a number of smaller finds have revealed that certain noble families such as the Báthory, had their own building projects.  In Nógrád, a Báthory fortress, red marble panels with certain all’antica elements were excavated with the date 1483.[27]
Árpád Mikó was the first to openly and explicitly question the significance of the Alberti’s treatise at the Hungarian court.[28] Although this was a major step in the understanding of the role of the architectural treatise in Hungary, and Mikó acknowledges the ties the artists had to Florence, he still insists that the translator, Antonio Bonfini, acted as intercessor between the treatises and these workers. This still suggests that the physical presence of a treaty in the hands of someone connected with the project was necessary.
                Yet still, no one has explicitly stated that the Corvina Filarete and Alberti treatises were never intended for use. I posit that these lavishly illuminated manuscripts served to explain the architecture that was already present rather than reveal the rediscovered knowledge of the ancients.  Their commissions were not catalysts, but afterthoughts, whose physical presence was an exercise in humanistic studies, helping codify forms, but not necessary for the wider dissemination of the Renaissance architectural movement.  How was this wave of Renaissance decoration possible prior to the introduction of the Alberti and Filarete treatises on architecture?   I would like to argue that humanists at the court, beginning in the 1460s, were directly acquainted with the building and scholarly pursuits of learned men in Florence, Urbino, Rome, and Naples.  The architectural principles themselves, reached Hungary through contact, and not through bound copies of written treatises.  For my November 2011 blog entry, I plan to go into detail with these exact modes and methods of contact.

Author
Title
Date of Copy
Library
Catalogue #
Leon Battista Alberti
De re aedificatoria
 1485-1490
Biblibteca Estense,
Modena
Cod. Lat. 419
Leon Battista Alberti
De re aedificatoria
1485-1490
State Archives of Olomouc
Cod. Lat. C. o. 330
Filarete
De architectura libri XXV.
1488
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice
MS. 2796




[1] The most significant work on this is Csaba Csapodi, The Corvinian Library: History and Stock (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1973).
[2] See Appendix A for full citations.
[3] To my knowledge, a closer text-to-text examination has yet to be undertaken to see which version these were based on. It would be interesting if they were manuscripts copied from the printed version of Alberti which appeared in 1485.
[4] The Olomouc Alberti’s heraldic arms were over painted by the Szapolya arms in the early sixteenth century.
[5] Many scholars have tried to show that the text was at least partially illuminated in Buda. See Luisa Cogliati Arano, “Due codici corvini.  Il Filarete mercaiano e l'epitalamio di Volterra,” Arte Lombarda 52 (1979): 53-62. In 2003, Arano synthesized these arguments and concluded that Bernardino Butione was the miniaturist who completed the illuminations of the bas-de-page on folio 5r while the rest of the folio and folio 1r are attributed to Francesco da Castello, active in the workshop of Butione. Luisa Cogliati Arano, “Ancora a proposito del Filarete marciano,” Arte Lombarda 139 (2003): 99-100.
[6] The manuscript has the inscription “Attavantes pinxit.”
[7] For more on the Codex Marciana see John R. Spencer, Filarete's Treatise on Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).
[8] Maria Beltramini, “Filarete in toga: la latinizzazione del Trattato d'Architettura,” Arte Lombarda 139 (2003): 14-20.
[9] The folio numbers along with the Latin names of the images are listed in Maria Beltramini, La latinizzazione del trattato d'architettura di Filarete (Pisa: Scuola normale superiore, 2000), XLI-XLIII. In general, scholarship on the Latin version tends to use images from the Magliabecchianus from the actual Latin version, which is problematic. 
[10] By this time, printed versions of the text were beginning to circulate, but the king preferred the sumptuous and costly illuminated version instead. Békés traces two Florentine editio princeps (printed in 1485) of Alberti’s De re aedificatoria in Hungary to the seventeenth century, when they came into the country by way of Bishop Ádám Patachich (1776-1784).   Published scholarship suggests no early printed versions arrived in fifteenth century Hungary.  Multiple printed versions published in the mid-sixteenth century also are extant in Hungarian public collections.  Enikő Békés, “La fortuna delle opere albertiane in Ungheria,” Nuova Corvina 16 (2004): 77-88.
[11] Lázár suggests that this commission may have been motivated by the desire to construct an Urbis Corviniana to parallel Sforzinda. István David Lázár, “Antonio Bonfini alla corte di Mattia Corvino,” Arte Lombarda 139 (2003): 12-14.
[12] During this time, the King was in residence at his court in Vienna, not at Buda.  Some scholars have suggested recently that the treatise never made it to Hungary at all, and instead changed hands in Italy after the death of the King.             Susy Marcon, “Treatise on architecture by Filarete for the library of Matthias Corvinus,” in Matthias Corvinus the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court 1458-1490, ed. Nicolas Bodoczky (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 331. Five other Latin versions descend from this one. (Spencer 1965)
[13] The provenance of this treatise after the death of the king suggests that it was taken from the library by Giovanni Antonio Cattaneo de Mediolano, abbot of the Dominicans of Madocsa.  From him it came into the possession of Gioacchino della Torre, Prior of the Venetian Dominicans.  After the Prior's death it was taken to the Biblioteca di San Giovanni e Paolo and from there in 1789, to the Marciana. (Berkovits 1964, 103)
[14] A note in the records of Lorenzo di Medici indicates that a codex was borrowed and copied for D’Aragon’s library in 1484. (Beltramini 2000, VI)  Yet another copy of Alberti’s treatise, a printed edition from 1485, may have been located in Bohemia as of 1486, which was under partial Hungarian rule at the time. It is traditionally believed that the Hungarian Renaissance influenced the Czech Renaissance, however Kalina argues that the notes in the margins of this treatise show Bohuslav Hasistjnsky of Lebkov grappling with the renewed interest in classical architecture without a Hungarian intermediary.          Pavel Kalina, “La prima ricezione del De re aedificatoria di Leon Battista Alberti nel Regno Boemo,” Nuova Corvina 16 (2004): 59-70. This is interesting in that the early renaissance architecture of Bohemia is much less influenced by Italianate models than the examples from Hungary.  The idea that Bohuslav was attempting to understand the text in a way that no scholar ever attempted in Hungary provides an interesting comparison.
[15] There were more building sites such as Vác, Nógrád, and Esztergom, however many of these cites remain unexcavated, unpublished, or their publications unavailable outside of Hungary.
[16] Árpád Mikó, “Stílus és felirat. Kőbe vésett, klasszikus és korai humanista kapitálissal írott feliratok a Mátyás - és Jagelló- kori Magyarországon,” [Style and Inscription: Carved in stone, classical and early renaissance capitols and their inscriptions from Matthias and Jagellon periods in Hungary] Művészettörténeti Értesítő 54 (2005): 205-244.
[17] Gergely Buzás and József Laszkovszky, “Life at Visegrád Palace under the reign of King Matthias,” in Medieval Visegrád , ed. József Laszkovszky (Budapest, 1995). For more technical data on the excavation see Árpád Balla, Palota a föld alatt. A visegrádi királyi palota ásatása 1934-1944 [Palace underground: the excavation of the Visegrád Palace 1934-11944] (Visegrád, 1993). In discussing these early dates, Feuer-Tóth suggests that the region was uniquely receptive to the new all’antica architecture because Eastern Europe had comparatively underdeveloped Gothic guild organizations and was rich in marble. Rózsa Feuer-Tóth, “The "apettionum ornamenta" of Alberti and the architecture of Brunelleschi,” Acta Historiae Artium Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 24 (1978): 147-152.
[18] Gergely Buzás, “The Royal Palace of Visegrád in the Time of King Matthias,” in Matthias Corvinus the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court 1458-1490, ed. Nicolas Bodoczky (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 325.
[19] Gergely Buzás, “Renaissance Column from the Royal Palace of Visegrád,” in in Matthias Corvinus the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court 1458-1490, ed. Nicolas Bodoczky (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 333-334.
[20] It has been suggested that use of the balustrade derives from contemporary furniture styles in Italy. The main architect and people working for him, as I will discuss later, were Florentine woodcarvers.  It is interesting to note that although the ruins of the city of Aquincum were located a few miles north of the Buda castle, there is no evidence that any of the architectural elements were visible and could have been used as reference points, but, there were loggias of a similar character there as well. Bartolomeo della Fonte, a Humanist with a particular interest in Roman Archaeology, spent some time at the court. Rózsa Feuer-Tóth, Renaissance architecture in Hungary (Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1981), 9. No evidence exists of any work by him in Óbuda , the location of the Roman ruins.  Óbuda was settled though, and the Queen had a castle there, just a few miles away from the main castle in Buda.
[21] Károly Magyar, “Towards a Reconstruction of Matthias-Era Residences,”  in Matthias Corvinus the King: Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court 1458-1490, ed. Nicolas Bodoczky (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 89-99. While saying this, Magyar does caution the reader with a footnote revealing that the gothic carvings from Buda are in a less orderly state than those in Visegrád and the measurements in ipso could produce surprising results.
[22] István Czagány compiled a list of writings on the castle in Buda which lists 12 different texts contemporary with Matthias’ reign. Not one of these texts is available in English translation, and many are only published in their original Latin form or in Hungarian translation. István Czagány, “A budai várta vonatkozó történetírás és művészettudomány története,” [Historical writings and Art Historiography relating to the Buda Castle] Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 22 (1988): 9-60.
[23] Szatmaári 1974B and 1975
[24] Ilona, Sz. Czeglédy, “Előzetes jelentés diósgyőri vár 1963. évi feltárásairól,” [Preliminary report on the excavations of Diósgyőr castle in 1963] Archeologicai Értesítő 91 (1966): 229-237. and Ilona Sz. Czeglédy, A diósgyőri vár (Budapest, 1988).
[25] Miklós Horler, “A buda-nyéki királyi villa épületei,” [The Buildings of the King’s Villa in Buda-Nyék] Ars Hungarica 25 (1986): 51-80.
[26] For more on excavations see (Magyar 2008, 95-96)
[27] (Feuer-Tóth 1981, 19)
[28] Árpád Mikó, “Il De re aedificatoria e la corte di re Mattia Corvino,” Nuova Corvina 16 (2004): 71-76.





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