Re: VMs: St. Vitus Cathedral

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dana,

At 23:51 29/11/2003 -0700, Dana (not Captain!) Scott wrote:
> The central spire at the top of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague certainly 
> resembles the spire seen between volvelles in the VMS. I wonder when the 
> construction of the cathedral spires was completed. Perhaps this has 
> already been mentioned.

Architectural historians refer to this kind of multi-stage building as 
"Filaretian" (or "filarateana"), after the Quattrocento architect Filarete 
- his Treatise on Architecture describes the planning and building of an 
ideal city called Sforzinda (the first architectural utopia) and its port 
(Plusiapolis), which contains drawings of a number of similar multistage 
buildings.

In Milan, he is famous for his work on the Ospedale Maggiore, as well as 
the Torre del Filarete, which collapsed before being rebuilt 100 years ago:-
        http://ciaomilano.it/e/sfores.asp

A nice animation/video on this site from the University of Milan (broadband 
users click on LAN):-
        http://www.matricola.unimi.it/video/

A little bit on Filarete's life:-
        http://www.italycyberguide.com/Art/artistsarchite/filarete.htm

A picture from his Treatise:-
        http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/f/filarete/tratta2.jpg

St Vitus' Cathedral in Prague was begun in 1344, but work on it stopped in 
1421 when the Hussites took over the castle: though the west front was 
added in the 1920s, my guess is you're describing the "Great Tower" on the 
south side, which seems to have had the octagonal extensions added much 
closer to 1541 (when there was a major fire there):-
        http://old.hrad.cz/castle/architektura/gotika002_uk.html
        http://www.aviewoncities.com/prague/praguecastle.htm
        http://www.r-l-p.co.uk/+vitus.html

If I've got all that right, it would seem most likely that St Vitus' 
Cathedral's Great Tower was designed circa 1490, and built over the next 
20-30 years.

IIRC one copy of Filarete's Treatise made its way to the court of Matthias 
Corvinus, and there was an architectural link between the Treatise and the 
University there: so there's every reason to suppose that Filaretean ideas 
were indeed circulating around the courts of Europe 1470-1520.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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