Hello Nick,
Very interesting. Thank you for the references to Filaretian architecture.
It appears then that the design for the spire on St. Vitus Cathedral may have
originated in or around Milan.
Regards,
Dana Scott
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 5:37
AM
Subject: Re: VMs: St. Vitus
Cathedral
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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