Leonardo's temple, part one, 11th od December, 2009.
And that's how the story begins. With the sketch of the (centralized) temple known as folia 5v from Codex Atlanticus, shown in the appropriately cut-out form in the image above. Leonardo da Vinci insists there on the octagon, which is not that unusual in his time - Fillipo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) used a similar construction for the phenomenal dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. Using octagon as a template for architecture has been probably inspired by the similar use of it in the ancient Rome - one can clearly see the octagon in the floor plan of the Pantheon, but there is also Vitruvius' idea about "ideal city" that looks like an octagon that in its center has smaller octagon. The plan of the "ideal city" would, according to the Vitruvius' interpreters look like this:
Since Leonardo was surely inspired by Vitruvius (this we know of course if from nothing else, then from
his vitruvian man where he studies Vitruvius'
idea regarding geometry of the human form), it is possibly that his "ideal temple" was directly inspired
by Vitruvius' "ideal city", and if he got the inspiration from Brunelleschi, then he was again indirectly
influenced by Vitruvius via the construction of Pantheon. It is surely of interest to mention here that
the dome of fiorentin cathedral was finished in year 1469 when Andrea Verocchio with his young apprentice
Leonardo da Vinci mounted a copper ball on its top.
And although Leonardo never built something architectural, i.e. he is not known as an architect, he thought
a lot about architecture, due partly to the fact that he is Leonardo who must know all there is to know,
and due partly to the fact that the architects were very appreciated in his times so he may have seen in
the architecture an opportunity to earn some more. In any case, a detailed floor plan that I shown in the
opening of this post is not the only architectural concept Leonardo created. The Codex Ashburnham contains
many sketches of churches, temples, and very geometrized buildings whose usage is sometimes obscured, and
whose entry point (doors) is sometimes missing. Here is one such example (below). These are pieces of
folias 21v and 22v from Codex B (Ashburnham).
On the floor plan on the right one can clearly discern an octagon, and an interplay of square and rotated square, i.e. again a kind of octagon, can be seen on the floor plan on the left. One sees similar features on the sketches shown in the image below (again from Codex Ashburnham), where, this time, the right sketch looks like something that was really built during Leonardo's times (at the expense of perfect symmetry that is something Leonardo obviously likes - a similar breaking of symmetry can also be seen on the first image shown in the opening of the post).
Since Leonardo never got the opportunity to build something based on his ideas, I thought, why wouldn't
I try to "resurrect" some of his sketches using, of course, a certain skill that I have in computer
graphics and 3D modeling?
And this is where the story begins. It will be documented on the pages of "Construction of Reality" during
next couple of months. The structure I intend to build is the one that opened this post. Leonardo
worked its floor plan to considerable level of detail that will be necessary for the construction of the
3D model of the building. Stay tuned for the next episode.
See >> THIS post for the second episode of the story.
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Last updated on 11th of December 2009.