Giovanni Giocondo

Fra Giovanni Giocondo (also Giovanni da Verona ; * 1433 in Verona , † 1515 in Rome ) was an Italian Dominican , humanist, archaeologist and architect and architectural theorist of the early Renaissance.

Life

Fra Giocondo seems to have devoted the first half of his life mainly to humanistic studies, which he combined with the study of ancient architecture. During this time he taught Julius Caesar Scaliger in his father's country residence Lodrone (between Brescia and Trento) in Greek and Latin. Although he was a member of an order, he spent most of his life outside the monastery. In Rome and other cities in Italy, Fra Giocondo collected more than 2000 inscriptions that he dedicated to Lorenzo de 'Medici ; a copy is in the Biblioteca Magliabecchiana in Florence. During his stay in France he found a manuscript of Caesar's Gallic War , which was printed with his commentary by Aldus in Venice. His Vitruvius edition, illustrated by 140 woodcuts, was also published in Venice in 1511. With its extensive illustration, it shaped almost all subsequent Vitruvedic editions and was thus epoch-making for the history of Renaissance architecture. He had other authors printed for the first time, including Columella 's De re rustica .

Fra Giocondo served the Republic of Venice , the Papal States and three kings as an architect and engineer: King Ferrante of Naples , Charles VIII and Louis XII. from France. In Venice he worked as a hydraulic engineer, as an architect of defenses for the city and the Terraferma and he was involved in the expansion of the port, which threatened to silt up by the sediments of the Brenta . He designed a new Rialto Bridge and a complete redesign of the Rialto district in the form of a Roman forum, but the plans remained. In 1509 he had to fortify Treviso and other cities of the Terraferma against the Emperor Maximilian. In the historic center of Padua there is still a ring of walls that he built in the sixteenth century. In 1512 he rebuilt one of the main pillars of the Adige Bridge in Verona. Fra Giocondo was one of the many architects on the new building of St. Peter in Rome, where he worked with Raffael and Giuliano da Sangallo .

His reputation as an architect was already established when Ludwig XII. 1499 came to Paris to build the bridge Notre Dame. The Pont Notre-Dame (1500–1512) was the first road system in Europe to be built according to a uniform plan with two rows of 34 houses each. This symmetrical arrangement of the houses served as a model for all later plazas in Paris (Place Royale, Place Dauphine). Vincenzo Scamozzi praises the bridge, which was the first to be built according to the principles of ancient architecture in the Renaissance. In his hometown he built the Palazzo del Consiglio.

Fra Giovanni Giocondo is not identical with the architect and sculptor Fra Giovanni da Verona (approx. 1457–1525).

His treatise De architectura libri decem , which he published in 1511, contributed to the understanding of Vitruvius "De architectura libri decem" through a reliable text and 140 woodcuts. It was the first illustrated version of Vitruvius's architectural theoretical treatise. Fra Giocondo's edition provides an alphabetical index in the appendix. The treatise is dedicated to Pope Julius II, in which he not only refers to the philological criteria of his edition, but also to the preface to Vitruvius's first book. Giocondo makes a parallel between Julius II and Augustus as the client. Fra Giocondo's edition was very expensive, but opened the way for smaller and more affordable editions that followed within a few years. Furthermore, the illustrated text passages were decisive for the majority of the later Vitruvian editions.