Giovan Antonio Rusconi

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Giovan Antonio Rusconi (* 1515 or 1520 ; † 1579 ) was a Venetian architect , hydraulic engineer , translator and illustrator of Vitruvius .

Life

The young Rusconi studied mathematics (in addition to training as a builder and painter) at the University of Padua with Giovanni Battista Memmo and Niccolò Tartaglia . When he consulted the “Ten Books on Architecture” by Vitruvius for the construction of a new water mill , he first became aware of the weaknesses of the editions of the time. Finally, the translator of Leon Battista Alberti's “De Architectura”, Pietro Lauro , suggested the young engineer do a new translation . Rusconi completed this by 1552 and illustrated them with his own woodcuts . The versatile talent had previously illustrated Ovid's “Metamorphoses” in the edition of Lodovico Dolce . In view of the flood of architectural treatises and Vitruvian editions at the time (by Daniele Barbaro , Giacomo Vignola and Andrea Palladio, among others ), however, Rusconi's Venetian publishers, Gabriele Giolito de 'Ferrari and Tommaso Porcacchi , saw no sales opportunities for another title.

As an architect, Rusconi worked with Palladio in 1562 on the design of the “Palazzo municipale” in Brescia , the new construction of the Doge's Palace and the Palazzo Grimani . Mainly, however, worked as a hydraulic engineer for the city of Venice. After becoming seriously ill around 1575, he died in 1579.

Rusconi's "Della Architettura"

Rusconi's edition of Vitruvius was only printed posthumously in 1590 by the son of his publisher Giolito . Since he was enthusiastic about most of the illustrations, but considered the text to be out of date, a strange "Vitruvius without Vitruvius" came about. A good 160 of 300 woodcuts are put together with excerpts from Fra Giocondo's and Cesariano's Vitruvian volumes. It is particularly important here that numerous of Rusconi's illustrations require explanatory captions, which were then lost along with his translation.

expenditure

  • Della architettura di Gio. Antonio Rusconi libri dieci from 1590 as a digitized version of the Bavarian State Library
  • Della Architettura di Gio [van] Antonio Rusconi, Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio di Vicenza, reprinted from Venice 1590, Testi e fonti per la storia dell'architettura, Verona and Vicenza 1996.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Anna Bedon, Giovan Antonio Rusconi: illustratore di Vitruvio, artista, ingegnere, architetto , in: Della Architettura di Gio [van] Antonio Rusconi , Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio di Vicenza, with reprint of the Venice 1590 edition , Testi e fonti per la storia dell'architettura, Verona, Vicenza 1996, pp. IX-XXI; Louis Cellauro, La biblioteca di un architetto del Rinascimento la raccolta di libri di Giovanni Antonio Rusconi , in: Arte Veneta 58 (2001), pp. 224-237.
  2. ↑ Cf. Bedon 1996, p. XII: "questa strana edizione vitruviana senza Vitruvio, senza traduzione, senza autore."
  3. ↑ See Thomas Reiser, Giovan Antonio Rusconi (1515 / 20–1579) , in: Firmitas et Splendor. Vitruvius and the techniques of wall decor , ed. by Erwin Emmerling, Andreas Grüner et al., Munich 2014 (studies from the Chair of Restoration, Technical University of Munich , Faculty of Architecture) ISBN 978-3-935643-62-7 , pp. 269-276.
personal data
SURNAME Rusconi, Giovan Antonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rusconi, Giovanni Antonio; Ruscone, Giovanni Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian architect and architectural theorist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1515 or 1520
DATE OF DEATH 1579 or 1587