by Shana Priwer
One of Leonardo's most significant ventures in architecture occurred in 1488, when he created a preliminary design for the dome and tambour of the Milan Gothic Cathedral. This massive cathedral was a huge undertaking, not just for Milan but for much of Italy. Built over a 500-year period, the cathedral brought the High Gothic style to Milan at quite a price. It is the central focus of town, with most streets ending at its doors. Work on the cathedral began in 1387. As political and religious power continued to change hands over the years, new designers and master masons were invited to work on the cathedral, which would be a living tribute to the creativity of Italian artists. Political and financial messes slowed down the project, though, and the great spire wasn't constructed until the mid-eighteenth century; additional spires and stair towers were built during the nineteenth century. By this point, some of the original work was already crumbling! Restoration was necessary, and that task occupied much of the early twentieth century.
During the end of the fifteenth century, the Sforza and Solari families exerted strong Tuscan influence over the cathedral's design (see number 21 for more on the Sforzas). The Solari family, based in Milan, included many artists and architects whose designs were prominent all over Italy. Giovanni Amadeo was slated to design the drum of the Milan cathedral, and despite the burgeoning presence of Renaissance architecture, he was determined to keep a strong tie to the site's Gothic roots.
Around this time, Leonardo da Vinci was consulted regarding several aspects of the cathedral. As usual, he wanted to involve himself in as many projects as possible, so he submitted drawings for the dome. Even though it was never built, Leonardo's design for the dome was an important marker in his career since, at this point, he was starting to incorporate studies of mathematics (particularly geometry) into his designs.
This project also brings to light Leonardo's famed multitasking. For example, Leonardo produced designs for several types of construction equipment, and his ideas for cranes were particularly useful for this dome project.
42
Order in the Church!
The history of church design is a long and rich one. Religious structures are typically more permanent (and more respected) than any other type of building. Despite political and social turmoil, ecclesiastical architecture tends to survive. Ancient Athenians devoted their entire lives to constructing the Acropolis; the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and other Greek temples were models of religious fervor coupled with civic pride. The Romans built arches and monuments for their emperors who, many Romans believed, had ties to the gods themselves. Medieval French architecture, as demonstrated by Chartres Cathedral and others, celebrated Catholicism with amazing feats of Gothic engineering. Across time, culture, and geography, churches and other religious edifices have provided opportunity for social consciousness and pride; they've also fascinated designers. Church designs were of particularly high importance because of their enduring influence. Is it any surprise that they interested Leonardo?
During the Renaissance, the principles of architecture were crystallized into treatises. Leonardo most likely read and studied these works, and the strict series of rules they presented probably influenced his rigorous church designs. Leon Battista Alberti's On the Art of Building in Ten Books (first published in 1485) is worthy of particular note here. This manifesto defined both symbols and usage, and was central to changing the perception of architecture from a craft into a true profession. Leonardo must have studied this work, because his sketches of religious architecture embody many of its principles.
Through his drawing, painting, and architecture, Leonardo was devoted to showing the order and articulation beyond what was visible. In the 1480s, Leonardo made pages and pages worth of sketches for various church designs. His notebooks include designs for multilevel structures and churches with domes, but he seems to have experimented most intensely with the central-plan church. (Brunelleschi's churches made use of the central-plan design, and his designs probably influenced Leonardo.)
The basic idea for the central-plan design involved a focal point for the church—a square, circle, or some other variant—from which other rooms radiated outward. Leonardo made many sketches of the Greek cross, a three-dimensional cross shape where all legs were of equal size. His drawings are filled with complex geometrical interaction based on the idea of a modular unit that was repeated and combined with other identical units. Proportions, directly derived from formal mathematical relationships, were also key in his designs.
While Leonardo's various church designs were never actually constructed, they are significant because they provided inspiration for later Renaissance architects. Bramante in particular probably studied Da Vinci's church sketches; several of his churches show evidence of Leonardo's classical sense of proportion and form.
43
San Giovanni Church: Closer to heaven
Renaissance Florence was historically a family-run town. Powerful families dominated each region, and the Florentine system of government was more or less an oligarchy. By 1343, the city was divided into sections, or quarters: Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, Santo Spirito, and San Giovanni. Each quarter had its say in nominating officials and would eventually have a major church supporting its saint. Leonardo became involved with the design of the church of San Giovanni.
This church has enormous cultural significance for Florentines. In addition to housing a number of sculptural masterpieces, it's rumored that several famous Italian artists and authors were baptized here, including Dante.
The Baptistery of San Giovanni, located in what is known today as the Piazza San Giovanni, was a crowning achievement. It was created and named for the patron saint of Florence, St. John the Baptist (San Giovanni in Italian). Workers began construction on this building in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and hundreds of years later it was still going strong. The basic design is an octagonal structure faced with white and green marble. The most famous parts of the Baptistery are the bronze doors on the eastern side. These doors would eventually contain a number of sculptural scenes from the Bible. Their first designer, Andrea da Pontedera, worked on this project in the 1330s. This was the first time artists had attempted to cast sculptural bronze at this scale. At twenty-eight panels total, it was also a very large job!
A competition was held in the early fifteenth century for sculptural panels on a new set of baptistery doors. Lorenzo Ghiberti beat out Brunelleschi for this honor, and saw his panels hung in 1424. Ghiberti received the honor of creating the remainder of the work, and this project kept his shop busy well into the 1450s.
Although he wasn't involved in the design, Leonardo probably played an advisory role during the creation of the sculptural doors. In the winter of 1507, he was called to Florence to aid a sculptor, Giovanni Francesco Rustici (1474–1554), with a project for the Baptistery. The three bronze statues of St. John, a Pharisee, and a Levite are located on pedestals above the north doors. Judging from the sculptures' anatomical precision, Leonardo either worked on them himself, or at least developed detailed sketches for them.
But Leonardo's work on the Baptistery didn't end there. He later got involved in a second round of work that was more monumental than the first: Leonardo developed a scheme for transporting the building! Believe it or not, he actually proposed a plan to lift and move the entire Baptistery of San Giovanni. He had the idea that elevating the structure so that it would sit upon a marble base would make the church more authoritative and divine. Needless to say, this project would have required an enormous engineering effort.
44
Build it and they will come: Designs for other public structures
Most of Leonardo's architectural designs were for cathedrals or entire cities, but he also worked on a variety of smaller-scale public projects. Unfortunately, most of these public designs were never built. Leonardo employed his creative talents to design many public buildings with the goal of improving functionality and enhancing city dwellers' lives. He also included element
s based on ideas of symmetry and balance, just like those he used in his designs for religious buildings.
Leonardo designed to extremes, even though some of his projects were more pedestrian in nature. For example, one sketch of a horse stable includes arches and columns supporting a vaulted ceiling, including three lower-level arcades and a number of air-circulating openings outside the building. Along with his design, Leonardo also included notes on how to run a fresh, orderly stable.
In one of his more elite forays, Leonardo designed a palace with a series of multileveled porticos. He designated the light and airy top levels of the palace for the upper classes, leaving the roads and paths that extended through the lower levels for the merchant classes. He reserved the roads through the base of the structure for transporting animals. The height of the palace was equivalent to the width of the streets below it, and he added porticoes and windows to improve airflow through the structure. In spite of its intricacies, Leonardo's design also had more pragmatic intentions; it was an attempt to ameliorate the narrow, crowded conditions on Milan's existing streets, which many designers and scientists of the day believed had actually contributed to the plague that killed almost a third of Milan's population between 1484 and 1486.
During his time in France with King François I, it's thought that Leonardo helped design the king's chateau, Chambord. Construction took place between 1519 and 1547, and Leonardo probably worked on initial plans for such features as a double spiral staircase. This special stair was similar to the four-ramp staircase that Leonardo had designed for a military fort (see number 45). Reportedly, the two paths of the spiral staircase allowed the king's wife to take one route, and his mistress to take another, which meant there wouldn't be any unpleasant chance encounters.
Leonardo's public projects include work he did in 1492, with Ambrogio da Cortis and Bramante, to rebuild the public marketplace in Vigevano. While today the city of Vigevano boasts that Leonardo designed their public square, in truth, it's possible that only his plans for the plaza's overall proportions were fully realized.
In 1518, Leonardo began one of his last architectural projects, studying the topography of the Loire River Valley, in France, for a royal fountain he was designing. Like so many of his other projects, however, this fountain was never built.
45
Military architecture, the design of defense
Military architecture today is a highly specialized field. Can you imagine a painter with no military training just hopping on a flight to Fort Bliss and putting up towers? Leonardo faced no such restrictions. During his time with Francesco Sforza in Milan, he designed buildings with various military reinforcements. His ability to design for the military endeared him to his patron—never a bad thing for an artist! One such building was a castle with a triple defense system. Between about 1487 and 1490, Leonardo sketched both a plan and a perspective drawing for one corner of this building. He made a point of showing two different angular fortifications, one extending over the corner of the fort and the other (which included a formidable moat) extending over part of the external wall.
His design included a series of cannons located on the overhanging wall, which allowed the castle defenders to shoot directly at all attacking forces. Leonardo also designed a triangle-shaped bastion, a structure that allowed the soldiers inside the fortress to defend the entrance. Leonardo's drawing for this type of structure was probably based on existing buildings, and it dates to his time in Romagna as Cesare Borgia's military engineer (between about 1501 and 1504). The design included three small structures, probably service buildings, on top of the main edifice. There were also a series of embrasures (openings for cannons) along the top wall.
But there's more. Leonardo also designed an innovative staircase for use in a fortified tower. His scheme included four different ramps. Each path was independent of the others, allowing soldiers to go up or down the four-story tower without running into groups going in the opposite direction. This technique could improve the soldiers' response times, as they would be able to move both troops and weapons quickly during an attack. Leonardo's design for this structure, probably also done between 1487 and 1490, included both a perspective view of the tower with the staircases exposed, and a top plan view.
In about 1502, Leonardo designed an addition to a moat. And no, his solution didn't involve just filling it with alligators! He did something much more interesting. He hid a cylindrical tower under the water, giving it a gently sloping roof that stuck up slightly above the water's surface. This system allowed defenders inside the moat tower to fire weapons right across the water's surface. Wet hay would cover the roof of the tower to protect against damage from incoming gunshots.
46
He built this city
Urban design was of major interest during the Renaissance. Of particular importance was a place for people to gather for political and social events, which gave rise to the formation of the town center. The public space, or piazza (plaza), was one of the most common architectural elements during the Renaissance. Add to the mixture defense towers and palaces, which were also common during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as key symbols of a family's wealth and influence.
Renaissance design influenced the set-up for Milan's city center, as was the case for so many other European cities. Its major structures are the Castello Sforezsco and the Duomo cathedral. Although the architects of that time were working on Renaissance-style designs, they also focused much of their energy on continued construction of projects that had begun in the medieval period, such as the Church of San Giovanni in Florence. Just like the artists of the time, Renaissance architects looked to classical Rome for inspiration, and a mandatory part of the architectural apprenticeship usually included a trip to Rome to study the ancient orders.
Somewhere alone the way, Leonardo developed a taste for urban design. His notebooks are filled with sketches of buildings, bridges, tunnels, streets, and entire cityscapes. As Milan's population grew, Leonardo sketched out a proposal for separated “satellite” cities that would surround a central core. Sounds like suburbia, doesn't it?
Leonardo based this particular idea on a concern for the health of Milan's citizens. Europe faced a number of plagues throughout history, but Milan was hit particularly hard by a series of plagues between 1484 and 1485. As a result, Leonardo started to think about a “healthy design” for an ideal city that emphasized cleanliness and hygiene. Some of Leonardo's suggestions included wider streets, more space in between buildings, and an anatomically based “circulatory system” of roads that would allow for better air passage. Applying his humanist, classical training to urban design, Leonardo came up with a system of proportion whereby city streets had to be at least as wide as the houses were tall. While Leonardo's goals of cleaning up Italy were certainly admirable, it's evident today that his schemes were inadequately engineered. Still, his sketches of separate transportation passageways for horse-drawn wagons and foot travelers prefigured developments of modern city planners.
As mentioned in number 44, Leonardo also proposed the idea for a multilevel city where workers and craftsmen would literally function beneath the wealthy, the clergy, and others with more noble stature. (How would you like to live under your boss's feet?) For these studies, he likely drew on his knowledge of other architects, including Alberti and Brunelleschi, who had produced similar ideas.
In 1515, Leonardo outdid himself when he submitted a plan for a combined city and palace complex to François I in Romarantin, France. This design, contained in the “Codex Arundel” (see number 72), shows bridges, canals, and a multilevel city center with underground traffic tunnels. Leonardo's design, unfortunately, was never built.
Leonardo was also a pioneer in the field of cartography, particularly in the production of accurate city maps. His map for the town of Imola, produced during his time in Florence around 1502, is thought to be one of the first geometrically precise town plans. This plan may have had strategic importance, as n
otes included along with the drawing contain distances and directions to various locations in Imola.
Part 3
WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT
In addition to working on many projects related to painting and architectural design, Leonardo devoted much of his time to studying the sciences. He based his theories on observations of the natural world and then attempted to explain and understand his observations. In this regard, Leonardo was the first of the modern scientists, since his methods were a sharp contrast to the medieval world in which religious mystery cloaked science. While the “Father of Modern Medicine” title usually goes to Hippocrates, Leonardo comes in a close second.
As discussed in Part 1, Leonardo spent his childhood immersed in nature, observing and sketching what he saw. As an adult, he asked questions and sought answers to the mysteries of the world around him. His investigations led him to study anatomy and zoology. He performed detailed dissections on both animals and humans. He was also interested in botany, geology, and the behavior of water as a fluid.
Leonardo's interest in flight led him into engineering, where he invented a number of flying machines. He also spent time as a military engineer, inventing new weapons and defensive mechanisms. His other inventions ranged from improvements in the printing press to a diving apparatus that would allow swimmers to breathe under water. Many of his inventions were never built and were, in fact, beyond the technological capabilities of his time. However, some of his designs—his parachute, for instance—have been built in modern times, and they work quite well.
