The Touch of the Eye in L.B.

Alberti's Thermal Bath Drawing

"Quam multa vident pictores in umbris et in eminentia que nos non videmus!" --Cicero, Academica, II.vii.20

The architect's hand is the encounter between perception and judgment. Through its bodily extension the active hand joins the dynamic eye in the path toward the light of imagination. It judges by touch, by the knowledge embedded within the thickness of the flesh itself. Memory of previous constructions pervades the eye and hand as it projects future ones, with the architect's drawing acting as both a medium of communication and a vestige of prudent thought. For Leon Battista Alberti such an embodiment of the knowing hand resides in his notion of iudicium, the meeting point between the exteriority of the senses and the interiority of the practical intellect. The best place to examine this phenomena is to return to Alberti's most complete surviving architectural drawing-- a representation of a thermal bath complex preserved in the Biblioteca 1 Medicea Laurenziana. In the present state of scholarship, no one has yet to examine how the physical making of the thermal bath drawing might instigate a wider discussion as to how Alberti worked and thought through his own hands, a key question for architects today wondering about 2 the role of the hand in their own work. In spite of several subsequent studies of the drawing, few have followed the analytical procedures written by the draftsman himself, which is, "...[to] 3 describe it as though we were ourselves about to construct the building with our own hands." Howard Burns' very thorough analysis of the dimensions, transcriptions, and proportions suggest 4 a clear link between Alberti's drawing practice and his larger theory of architecture. Robert Tavernor's most recent and excellent study of the thermal bath drawing attempts to link it to an 5 unrealized project for the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. Both scholars focus on the visual properties (proportions, scale) of the drawing in relation to a historical analysis of Alberti's built work, writings, and patronage. Neither Tavernor nor Burns, however, have considered how Alberti's drawing practice in the thermal bath drawing might help us to understand the particularities of the role of an architect's sense perception; how the hand itself, Aristotle's instrument with respect to 6 instruments, could sustain a productive realm between the cogitation and judgment. Rather, to uncover these aspects, the bath drawing must be examined thoroughly in terms of the relationship of Alberti's hand to his mind while in the act of drawing. The lines on the drawing must be considered in terms of their relationship to the peculiarity of architectural thinking--one which both projects into the future and relies on the recollection of previous constructions. The emphasis by scholars on the visual aspects of the thermal bath drawing is hardly surprising, given that we find remarkable support in De re aedificatoria for the primacy of vision.
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The drawing is preserved in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Codex Ashburnham 1828, fol. 56v-57r. This drawing was personally viewed by the author in July 2009. The only other architectural drawing by Alberti exists in his letter to Matteo de' Pasti, November 1454, where Alberti must resort to a small sketch in order to illustrate the roof condition on the Tempio Malatestiano. 2 Howard Burns, "A Drawing by LB Alberti," Architectural Design, 1979: 45-56; Tavernor reviews recent scholarship and re-affirms the authenticity of the drawing as from the hand of Alberti in Tavernor, On Alberti and the Art of Building (Yale University Press, 1998), pg. 194. My own comparison of the line work by Alberti in his annotated copy of Euclid's Elementa further supports the authorship of the Bath drawing (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciano, Lat. VIII, 39 (3271), esp. 90v). Christine Smith in a recent article states that the authorship is unsupported based on the evidence of Alberti's De re aedificatoria (from now on abbreviated as DRA), although she does not deny its authenticity. Lucia Bertolini recently confirmed the drawing as autographed in Bertonlin, "Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana: Ashburnham 1828 Appendice," in Leon Battista Alberti: La Biblioteca di un Umanista, 367-368 (Mandragora, 2005). 3 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor Joseph Rykwert (MIT Press, 1988), pg. 61. Alberti is here explaining the process of building, an analogous procedure to the making of a drawing. 4 Burns, op. cit., see. esp. pg. 47. 5 Tavernor, op. cit. pg. 189-202. 6 Aristotle, De Anima, Loeb Classical Library, trans. W.S. Hett (Harvard University Press, 1975), 432a1. cf. Latin translations of Aristotle from, Averrois Cordubensis, Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis de Anima LIbros (The Medieval Academy of America, 1953). Here see, Averrois 38.6: "Et ideo anima est quasi manus; manus enim est instrumentum instrumentis, et intellectus forma formis, et sensus forma sensatis." On the propensity of Averroes in Italian universities in the 15th century, see Paul F. Grendl David Marsh, "Review: Leon Battista Alberti at the Millennium," Renaissance Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2002): 1028-1037.er, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). pg. 281-293.

At the opening of his book on materials, Alberti introduces the subject by wondering about the seemingly natural way we are able to assess impropriety in the work. We are guided above all by the sense of sight:
It is remarkable that anyone, learned and unlearned alike, guided by some natural instinct, is able to sense immediately what is correct or erroneous in the conception (ratio) and in execution (artibus) of the work. In regard to these matters the sense of sight (sensus oculorum) proves itself 7 the keenest of all the other senses...

It would seem at first glance that Alberti's modern interpreters have followed his theory quite closely. Both Burns and Tavernor perform an exhausting visual survey of the thermal bath drawing, publishing carefully dimensioned reconstructions of the drawing using modern drawing 8 techniques. This would be an obvious approach, since Alberti himself confirms his conviction in the desirous eye during his ruminations on the beautiful in Book IX, and he would likely deem the visual aspects of the drawing one if its most revealing qualities. 9 Are there other properties of the drawing worth considering, however, such those that can be revealed through a peering into the factures made by the draftsman himself? Let us take a moment to follow the mind of the draftsman, following the advice of Alberti himself... starting from the eye and returning to the mind by way of the hand.

Alberti's edificium thermarum, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ash. 1828, fol. 56v

Leon Battista Alberti, L'Architecttura (De re aedficatoria), trans. Giovanni Orlandi (Il Polifilo, 1966), 20v. 5. Translations are by author and are cross-referenced to the most current English translation, Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, op. cit., unless noted otherwise. For more on the primacy of sight in DRA, see: 171.33 on the desirous eye for beauty; 37v.3 on the power of the eye (vis oculorum) to see the invisible below ground; 105v.27 on the greater importance on workmanship within view of the eye; and 118.12 on how lineamenta should account for objects closer or farther from the eye, so as to confer elegance. cf. Cicero, De oratore, III.xl.161 and Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a. 8 See in particular, Burns, op. cit., pg. 51 and Tavernor, op. cit., pg. 195. 9 DRA, 171.33; cf. an almost identical passage earlier in Book IX, 164v.23. cf. Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, pg. 312

Alberti's edificium thermarum Alberti's thermal bath drawing is conserved in a volume of drawings collected by the 17th 10 century Urbino architect, Muzio Oddi. Put together as somewhat of a scrapbook, the volume contains a variety of 15th and 16th century drawings connected to projects and architects of Urbino, including several by Francesco di Giorgio. The drawing describes an unbuilt complex of thermal baths, either as an architectural fantesia or, as Tavernor has convincingly suggested, as 11 a bath building for the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. Alberti's handwriting provides important supporting information, such as the identification of the spaces and the contention that the complex "will be seen with the greatest pleasure (Et spectabitur cum summa voluptate)". For our purposes, we shall focus on several curious features of the drawing which would escape any but the most astute observers. To begin, a very close examination of the drawing reveals that Alberti apparently began by setting up a field of lightly drawn, nascent lines which proportioned and 12 regulated the drawing before it was inked. These faint lines in silverpoint were drawn as part of the scaffolding of drawing construction which gains its final particularity once the drawing is inked. While such faint lines appear to be a common 15th century drawing practice, Alberti's bath drawing remains unique, since it is one of the few drawings which seem to indicate an 13 intervention within an existing building (rather than as a drawing of a stand-alone edifice). The measuring marks placed around the perimeter of the drawing point outward toward a larger, existing construction. This is further substantiated by the fact that the drawing was evidently cut to fit neatly into Oddi's collection book, and one could easily imagine that the project originally 14 extended further up and to the right. The apparent fact that the bath project is a modification of an actual condition makes it ripe for us to examine the relationship between the particularity of sensible judgment and the particularity of an architectural situation. Why speculate on how Alberti made this drawing? To begin, we might re-state the obvious. An important difference remains between the visual reconstructions, the published photographs of the bath drawing, and the original. It lies in simple fact that the drawing in the care of the Laurenzian Library participates in the tactility of Alberti's original hand. As such, a strictly visual investigation of the drawing would be incomplete, considering that the making of the drawing unfolded across a temporal dimension invoking the skill, imagination, and judgment of the author. It would therefore be instructive to peer deeper into the marks, both visual and tactile, beyond what they appear to signify. As we will see, although Alberti placed great emphasis on the visual properties of architecture and drawing, he also knew the eyes were subject to error, and that the entire array of the human senses must be joined with the mind in reaching for a proper judgment. Alberti's paradigm for seeing, while not immediately obvious, actually resides in the physical touch of the architect's hand. In the thermal bath drawing, we observe a powerful polemic for the unification of the eye and hand in the faculties of judgment (iudicium) through the lines and marks of a prudent and experienced architect.

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Cod. Ash. 1828, op.cit. Oddi's biography and his propensity as a collector is described in Howard Burns, "Un disegno architettonico de Alberti e la questione del rapporto fra Brunelleschi ed Alberti," Filippo Brunelleschi: il suo opera e il suo tempo, 1980: 105. For detailed measurments and transcriptions of Alberti's writing, see Burns (1979). 11 Tavernor, op.cit., pg. 194-200. Christine Smith believes that the bath building was never meant to be built for a specific patron or site. See C. Smith, "Attribiuto a Leon Battista Alberti: Pianta di un complesso termale," in Rinaschimento da Brunelleschi a Michelangelo: La representazione dell'architettura (Milan, 1994), pg. 458. 12 Burns also identifies these lines, although he identifies them as "black chalk" lines, Burns (1979), pg. 49. In my own analysis of the drawing, some 30 years after Burns, these faint lines have become nearly imperceptible. Marco Frascari has suggested that the lines were probably made using a dry point or ematita, a 15th century leadless version of the Italian matita. 13 For examples of other 15th century drawings exhibiting such faint "construction" lines, see Millon, Rinaschimento da Brunelleschi a Michelangelo, op. cit. pg.109-110. 14 Burns also suggests the drawing was trimmed, Burns, op.cit. pg. 46.

iudicium as Sensible Mean The faculty of judgment, or iudicium, serves a central role in De re aedificatoria and is one of the most distinguished qualities that an architect can possess. "The greatest glory in the matter of building", Alberti writes, "goes to him who can judge well (iudicare bene) what is 15 appropriate." It is an ability which is "instilled in the minds of men" by Nature herself, and is 16 subject to the highest praise by others when exercised well. A principle attribute of the rational soul (animus), judgment (iudicium) is the consummate faculty by which the architect considers 17 beauty, and ornament, and the advice of the experts. Coupled with knowledge obtained through the practical intellect (prudentia), a keen sense of judgment allows the architect to see into the future, to 'project' his imagination as a way of discovering potential opportunities and pitfalls in construction. In the notable chapters at the end of book nine, as Alberti discusses the education and the virtues of an architect, we find his most definitive statement on iudicium:
"Through his intellect [ingenio] he must invent, through experience recognize, through judgment [iuditio] select, through deliberation compose, and through skill effect whatever he undertakes. I maintain that each is based on prudence [prudentium] and mature 18 reflection"

Iudicium, then, is the capacity of prudent selection (selectionis) based in extensive personal experience in the matters of construing and constructing. It is through selection that the form and figure (forma et figura) of a building is able to present itself as a coherent whole, where 19 nothing can be removed or altered but for the worse, as Alberti explains in his prologue. So it is, we learn, that a building is a kind of corpus, whose principle quality is the cohesion between 20 the proper measures of lines and materials. Alberti's description of the forma et figura of a building clearly echoes Cicero's forma et figura of the human body, who in De Oratore relates 21 coherence to the natural paradigm of beauty (pulchritude). Just as with Cicero, iudicium must 22 preside over such a decision, so as to know when wholeness is present. Thus the oratorarchitect must retain the ability to find the proper mean between extremes, appealing to the natural structure of the rational soul to seek the sensible mean, whether it be the ear, the eye, or any other sense. Later in book nine Alberti stresses the need to develop a keen sense of iudicium in the moderation of extremes:
When you make judgments on beauty, you do not follow mere fancy, but the workings of a reasoning faculty that is inborn in the mind (animus)...once we are convinced of this, it will not take
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DRA, 173.33 DRA, 170.1 17 The Latin animus is closely related to the Greek nous, generally translated as 'mind' or 'intellect' (contrasted with the Latin anima and Greek psyche, which generally includes the entire spectrum of life-giving, animating faculties. Animals, in Aristotelian doctrine, would possess an anima but not intellectus). In Nicomachaen Ethics (Book 6.ii.) Aristotle relates nous to the rational part of the soul, which denotes "good sense or practical intelligence". The medieval commentators of Aristotle generally translated the Greek nous as intellectus, whereas the classical Latin tradition and early church fathers (Augustine) tended to treat the intellective part of the soul as animus. In De re aedificatoria, Alberti places the rational powers of discernment and intellection within the animus, suggesting that he was drawing more heavily on a humanist interpretation of the soul rather than a scholastic one. On beauty and iudicium, see DRA 164v.17-32; on ornamentum see 158v.19; on the advice of experts see 22v.33. 18 DRA, 173v.12, translation by Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, op. cit., pg. 315. 19 DRA, 3.20. Alberti's notion of iudicium in De pictura is very similar to that of DRA, whereby the faculty of moderation in discernment and selection is held in high esteem. On iudicium and painting, see De pictura, II.31, II.46, III.62. 20 DRA, 3v.28. 21 See Cicero, De oratore, III.xlv.179, "Referte nunc animum ad hominum vel etiam ceterorum animantium formam et figuram..." On Cicero as a likely source for the structure of Alberti's treatise, see Caroline van Eck, "The Structure of "De re aedificatoria" Reconsidered," The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 57, no. 3 (Sep. 1998): 280-297. On Cicero has a conceptual source, see John Onians, "Alberti and . A Study in Their Sources," Journal of the Warburn and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 96-114. 22 On examples of iudicium in Cicero, Orator, liii.178 and Academica II.vii.20. On the parallel use of iudicium between Alberti and Cicero, see Hans-Karl Lcke, "Alberti, Vitruvio, e Cicerone," in Leon Battista Alberti, ed. Joseph Rykwert and Anne Engles (Electa, 1994), pg. 90-94.

long to discuss what may be removed, enlarged, or altered in the form and figure. For every body consists entirely of parts that are fixed and individual; if these are removed, enlarged, reduced, or transferred somewhere inappropriate, the very composition will be spoiled that gives the body its 23 seemly appearance. (new trans).

Thus, in matters of beauty, it is the task of the architect's iudicium to temper the extremes and maintain the wholeness apparent in the corpus. Alberti very likely had Aristotle in mind as he 24 developed his theory of iudicium as a faculty of moderate discernment. Such a treatment recalls a classic statement made by Aristotle in the Nicomachaen Ethics, where he compares the virtuous mean to a "common remark about a work of art...[where] excess and deficiency destroy 25 perfection, while adherence to a mean preserves it". In De anima, where Aristotle praises the mixing of sounds over the excesses of high and low, we see another quality of Alberti's iudicium: the inseparability of the sensible mean from the harmonious mean. "Generally speaking a mixed constitution produces a better harmony than the high or low pitch, and to the touch that is more pleasant which can be warmed or cooled; the sense [sensus] is the ratio [similis proportio], and 26 excess hurts or destroys." Aristotle thus suggests that there is a shared structure between judgment in sensing, intellection, and virtue, something which Alberti would capture well in own theory. This structure is formulated within the mean, and it is the task of iudicium to select or discard as is necessary to achieve or maintain such a mean. In book 6 (Ornament), Alberti advises that temperance is a principle criterium of perfection in the work:
...avoid using the same color or shape too frequently, or too close together, or in a disorderly composition; gaps between pieces should also be avoided; everything should be composed and 27 fitted exactly [ad unguem], so that all parts of the work appear equally perfect...

Such a judgment ad unguem, or by the fingernail, suggests that between the exteriority of touch (or sense in general) and the interiority of intellection lies the key to beautiful joinings, to a 28 moderated composition "fitted exactly" in both mind and material. The fingernail, as we will see, appears in our final analysis of the bath drawing as a key metaphor in Alberti's method of drawing. It is the furthest extension from the physical body, and it is one of its most sensitive parts. As an instrument for judging the proper gaps between pieces in the exterior world, the fingernail is a natural starting point, just as it was for the Roman sculptors from whom the Latin phrase was borrowed. Ad unguem thus becomes, for Alberti, a kind of embodiment between the judging mind and the judging hand, always probing, searching, testing.

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DRA 164v.17 Alberti received a privileged education in Aristotelian natural philosophy at the universities in Padua and Bologna, and would have been well-read in the standard medieval commentaries and translations of De anima, Nicomachean Ethics, Physics, and Metaphysics. The probable influence of an education well-versed in the predominant texts of late medieval scholasticism can hardly be overestimated. The fact that Alberti's audience, both patrons and fellow humanists, would have been schooled in these texts needs also to be considered, since it is likely that Alberti carefully maneuvered his conceptual thinking to account for an accepted canon of learned education. For a discussion of emendation and Alberti's role in the larger culture of humanist criticism and the risks of publishing learned works in the early and mid 15th century, see Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (Hill and Wang, 2000), pg.53-70. On Italian universities in the 15th century, see The universities of the Italian Renaissance, 269-271. On the awareness of Aristotle in Alberti's thinking, see Branko Mitrovic, Serene Greed of the Eye (Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005), pg.153-157. The locus classicus in Aristotle on the virtue of prudent judgment is in Nicomachean Ethics, VI.ix-x. 25 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Rackham (Harvard University Press, 2003), II.vi.8-10. 26 De anima, 426b5. cf. Averrois, op. cit., 143.16 (pg. 326). For an excellent overview of the relationship of iudicium and the senses, see David Summers, The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pg. 21-28. 27 DRA 106.32, trans. by Rykwert... 28 Ad unguem is a self-contained expression variously translated as, "fitting exactly", "fitting closely", and in Italian as, "con la massima esatezza". Alberti would have probably been familiar with its origin in Horace, who wrote in Ars Poetica 291294: "condemn that poem which / many a day and many an erasure has not pruned and / whittled down and chastened tenfold to the nail [ad unguem]." Ad unguem was apparently borrowed from the Roman sculptor's workshop as a method for testing joints and cuts for propriety. See Armand J. D'Angour, "Ad Unguem," The American Journal of Philology , Autumn 1999: 411-427.

Aristotle wrote that in the case of the senses, "...it is the mean that has the power of 29 discernment..." Returning to the thermal bath drawing, the faint denoting lines act as a kind of prudent scaffolding, whereby knowledge of the site and construction provide the armature for the 30 discernment of the "fingernailed" imagination. The denoting lines are just the first step in arriving at the sensible and harmonious mean: they infuse the drawing with certain particular, material notions to be considered, but they are not yet indicative of a final judgment. As faint lines gently scratched on the parchment, they are the lines scratched into the imagination seeking the proper mean, or the coherent corpus. They are the lineamenta seeking themselves through material substantiation. These faint lines allow Alberti to coerce and balance existing site conditions, wall thicknesses, wall openings, and room proportions--apprehending them as a coherent situation, although not yet as a solid body. They send the eye back to the mind through the work of the hand. The denoting lines on Alberti's thermal bath drawing, while faint, are hardly the result of the faint-hearted or whimsical imagination. Here we find the first substantiation of Alberti's desire for a sensible and harmonious mean, ad unguem -- the result of both sensible judgment and the well-honed faculty of reasoning.

The winged eye of Alberti, manuscript of Della famiglia, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II.IV.38, c.199v

iudicium and eye In a famous passage from Della Tranquillit dell'Animo, Alberti compares the humanist experiment of collecting and putting together existing literary fragments to the making of a mosaic. Alberti envisions the modern task of the writer as a kind of rational selection, whereby a new whole, gleaned from the voices of past writers, is subsequently "knitted together" and "bound 31 around the edges". The architectural metaphor seems fitting, since buildings and works of the hand (such as mosaics) must present a kind of natural cohesiveness in order to fulfill their obligations as de facto constructions. Alberti developed his notion of concinnitas in an effort to 32 theorize how one might come to make such judgments. Like in the making of a mosaic, concinnitas describes a method for properly discerning the joining of disparate parts. Literally meaning 'skillfully put together or joined', concinnitas helps us to see how iudicium is united with the senses in the apprehension of architectural inventions. Used in Cicero's Orator to mean a kind of harmony among the arrangement of words, Alberti's concinnitas is very likely adopted

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De anima 424a; cf. Summers, op. cit. pg. 23. I am borrowing the word 'denoting lines' from Marco Frascari, who recently offered this as a translation for Alberti's lineamenta. See Marco Frascari, "Lines as Architectural Thinking" Architectural Theory Review. 2009, 14(3):200-212. 31 Della Tranquillita dell'Animo, book III, fr. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere Volgari, ed. Dott. Anicio Bonucci (Firenze, 1849). Alberti's teacher Barizizza was a prominent advocate of this position of gathering topics (loci) and incorporating them into one's own writing. On this episode in the context of 15th century humanism, see Grafton, op. cit., pg. 42. 32 On concinnitas in general, the most complete recent study is in Robert Tavernor, "Concinnitas, o la formulazione della bellezza," in Leon Battista Alberti, ed. Joseph Rykwert and Anne Engles (Electa, 1994), pg. 300-315.

from traditional Ciceronian rhetoric. In Orator we find that the ear plays a central role in the apprehension of concinnitas, even more so than the content of the words themselves as perceived by the mind (animus): "For however agreeable or important words may be, still if they are expressed in words which are ill arranged, they will offend the ear, which is very fastidious in 34 judgment (quarum est iudicium superbissimum)." The judging ear finds a direct parallel in Alberti, who also believes in the senses as the path into concinnitas:
There is in the form and figure (forma et figura) of buildings a natural excellence and perfection, such as to stimulate our mind (animus); and it is to be immediately recognized when present but if absent is even more desired. The eye is by its nature especially desirous of beauty and 35 concinnitas...

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Instead of the ear which judges the sounds of words, Alberti's desirous eye seeks and judges the form and figure of buildings. We find a similar sentiment on the relationship between the senses and concinnitas in two more key passages from De re aedificatoria. Occurring very near to each other, in the middle book of nine during Alberti's ruminations on beauty, we read:
"This is why, when the mind (animus) is reached by way of sight and sound, or any other means, 36 concinnitas is immediately perceived (sentiantur)."

and also,
"The very same numbers that cause sounds to have concinnitas, which are so pleasant to the ear, 37 can also fill the eyes and mind (oculi animusque) with wondrous delight."

This coupling of animus and oculus appears in several places throughout Alberti's treatise, suggesting that there is a key connection between perception and mind in the judging of concinnitas. The foundation for this coupling is already laid out in De Pictura, in a discussion on the aim or purpose of painting. Here Alberti states that the aim is to give pleasure to the "eyes 38 and minds [oculos et animos] " of those beholden to the painting. Alberti's eye and mind mirrors quite remarkably the frequent coupling of animus with auris already found in Orator, where Cicero 39 states that the mind (animus), "contains in itself a natural capacity for measuring all sounds" For both Alberti and Cicero, the line separating animus and sensus is not entirely clear, although their capacity to work in unison in the detection of concinnitas seems certain. To help sustain this productive conjunction, we might also turn to Pliny, another source for Alberti, who wrote, "assuredly the mind (animus) dwells in the eye, for we see by the mind and 40 discern by the mind." In the space between the rational soul (animus) and the eye, Alberti's emblem, the winged eye, seems particularly pertinent. Something of a self-portrait, the winged eye appears in several manuscripts of Alberti's work, including two medallion portraits. In his Anuli Alberti recounts the story of an eye adorned with eagle wings, the description of which could easily be taken as a description of his own winged eye. Here he describes that, "the eye is more powerful than anything, swifter, more worthy...it is such as to be the first, chief, kind, like a god of
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On concinnitas as a Ciceronian term, see Giovanni Santinello, Leon Battista Alberti, una visione estetica del mondo e della vita (Firenze, 1962), pg. 224-228 and Tavernor, op. cit. pg. 43. Alberti's teacher was Gasparino Barzziza, a key early figure in the re-discovery and dissemination of the rhetorical works of Cicero. It was with Barzziza that Alberti probably received his first education in Ciceronian Latin and other humanist works from 1416 to 1418 in the university town of Padua. Alberti's copy of Brutus still survives For more on the intellectual relationship between Alberti and Cicero, see Grendler, op. cit. pg. 207-209; David Marsh, "Review: Leon Battista Alberti at the Millennium," Renaissance Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2002): pg. 1029; Grafton, op. cit. pg. 39. 34 Orator, 44.150. On concinnitas as a joining of words, see Orator xliv.149, Orator xlix.164, Orator lxiv.220, and Brutus 83.287. 35 DRA, 172v.8 36 DRA. 164v.33 Translation by Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, op. cit. pg. 302. 37 DRA, 166v.10 Translation by Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, op. cit. pg. 305. 38 De pictura, III.52. 39 Cicero, Orator, liii.178 40 Pliny N.H, XI.1iv.145-146; cf. Summers, op. cit., pg.136.

human parts." As the ancients observed, the eye is like God, "seeing all things and distinguishing each separate one". It is through the power of the mind (vis animi) that the full potency of the eye flourishes. The inseparability between the eye and the mind is forged in the transparency between the eye of the mind and the eye of God, with 'seeing' as simultaneously physical (sensing) and metaphysical (apprehending). The eye is an active, moving force in itself, peering-into the world; flying, as it were, be means of the vis animi into the exterior world. Since, as Alberti states, the eye must be continually wide-awake and all-embracing (pervigiles circumspectosque), his accompanying charge, "Quid Tum?" (What next?), seems a fitting partner 42 in this motive search. The power of the mind proudly reaches forth and grabs the world, continually seeking to bring the distant within reach. The winged eye as the vis animi is thus highly suggestive of the spirit of observation as 43 an outward movement in the world. Like the hand, the eye never rests. It is constantly searching, touching the world, seeking excellence through the fingernail of precise judgment. Also like the hand, the eye moves out from the body, possessing the world through intimate, physical touch. In De Pictura we gain a clue into the outward thrust of the eye, when we learn that the extrinsic rays of our eye, representing the outermost extends of our pyramid of vision, "hold on like teeth to the whole of the outline, [and] form an enclosure around the entire surface 44 like a cage." Such rays, "move rapidly and with great power and remarkable subtlety, penetrating the air..." And in order to perceive an object, they must, "fly out to touch the outer parts of the surface (quod ultimas partes superficiei libando volitant)." The verb libare has been variously translated as 'to barely touch', 'to collect', and even 'to taste', suggesting that a physical 45 'touching' by the rays of the eye to the object in view is not so far off. Cleverly avoiding the philosophical question of whether the rays enter or are emitted by the eye, which might have theological implications, Alberti nevertheless takes a clear position that the rays of the eye are 46 dynamic, motive, and reaching.

41

41

Rene Watkins, "L.B. Alberti's Emblem, the Winged Eye, and his Name, Leo," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 9 (1960): 256-258. Translations by Watkins. Original dialogue can be found in the Anuli of Mancini, ed.,Opera Inedita et Pauca Separatim Impressa, 224-225 (Florence, 1890). Watkins provides a good historical overview of varying interpretations of "Quid Tum?". 42 ibid. pg. 258. 43 For situating Alberti's optics among his contemporaries, see David C. LIndberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (The University of Chicago Press, 1976), pg. 149-151. 44 Alberti distinguishes between three types of rays in the visual pyramid, each of which vary in strength and function: the extrinsic, or outermost rays, which enclose the visual angle; the median rays, which are the "mass of rays" enclosed by the extrinsic rays; and the centric ray, the center ray of the visual pyramid, which is "undoubtedly the most keen and vigorous". Cecil Grayson, ed., On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of De pictura and De statua (Phaidon, 1972), pg. 41-45 (book I.6-8). 45 In discussion of touch as the fundamental, life possessing sense, Aristotle explains that the tactile sense is the only sense that occurs by direct contact (i.e. through the medium of the flesh). However, "the other sense organs (instrumenta sensus) perceive by contact too, but through a medium...," De anima 435a. For Aristotle, there was no such thing as immaterial space: air is the medium of the eye, the medium of the tangible is flesh, De anima 423a-b; cf. Summers, op. cit. pg. 103-104. On Alberti's theory as related to Aristotle's conception of space, see Branko Mitrovic, "Leon Battista Alberti and the Homogeneity of Space," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63, no. 4 (Dec. 2004): 424-439. 46 De pictura, op. cit., pg. 41-42. Considering the various Aristotelian commentators' definitive position against extramission, very few, if any, doctors of anatomy or natural philosophy would have defended a theory of extramission in the late middle ages. However, given the new circulations and translations of Plato's works in the 15th century (esp. Timeaus 44C, where the fire "flows through the eyes in a smooth and dense stream") and the new commentaries on Galenic anatomy (where the eye emits a visual spirit), there certainly were sources for Alberti's advocation for active vision. It is likely that a strict defense of extramission might have been branded as heresy, as in Taddeo Alderotti's claim in late 14th century Bologna that followers of extramission theories should be expelled as heretics. Nevertheless, Alberti claims that such theoretical arguments are in the realm of the philosopher, not the painter. De pictura is written, as Alberti claims, not from the standpoint of a mathematician but from that of a painter. Typical of other instances in De re aedificatoria, Alberti purposely avoids delving into such technical discussions "in the mind alone and divorced entirely from matter" (De pictura), which might have larger implications in theology, natural philosophy, or logic. Alberti intends his disciplinary treatises (such as de pictura and de re aedificatoria) to be theoretical guidelines for actual practice. For a parallel avoidance in DRA see 179v.1. On the optical texts of the late middle ages, see Fernando Salmn, "Medieval theories of vision in the medical classroom," Endeavour 22, no. 3 (1998): 125-128. On 15th and 16th century medical curriculum, see Paul F. Grender, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002): 324-334.

We read a little further in De Pictura and discover that, "the eye measures with the 47 extrinsic rays rather like a pair of dividers." The coupling of the eye with the architect's dividers brings us right back to Alberti's thermal bath drawing, where the projected eye appears in the measured vestiges of the divider, marking out dimensions or site conditions. One can observe in many places that Alberti made good use of the divider in measuring or marking the future locations of lines before they were inked. Like the rays of the eye, which must "reach to the outlines of surfaces and measure all their dimensions", the legs of the divider work through the 48 hand to measure the drawing as if eyeing the site itself. Thus, as Alberti's hand walks the dividers across the parchment, the eye measures the lineaments through a peering-into the particularities of material and construction. The primacy of the eye as an extension of the vis animi cannot be underestimated here, but it is also apparent that vision alone cannot account for the harmony among the parts of the drawing. The 'caging' of the eye suggests that we must also turn to other modes of holding in the apprehension of Alberti's lines.

"Te tot cur oculis, cur fingunt vultibus?" Janus as the embodiment of prudentia. Alciato, Emblemata, 1621

iudicium and Hand With so much emphasis by Alberti on the primacy of vision, why would the hand be of any importance in the faculty of iudicium? Recall that with concinnitas, as in the testing of the work by touch [ad unguem], the critical notion is that there is a sympathetic joining of parts or 49 components. Joints must be able to bridge both gaps in the material as well as 'gaps' in the mind. Since, as any craftsman knows, the fingernail is often employed in the making of a proper judgment, we might assume that the eye cannot act alone in coming to know propriety in the construction of architecture. When Alberti utilizes models and drawings to foresee future construction, for example, he must exercise his sense of iudicium to see beyond mere 50 appearances. The animus of the architect must not be seduced by "lewdly dressed models" and should insist rather on models that are "naked and simple", so as to arrive as close as 51 possible to a proper examination of the parts. Here the work is examined not only for the greedy eyes of concinnitas, but also for the criteria as tested by the practical hand of construction. The possibility of ocular error evidently leads Alberti to strongly advocate against the utilization of the techniques of the painter in the making of an architectural drawing. So as to avoid the potential falsity of a strictly visual approach to architecture, the architect should reject shading 52 and coloring and take his measures directly from the ground plan. It recalls a famous statement by Vitruvius, who also warned against the bias of vision in matters of proportion: "...the effects of
47 48

De pictura, op. cit. pg. 41. Ibid. pg. 43. 49 DRA, 165.19 50 DRA 173.12; where "...such are the considerations in which it is opportune that the architect apply wisdom and judgment." 51 DRA 20v.30 52 DRA 21.1. See also DRA 159v.6, where Alberti warns against the visual tricks of the craftsman in cheating of concinnitas.

sight are not always true, and the mind is often fooled in making judgments based on them." The model or drawing, as judged by the eye, must therefore submit also to the judgment of the hand, which discerns correctness by the depth of material constructions. The touching eye requires the aid of the seeing hand in order to contemplate future edifications, thus revealing a kind of thickness in the architect's iudicium. The hand of the craftsman is imagined as an extension of the architect's hand, not only as an instrument of execution, but also as an means of 54 judging future possibilities. Aristotle wrote that, "touch is the most exact of man's senses". Given this revelation of exactitude, he suggests that, of all the senses, the sense of touch is the least susceptible to 55 error. As the "distinguishing character of life", Aristotle concludes that humans are the most intelligent of the animals since have the most sensitive faculties of touch. And among the human race, those with the most refined sense of touch are endowed with the most intelligence (homo 56 discretus). Like Aristotle, Alberti placed a great emphasis on the originality of touch in the refinement of material judgments, often assigning to the architects hands the most important role in the coming to know of the physical qualities of materials. While describing the proper sand for plastering and vaulting, for example, Alberti states that, "the best sand of any kind will be one that 57 crackles when rubbed or crushed in the hand." Such a bodily approach is indicative of a pattern where Alberti asks the architect to imagine materials and construction through other, non-visual 58 senses: by touching, listening, smelling. Such a preoccupation with the particularity of material constructions brings us to another scholastic-Aristotelian notion of great importance for Alberti, the virtue of prudentia. Thomas Aquinas, for whom prudence was a central concern, wrote that, "...prudence...does not consist in exterior sense, by which we know proper sensibles, but in interior sense, which is perfected by memory and experience, and expert in the ready judgment of particulars [ad prompte iudicandum 59 de particularibus expertis]." Putting the theory of concinnitas to the test, prudentia looks at how 60 one develops a sense of correctness in particular, material situations. It deals with, as Aristotle 61 states, "the ultimate particular fact." Such a forward thinking expertise is gained, as Aquinas has stated, from looking past into memory and experience, allowing the architect to gain Januslike vision--seeing forward and backward at the same time. While Alberti's major works after De re aedificatoria were all conducted remotely, he nevertheless spent many years beforehand honing his sensibilities through direct empirical contact with materials and the practical problems 62 of engineering and construction. We see this clearly in book three, on construction, when
53

53

Vitruvius, On Architecture, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Frank Granger (Harvard University Press, 2004), VI.II.2. Vitruvius also raises and then avoids the question of whether rays enter or leave the eye. To overcome the false judgments of the eye, one needs to develop a keen sense of ingenium. cf. Summers, op. cit. pg. 66. 54 Alberti recognizes the indispensability of drawings and models in discovering errors of projects conceived in the mind, DRA. 175.20. Alberti's professed separation from the building site appears in DRA 2.24, "...the hand of the carpenter is merely and instrument to the architect." 55 Aristotle, De anima, 421a19-20 56 Aristotle, De anima, 435 57 DRA, 33v.15 58 On the bodily apprehension of stone, see Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, op. cit. pg. 47-48; on brick, pg. 51-52; on lime, pg. 55; on sand, pg. 57. 59 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 2-2.47.3; Translation by Summers, op. cit., pg. 87-88. 60 On the inner senses, see H.A. Wolfson, On Internal Senses, Vol. 1, in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (1973-77). According to Wolfson, Augustine's internal sense is identical to Aristotles common sense (303,310); in later Latin texts, beginning with the translations of Avicenna and Averroes into Latin, classifications of internal sense are dominated by Aquinas, following Averroes, whereby the internal senses are: sensus communis, imagination, cogitation, and memory. Alberti writes that concinnitas is a kind of natural sense (sensu naturae), which resides in the animus, making a good case for including concinnitas among an architect's internal senses. 61 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.viii.9 cf. Summers, op. cit. pg. 87 and 221. 62 Alberti passed the 1440s in the court of Nicholas V, involved in various projects for the rebuilding of Rome. During this time he completed several practical treatises on navigation (De navis), horses (De equo animante), and the measuring of Rome (Descriptio urbis Romae). On Alberti's probable involvement in Roman building projects of the 1440s, see Torgil Magnuson, "The Project of Nicholas V for Rebuilding the Borgo Leonino in Rome," The Art Bulletin 36, no. 2 (Jun. 1954): 89-115. It was during this time that Alberti undertook to begin his treatise on architecture, probably at the urging of Leonello d'Este. On the origins of DRA, see Cecil Grayson, "The Composition of Leon Battista Alberti's "Decem libri de architectura"," Mnchener Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 3 (1960): 152-162.

Alberti discusses the various pieces of advice offered up by ancient authors as to the correct use of pavements. After recounting their well-seasoned counsel, Alberti finally resigns to the fact that direct contact with the problems of interior and exterior pavements are best addressed through practical experience:
And, I must confess, I have learned more on my own than I have from the author of any book.
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This tempering of the wisdom of the ancients with practical considerations is a recurring theme 64 throughout Alberti's ten books. We find him assert his personal experience in the invention of a technique of coffering (222); the refinement in brick making (51); the laying out foundations (62); and the correct execution of roofs (35). Repeatedly invoked alongside the authority of Pliny, Seneca, and Varro, Alberti unites the sapientia of the ancients with his own through direct 65 empirical investigations. The hand must be continually vigilant in such matters, constituting a 66 key instrumentum in these prudent undertakings. Cicero, expressing doubt in the fidelity of vision in matters of judgment, marveled at the 67 power of the senses (vis sensibus) obtained through "practice and artistic training". Such an empirical training, as we have just noted with Alberti, seems a primary component in the honing of the animus and sensus. Returning to the bath drawing, Alberti's prudent hand emerges once again through our examination of the faint denoting lines. Possibly remembering the pulling of strings across the construction site, as Frascari has argued, Alberti might have envisioned the lines of the existing site as he laid out the bath complex. Assuming that Tavernor was correct in arguing for the site in the Palazzo Ducale, it seems very unlikely, as Smith has argued, that the 68 drawing complex was mere fantesie. Even so, the faintly drawn lines probably derive in part from the existing site, possibly as measured by the hand of Alberti himself, who had extensive 69 personal experience in the measuring of ancient sites. A life of practical and sensible experience is embedded in these disappearing lines of the hand, just as in the builder who 70 prudently strings the ephemeral flax lines of the future walls. The problem of the reduction of the bath drawing to its commentary on the visual aspects of concinnitas is becoming clearer. What we discover is that the marks and lines of Alberti's hand indicate a deliberate attempt to merge practical, empirical thinking along with the difficult problem of harmonious joining. Alberti's desirous eye cannot be divorced from the knowing hand:
From my own not inconsiderable experience in these matters, I am aware of the difficulties encountered in executing a work in such a manner that it marries practical convenience (commoditates) with dignity and grace (dignitati venustatique), so that, among other commendable advantages, these parts are imbued with a refined variety, in accordance with the demands of 71 proportion and harmony (proportionum ratio et concinnitas). That is really difficult!

63

Rykwert, 89. Alberti would have found good precedent in this in his copy of Cicero's Brutus, where he writes, "Examples where reason or personal experience trumps the words of the ancients or the philosophers are frequent...". Another illustrative account is found in 179v. 15, where Alberti forgoes philosophical questions on the cosmic nature of water in favor of its qualities useful to understand in practical matters, i.e. those things we can perceive with our eyes [oculis perspicimus]. 64 Alberti's substantiation of the frugality and utility of the Etruscan over the excesses of Greek culture is repeated throughout the treatise. See in particular De re, IV.iii.94-95v. cf. Cicero, De oratore, III, where Cicero repeatedly invokes the virtue of utilitas for a well ordered and beautiful speech. For an analysis of Alberti's assertion of Latinism along moral grounds (vis--vis the writings of Cicero), see Onians, op. cit., 96-99. This distinction is one of the main lines of inquiry into the differences between Alberti and Vitruvius. 65 Interestingly, wisdom, or sapientia, does not appear among the virtues of an architect in DRA. Alberti reserves sapientia for his descriptions of ancient knowledge and the virtues of patronage. 66 On other prudent actions taken by the hand of experience, see DRA 20.33; 59.32; 170v.1. 67 Cicero, Academica, II.vii.19-20; On the praise of ratio and sensus, see also Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.147. cf. Summers, op. cit. 242-243. Certainly with Cicero in mind, Alberti writes that prudentia is a fundamental quality of an architect in his role as a rhetorical agent of construction, DRA 174v. 15. 68 See Smith (2005), pg. 368. 69 cf. DRA 92v.15, where Alberti expresses the importance of personally measuring and exploring sites through drawing. 70 cf. Frascari, op. cit., pg, 208. 71 DRA 20v.10; Translation by Rykwert, Leach, Tavernor, op.cit., pg. 35.

Alberti's hand, drawing his hand. Autographed annotations of Libri de familia, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II.IV.38, c.119r.

tactus interior: sensus et animus in the Thermal Bath Drawing "It is not with sight that the mind sees that it sees," Aristotle wrote in his treatise on 72 dreams, "but with some organ common to all sensoria". He wonders why "...we have several senses and not one only [vision]. It may be in order that the accompanying common sensibles, 73 such as movement, size and number, may escape us less..." In the scholastic doctrine of Averroes and Augustine, such cogitation took place within realm of the sensus communis, the common sense which brought together the various inner and outer senses into a unified judgment. The sensus communis is a "judging sense [that] must be undivided and also must 74 judge without interval". Possibly because of potential theological significations, Alberti interestingly steers clear of a direct use of the sensus communis in De re aedificatoria. However, the presence of a unifying, interior sense in Alberti's theory is undeniable. For Alberti this power resides firmly in the in-between spaces of sensus and animus, in the unification of what we might call a 'thick judgment' between the touching eye and seeing hand. Cicero thought of the transparency between sensus and animus as the tactus interior (interior touch), which is "not 75 actual sensation but a sort of sensation" grasped by our mind (animus). The primacy of touch, Aristotle's "distinguishing character of life", is thus relied on by Cicero as the paradigm for knowing. The tactus interior unifies the particularity of the material, exterior world with the suppleness of a avaricious mind.

72 73

Aristotle, De somniis 455a17, cf. Summers, op. cit., pg.80. Aristotle, De anima 425b8 74 Aristotle, De anima 426b1, Averrois, 147.1 "Sed impossibile est ut idem moveatur motibus contrariis insimul, secundum quod est indivisible et in tempore indivisibili..." In De memoria Aristotle reveals that memory pertains to the 'primary sense faculty', or that sense with which we perceive time, 451a15. On sensus communis see Summers, op. cit., pg. 71-109 75 Cicero, Academica, II.viii.21 On the parallel structure between iudicium and the senses in Alberti and Cicero, see esp. Lcke, op. cit., pg. 94.

Such a unifying sense helps to correct errors in judgment caused by illusion or visual seduction. Alberti's drawing practices are a particularly poignant expression of the tactus interior, or the unification of sensus and animus. They are the result of prudent judgment as exercised through both the eye and the hand. When Alberti wrote to Matteo de' Pasti during the construction of the Tempio Malatestiano in November of 1454, for example, he solidified the connection between judgment and drawing. Having already received a drawing from Alberti of the work to be done, de' Pasti has nevertheless proposed to make changes based on the advice of another architect. It is here that Alberti instructs his on-site builder, after a lengthy practical and theoretical explanation, to "follow the drawing, which in my judgment, is good (seguite el 76 disegno, quale, a mio iuditio, sta bene)." Thus, the architect's drawing, just as we have already seen in matters of beauty, harmony, and material qualities, is also subject to iudicium. The sensible judgment of edification, performed by the hands of craftsmen, submits to the same procedures as the act of drawing, performed by the hands of the architect. Just as the touching eye of the architect brings the distant or future building close, so does the architect's hand perform distant constructions. With this example we can close the circle between iudicium, drawing, and the practicing architect. The interior sense, which unifies animus and sensus, comes to light in an examination of the making of Alberti's thermal bath drawing. Prudentia, perfected by memory and experience, is brought forth through extensive empirical experience with materials and matters of construction. It allows the architect to achieve the sensible mean, which is both beautiful to the eyes and practical to the touch. The touch of the eye in the edificium thermarum is thus expressed in three ways: first, in the eyeing of the site like the architect's divider, with the measuring marks on the bath drawing analogous to the measured marks of the architect's eye moving across the site; second, in the pulling of string lines, with the dry point lines on parchment embodying the memory of the process of construction; and third, through the presencing of the existing site in the combination of measured marks and faint lines, allowing the desirous eye to reach out toward concinnitas through the prudent hand of the experienced architect. Just as the fingernail judges present work, so does the touching eye judge the architectural lines, ad unguem. The thermal bath drawing demonstrates how Alberti's hand acts like an eye, where it reaches out to touch the surface of the drawing as a way to judge future construction.
"Obscuriora fortassis quae videbuntur, si libebit ad unguem tenere, ex commentariis ipsis petita percipies." -- L.B. Alberti, DRA, 37.15

Jonathan Foote Alexandria, VA December 2009 dedicado a c*

76

Transcription taken from Corrado Ricci, Il Tempio Malatestiano (Bestetti & Tumminelli, 1925), pg. 587. Alberti explains how such changes threaten the "musica" of "le misure et proportioni de' pilastri", while at the same time reminding de' Pasti how Alberti's current proposal for the wooden pilasters is "pi utile". The intertwining of the harmony of measures and the practical limitations of material could not be more clear. In this letter, we find the eye and hand united in the virtue of iuditio.