[split] Taccola spillover thread

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Taccola has this organic early-humanistic style that is so far the best match for the similarly organic shapes in the VM. It is not only the motifs that match, also the style. I have no doubt that Taccola copied extensively from earlier sources like Kyeser, a lot of their war machines look the same. But Kyeser's style is very medieval. Flat and straight.

My feeling is that Taccola saw himself (or wanted to be seen) as an artist besides an engineer.  I suppose that was almost the norm for his time and place: a genius was expected to be good at art as well as in mechanics, math, geometry, etc.  

Thus, if Taccola copied the ideas from Kyeser, he would not have copied his style.  he would have redrawn them in his own, which was representative of the Early Renaissance atmosphere pervasive at Siena.  Although, as others have noted, he was still rather incompetent at perspective.

It was mentioned nowhere, and didn't show up anywhere.

   

That does not mean much.   It is true of most of the manuscripts that existed at that time.  Like the VMS itself...

is this really something you'd gift to an emperor? It's a sketchbook not a colorful illuminated manuscript.

I think an Emperor might well value an ugly book for its technical contents.  

Again, maybe Palatino766 was not the only clean copy that Taccola made of his notebook.  When some rich nobleman or merchant learned that Taccola intended to gift a copy to Sigsmund, they may have wanted to have one too.  Or maybe Taccola thought of gifting Sigismund after he saw how popular earlier copies of his notebook had become.