- Options
- Login
- Desktop Style
Options
Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
- Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
-
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Koen G > 31-01-2026, 06:22 PM
-
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Bluetoes101 > 01-02-2026, 12:20 AM
(31-01-2026, 01:28 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Finding a "full head" sun face is very rare, and this one has pipes and and 8-pointed star shape.
Maybe not relevant but, the way the sun is done here reminds me of de sphaera mundi, these examples are from 1491-1500
It's missing the 8 points and pipes so not as good a comparison, but the lines making the star shape and full head. (I guess the bottom left has 8 actually, but the number varies throughout)
This one (Palatino 766) is the earliest example I've come across of the same (sort of) thing. Be interesting to see if anyone else has other examples of the same style. I haven't looked extensively.. but I guess there's a good chance de sphaera mundi images were inspired by previous such as Palatino 766.
-
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Koen G > 01-02-2026, 10:48 AM
It's interesting to see that the star-shaped rays occur elsewhere. These ones you found also illustrate how close the Taccola star is though. In between the 8 points, it has longer lines in the right places. The VM kind of "tentified" the thing, but the shape match is remarkable. And it all sits comfortably in the first half of the 15th century.
An interesting question would be where this ray-star sun type came from. I doubt Taccola invented the type. -
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Bernd > 01-02-2026, 02:41 PM
Good find in sphaera mundi! I am quite certain Taccola didn't invent this Sun-shape.
It would be helpful to look into the primary sources. I have this article:
Shelby, Lon (1975). "Mariano Taccola and His Books on Engines and Machines". Technology and Culture. 16 (3): 466–475. doi:10.2307/3103042. JSTOR 3103042.
Shelby (1975) Wrote:The genesis of De ingeneis covered a thirty-year period. Around 1419 Taccola began making technical drawings and notations which he called capitula and which eventually went into the composition of book 1 of De ingeneis. During the 1420s he added book 2, and by 1433 he had completed books 3 and 4. Books 1 and 2 got separated from books 3 and 4, and the latter apparently got out of Taccola's possession, for they remained in the form in which he originally composed them. On the other hand, he continued to work over books 1 and 2 by adding-in and around the original drawings-hundreds of notes and other drawings which Prager and Scaglia designate as the "Sketches." He also made notes and drawings on folios that were added to the original manuscript of books 1 and 2; these folios the editors have designated as the "Separate Fascicule" and the "Sequel." They tentatively date the "Sketches" to the period 1433-38; the "Sequel" to 1438-49, and the "Separate Fascicule" to the period just before 1449. It was in that latter year that Taccola completed his other treatise, De machinis, which restated in ten books many of the devices developed in the long and complex genesis of its predecessor, De ingeneis.
BNCF, Palatino 766 consists of De ingeneis 3+4, which according to Shelby were not in Taccola's possession soon after he completed them. So who had it then and how did it get into the possession of BNCF?
If we assume that BNCF, Palatino 766 was a direct inspiration for the VM, I think this hypothesis, if true, has fundamentally different implications than the other putative sources proposed so far. For they all existed in a number of widely known and circulated copies at the time the VM was created. This is not the case for Taccola's De ingeneis 3+4. No known copies exist in contrast to Taccola's other works. Furthermore, the first facsimiles were only published in the 1970s. The whole thing is quite bizarre, there still seems very little academic work done about Taccola. Furthermore, I'd like to point out that prior to the 70s it would have been considerably hard for a potential modern forger to get a look at this manuscript. The only way would have been direct access to the original at BNCF. -
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Bernd > 01-02-2026, 03:13 PM
A more recent look at Taccola from the perspective of an artist:
Fane, Lawrence (2003). The Invented World of Mariano Taccola", Leonardo. Vol. 36. pp. 135–143.
Like Shelby, Fane mostly had to work with facsimiles for reasons stated above. I don't know when BNCF, Palatino 766 was digitized, but clearly after 2003.
Fane (2003) Wrote:It is not easy to gain access to the original drawings of Taccola. The bound volumes drawn in his own hand are in the state libraries of Florence and Munich and, because of their fragility, may never be exhibited. When I first saw the De machinis volume at the Staatsbibliothek in Munich, I was already familiar with the elaborate facsimile edition published in Germany in 1971, edited by Gustina Scaglia.
On Taccola's drawing stye:
Fane (2003) Wrote:Each element is somewhere between a representation and a symbol. The strokes, although freely executed, are codified.
Wavy lines mean water, scalloped edges represent the shore and short curved strokes on one side of each log are used to show roundness and hollowness. In fact, it is doubtful that we would immediately read them as hollowed-out logs without the text. Then, there are the atmospheric symbols of grass, flowers and trees, placed as signs around the lake and the charming bird that stands guard, reminding us of animals in the margins of medieval manuscripts, placed there for reasons we are often not sure of. (In other Taccola drawings, small animals are used for page identification.)
The last coded marking system I will mention is the light wash brushed over the linear waves of the water. In almost all of Taccola’s drawings, washes are used only to represent water, gases and smoke. Everything else is delineated by lines. Shading to show three-dimensional form, when not done with parallel lines, is occasionally indicated with back-and-forth pencil strokes on the ink drawingsFane (2003) Wrote:Taccola did not brazenly take pen to paper without preliminary sketches to locate and lock in the elements of his drawings. (The same was often true even of such eloquent draftsmen as Leonardo da Vinci.) But unlike many artists, he did not erase most of them. (Perhaps there is a clue here to his intentions.) Often, in fact, the remaining pencil lines reveal multiple positions of elements drawn finally in ink. This puts us in even closer touch with Taccola’s process of thinking and adds a dimension of delight to viewing the drawings. But the pencil had another use as well: it was employed for shading. As stated above, Taccola’s marks were, in a sense, coded. Wavy lines suggested smoke and water, small parallel strokes on the edge of a beam meant roundness, long parallel lines often meant slats of wood, and so on. But washes, which have now faded to a yellowish tone, usually signify fluids. The washes are only occasionally used for accents, like decorating an elaborate letter of the alphabet (De machinis, 27r) or some peripheral element (e.g. the feather on a fawn’s head in De machinis (26v), but they are not used to suggest space or three-dimensionality. Shading, when used, is in pencil. I assume the scratchy penciled planes were drawn by Taccola, but they could have been added by a later hand. In any event, they stand in contrast to the ink washes and are only vaguely readable in the reproductions- and then only after seeing the original.
Interestingly, Fane believes that many of Taccola's drawings represent his 'personal fantasy world' rather than practical inventions. Many are indeed wacky designs, or as already discussed in this thread, outright impossible.
Fane (2003) Wrote:Another intriguing aspect of Taccola’s carefully arranged notebooks is that ware not entirely sure what their function was. Did Taccola consider himself primarily an inventor who drew only to elucidate his mechanical ideas? Did he think of himself as an artist making drawings to be appreciated for their visual qualities? Were the drawings meant as presents to important leaders to elevate his public stature? Did they feed Taccola’s fantasy life as he dealt with daily issues of engineering and administration? Was humor a conscious part of his visual experiments?
Fane concludes:
Fane (2003) Wrote:Taccola’s greatest invention is the strange private world he created in his illustrated notebooks. People, animals, machines, buildings, rafts and ships, mountains and trees—all are placed in atmospheric arrangements creating spaces that are on one hand illogical and, on the other, totally convincing
Parallels to the VM may or may not be coincidential!
-
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Koen G > 01-02-2026, 03:44 PM
Thank you for those quotes, Bernd. I especially like the one about the use of patterns, which is something I also noticed and found very VM-like.
Regarding the possibilities of copies, they must have existed because these Renaissance men needed to make a name for themselves. Marco referred me to this work from 1972: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On p.16, it is suggested that a copy must have been given to the emperor Sigismund in 1433.
I guess one could object that these materials would only be available in the upper echelons of society. But to me this feels like information rather than a problem
-
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
DG97EEB > 01-02-2026, 03:55 PM
(01-02-2026, 03:44 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you for those quotes, Bernd. I especially like the one about the use of patterns, which is something I also noticed and found very VM-like.
Regarding the possibilities of copies, they must have existed because these Renaissance men needed to make a name for themselves. Marco referred me to this work from 1972: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On p.16, it is suggested that a copy must have been given to the emperor Sigismund in 1433.
I guess one could object that these materials would only be available in the upper echelons of society. But to me this feels like information rather than a problem
You may find the attached interesting. I asked Gemini to "deep research", which if you haven't used it before is a great tool for doing deep web searches. Like everything else Gemini does, it's not guaranteed to be error free, but it's normally pretty reliable and if you give it the right research question, can find a surprising amount that's not easily found by Google alone. Provided with caveats then... -
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Bernd > 01-02-2026, 05:04 PM
(01-02-2026, 03:44 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On p.16, it is suggested that a copy must have been given to the emperor Sigismund in 1433.
Quote:On 13 January 1433, Taccola applied the finit to his book De ingeneis, obviously planning to give the work, or a copy of it, to Sigismund. Three months later the king departed from Siena, having completed his difficult negotiations and having exhausted if not overstayed his welcome at Siena; he had paid for her hospitality by ending the war with Florence and the Pope, an event to which Taccola alludes (IV 73v). The king was on his way to the usual ceremonial entry into Rome and to his coronation as Emperor. In the Eternal City he stayed a few months. He then proceeded back north, along the east coast of Italy. On 21 September 1433, he reached Mantua, his last major place of sojourn in Italy.
That's rather murky.
In this city he then, two days later, once more met a group of Sienese. They may have accompanied him bodily or, as is more probable, only in spirit and by messages, appearing now to take leave of him. According to the Regesta on 24 September, Marianus Jacobi "de Thomasinis," a term that was equivalent to the former de Humelis, and other Sienese men became comites palatini. No doubt the title was given in lieu of payment for some services rendered or properties delivered, and although the details again are not recorded, probably in Mariano's case the delivery of a copy of his book, personally or by proxy, was the occasion. However, no such copy is known to exist.
Between Taccola's completion of Book3+4 and Sigismund's departure were 3 months. Not a lot of time to make a fancy copy. He would have had 8 months until Sigismund's final departure from Italy which is more reasonable. Still there is no clear evidence this ever happened and if, we do not know which of his books (all4?) such a copy would have consisted of. I assume such a gift to the Emperor that was rewarded with a title would have been recorded somewhere. In any case, if Sigismund received a copy, he would have taken it back to Bohemia. -
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
Bernd > 01-02-2026, 06:19 PM
Interesting fact, according to the Regesta Imperii, after leaving Mantua where he may or may not have received a manuscript from Taccola on Sept.24 1433, Sigismund traveled to Basel, arriving on Oct 11th 1433 and staying until May 12th 1434, so 7 months. He may have showed or even given such a manuscript to someone else there being present at the Council of Basel. But this is highly speculative. It would explain how Taccola's work got into Switzerland relatively early.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -
RE: Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)
R. Sale > 01-02-2026, 07:48 PM