JustAnotherTheory > Yesterday, 02:06 PM
Bernd > Yesterday, 05:54 PM
MarcoP > 25 minutes ago
”Elizabeth Merrill” Wrote:Taccola’s profusely illustrated books, which merged antiquarian knowledge with technical acumen, provided a model for the codification of mechanical ideas, technological lore, design speculations and craft information, which until that point were largely maintained in an oral tradition. Within the context of the Studio of Siena, where Taccola was a chamberlain for nearly a decade, we might imagine that his manuscripts came to join those of the sources he employed – including Pliny, Vegetius, Frontinus, Marcus Graecus and Philo of Byzantium – providing inspiration and references for a community of artists and design practitioners. Even beyond the city, there was a demand for copies of Taccola’s manuscripts, and more broadly, the canon of material he had amassed. By the final decades of the 15th century, machine model drawings of Sienese origin were dispersed in Italy. The drawing books that index this culture follow a uniform pattern: in their subject matter, rigorously confined to machine drawing, and also in their material composition, which is irregular. Exemplars of the type include the Ms. Palatino 767 (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale); Ms. Additional 34113 (London, The British Library); Ms. Ob. 13 (Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek); and Ms. S.IV.5 (Siena, Biblioteca degli Intronati) (Figs 6, 7). These model books are compilations, not preconceived works. Most probably, they originated as unbound stacks of folios, and for a significant period of time remained open to reference and annotation among a community of practitioners.