Paduan Aristotelianism and Daniele Barbaro's Commentary on Vitruvius' De Architectura

Abstract

Daniele Barbaro's 1556 commentary on Vitruvius (second edition 1567) is generally regarded as the highest achievement of Renaissance Vitruvian exegesis. Because of Palladio's participation in its writing, architectural historians have devoted much attention to it in recent decades. However, the philosophical influences underlying Barbaro's arguments have been little studied so far, even though Barbaro himself was the author of a number of philosophical works. This study shows that Barbaro's views of a number of important issues in architectural theory, such as perception, optical corrections, imitation, meaning, and the formulation of the canon of the classical orders, were fundamentally determined by his Aristotelianism and Paduan philosophical education.