Filarete

Abstract

As a theorist of architecture, Filarete is well known for his Treatise on Architecture, which he wrote between 1461 and 1464 in Milan. In the Treatise, which is the first such book in Italian, rather than the usual Latin, Filarete proposes the first star-shaped, ideal city of the Renaissance, reflecting the era’s humanism, naturalism, and utopianism. The ideal city of Sforzinda, named after the duke of Milan, was a search for harmony, proportion, and order, which were to be found in ancient history, nature, and geometry. The laws of nature were reflected in the body and expressed in mathematics. The human figure was the source of inspiration, the Greek orders were the best model to be followed, and perfect geometrical shapes were the tools with which to design the city. The human head was the primary measure of the body, which was extended to architecture, as the basis of harmonious relationships between the parts. The desired order was to be achieved by a single design for an entire city, anticipating Machiavelli and Descartes who also looked for a single source of order, which politically became manifest in absolute monarchies. The shift from the human head and body to the human mind, from Filarete to Descartes, however, took two centuries to emerge. The utopian designs of alternative realities became common practice for centuries, and the paradoxical relations with the natural world, simultaneously imitating and transforming it, which Sforzinda displays, are still with us. Although Sforzinda was never built, Filarete’s built projects survive in Milan’s castle and university.