ANTIQUITATES
Empirical Knowledge and Antiquarian Architecture in Sixteenth-century Venice

Project

The overarching aim of the ANTIQUITATES project is to investigate the quantitative empirical practices of the early modern historical disciplines. During the sixteenth century, the Republic of Venice was the site of a flourishing architectural scene, that included groundbreaking architects from Veneto, like Fra Giovanni Giocondo (1433-1515), Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616). These figures were at once architects, learned scholars, and also experienced measurers and surveyors of ancient classical buildings. In their archeological studies, they blended historical and quantitative empirical evidence. Scholarship traditionally associates measurement and quantification with the growth of the natural sciences. In contrast, ANTIQUITATES shows how these were also established epistemic practices of the antiquarian and historical investigation of the past. Accounts of the rise of early modern empirical knowledge need to consider the quantitative methods of the historical disciplines. This perspective is original and largely unexplored.

Research

This research reconstructs the quantitative work of antiquarian architects within the networks of knowledge and patronage in the cities of Vicenza, Padua, Verona, and Venice. A defining feature of these groups was their inherent interdisciplinarity. The focus will be on three crucial patrons, Giangiorgio Trissino (1478-1550), Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570) and Giacomo Contarini (1536-1595), and on a few learned academies, namely Trissino’s academy in Cricoli (Vicenza), the Accademia Olimpica (Vicenza), in which both Palladio and Scamozzi operated, and the Accademia della Fama (or Veneziana; Venice). These circles brought together artisans, artists, scholars, and technical practitioners, breaking boundaries between learned and practical knowledge. An analysis of these networks counters narratives of Renaissance scholarship and early modern empiricism that have tended to develop separately, in disciplinary histories of arts, architecture, humanities, and the sciences.

Objectives

If these are the immediate aims of the project, its long-term approach is more ambitious. The goal of this research is to lay the foundations for a new area of historical research at the intersection between the early modern study of antiquity and the development of early modern empiricism. This approach promises to provide a new, integrated interpretation of the rise and development of early modern empiricism, in which the history of the sciences, humanities and art are combined and integrated in a common history of empirical knowledge.