filarete y la arquitectura prisca

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Filarete and the East: The Renaissance of a Prisca ArchitecturaAuthor(s): Berthold HubSource: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 70, No. 1 (March 2011), pp.18-37Published by: University of California Presson behalf of the Society of Architectural HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.1.18.

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Figure 1 Filarete (Antonio di Pietro Averlino), Codex Trivulzianus(ca.

1465, lost), title page, detail, initial E with a double portrait of its author

(from Michele Lazzaroni and Antonio Muoz, Filarete, scultore e

architetto del secolo XV[Rome: Modes, 1908], 238, fig. 113)

Figure 2 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XIV, fol. 108v, detail,

Golden Book (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit

CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians70, no. 1 (March 2011), 1837. ISSN

0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. 2011 by the Society of Architectural Historians.

All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce

article content through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website,

http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2011.70.1.18.

berthold hub

Universitt Wien

Filarete and the East

The Renaissance of a Prisca Architectura

Among early writings on architectural theory, theLibroarchitettonicoby the Florentine sculptor and architectAntonio di Pietro Averlino, who used the nameFilaretelover or friend of virtueis surely one of the mostoriginal and complex; its significance is therefore also the mostcontroversial (Figure 1).1Written in Italian between 1460 and

1464/66, it takes the form of a dialogue between the authorand his employers, Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan and hisson Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and it tells of the planning andconstruction of an ideal city, named Sforzinda after its royalpatrons, as well as a port allied to it, called Plusiapolis (richcity).2During excavation for the port citys foundations, agolden book written by an ancient king is found (Figure 2).The discovered volume is also a dialogue between a patron(the king) and his architect, and Filarete weaves together hisown book and this book-within-a-book using numerous liter-ary and visual strategies. He recounts how the buildings of themodern city of Plusiapolis are erected in imitation of thosedescribed in the ancient Golden Book; some descriptions referto the previously erected city of Sforzinda.

Filarete constructs a renaissance of the ancient worlddescribed in the rediscovered text, and his architectural the-ories and designs are presented as a rebirth of that ancient

ideal. However, what is involved is by no means a recoveryof Roman antiquity, as one might have expected. Filaretesdesigns show almost no similarities with the architecture ofRome; instead they share notable common features with thearchitecture of the Near and Far East, while the text situatesthe ideal city of Sforzinda in India and repeatedly mentions

Egypt as the origin of every form of architecture and as themodel to be followed.

Most scholarship has consistently emphasized Filaretesdependence, with regard to both the text and the illustrations,on classical sources: Roman architecture, Vitruvius, Pliny,Diodorus Siculus, and others.3John Onians and AlessandroRovetta have rightly expanded this territory, emphasizing theimportance for Filarete of Greece and the influence of Pla-tonic literature (Onians) and of Byzantine buildings (Rovetta).4According to them, Filaretein contrast to the Latin LeonBattista Albertiwas aiming for a renaissance of Greek antiq-uity. But Filaretes view extended even farther into the east. Hisimagination was fed by everything he could find relating to theNear and Far East in the medieval literature of travel and won-ders and in conversations with contemporary travelerseverything about the far-off lands where he thought elementsof genuine, pure, uncorrupted antiquity were still preserved.

An analysis of Filaretes understanding of the ancientworld, his use of the terms India and Egypt, the possiblesources for his enthusiasm for and knowledge of the East, andhis designs leads to the hypothesis that he was hoping to achievea renaissance of aprisca architectura.5In this, he was like his

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humanist contemporaries, who were seeking older and morevenerable witnesses to an original truth, aprisca theologia.

Rebirth of Antiquity

One of the main themes of FilaretesLibro Architettonicois thecontrast between two architectural styles. On the one hand,there is the inferior modo modernoi.e., the Gothic style,a maledetta praticaccia (damn bad practice) that supposedlyreached Italy with the invasion of the barbarians, meaningthe people from the other side of the Alps or, more specifi-cally, the Germans and the French.6On the other hand,there is the modo antico, which according to Filarete hadalready been revived in Florence, but not in Milan. Duringthe course of the dialogue, Filaretes patron and his son, andthe reader/listener, are converted from favoring the modernarchitectural style to the antique.7

What Filarete was aiming for in his promotion of an an-tique style was a rebirth. This is often alluded to in his work,most explicitly in the thirteenth book, in which a visiting lordfrom Mantua (presumably Ludovico Gonzaga), upon seeingthe just-completed city of Sforzinda, enthusiastically pro-claims the advent of the Renaissance: My lord, I seem to seeagain the noble buildings that were once in Rome and thosethat we read were in Egypt. It seems to me that I have beenreborn on seeing those noble buildings. They seem verybeautiful to me.8The sense of the phrase rinascere a vedereclearly indicates that Ludovico Gonzaga/Filarete is thinkingin terms of a rebirth of antiquity, either his own rebirth in the

past, as the text seems to indicate, or the rebirth of ancientbuildings in the present. However, Filaretes aim is clearlystated. He wishes to recreate the lost architecture of antiquity.

Golden Books

A central role in this renaissance of the ancient style andin the education of the patron and his sonand the reader/listeneris played by the discovery of the ancient codex.9As soon as the city of Sforzinda has been more or less com-pleted, construction begins on the fortified port, Plusiapolis.As the foundations for its defensive walls are being excavated,a treasure chest is discovered. Along with other precious

items, it holds a further chest containing a Golden Book writ-ten in Greek. The author of this Codex Aureusis an ancientking named Zogaglia, whose city of Galisforma (the twonames are an anagrammatic form of Galeazzo Maria Sforza)once stood on the site. The book first tells the story of theking, and additional anagrams reveal it to be the history of therise of the Sforza family.10It thus confirms and ennoblesSforza rule by endowing it with the pedigree of antiquity.

The principal protagonist in the Golden Book is Fil-arete himself, who appears as Onitoan Nolivera . . . per

patria notirenflo (an anagrammatic form of his name andorigin, Antonio Averlino, Florentino), court architect toKing Zogaglia.11The majority of the Golden Book consistsof a dialogue between the ancient king and his architect, inthe course of which all of the ancient buildings and com-plexes erected by the king are described. Guided by the de-scription of the now-sunken port city, the buildings of thenew Sforza port are then erected on the same site.12Someof the descriptions, however, match buildings that had al-ready been described as erected in the city of Sforzinda,which lay inland, some distance away. A number of the pal-aces of Sforzinda are described again in the Golden Book,which also mentions the churches. And in fact Filarete at-tributes to the ancient King Zogaglia the construction of asecond city farther away in the interior, where Filarete, com-missioned by Francesco Sforza, had just built Sforzinda.13

The dialogue in the Golden Book between the ancientking and his architect is no different from the discussion be-tween Filarete and Francesco Sforza and/or Galeazzo MariaSforza that is recounted in the encompassing text. Filaretesometimes even forgets to change the names to anagrams, orperhaps does so deliberately in order to make the two epochsappear even closer.14

Another connection between the two renaissancesand between the book and and the book-within-a-bookiscreated when Filarete reports that he buried a bronze bookduring the ceremonies accompanying the laying of the foun-dation stone for the city of Sforzinda, when a marble chest

containing the book is set into the foundation of the city wallalong with the first stone.15This book is to serve as a witnessofthis our age and the deeds of worthy menbut aboveall as a witness of Filaretes designs and architecture. He sug-gests that his bronze book corresponds to the ancient GoldenBook, found during the excavations for the walls of the portcity: The reason I put these things in this foundation is be-cause, as every man knows, things that have a beginning musthave an end. When the time comes, they will find thesethings, and know our names and remember us because ofthem, just as we remember when we find something noble ina ruin or in an excavation. We are happy and pleased to find

a thing that represents antiquity and [gives] the name of himwho had it done.16Filarete argues that the presentinclud-ing his own architecture and accomplishmentsshould havethe same importance for future generations that the GoldenAge of antiquity has for the present. If antiquity is lost again,Filarete is ensuring the continuation of its tradition.

The parallelism between Filaretes ownLibro Architetto-nicoand the ancient codex is impressed upon the reader in avisual, material manner as well. The title page of Filaretesbook bore a motif that he also depicts on the cover of the

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F I L A R E T E A N D T H E E A S T 21

Golden Book (see Figures 1, 2).17In both, a nude woman

stands in a vessel inscribed with the word Memori(a), withtwo children identified as Intellectus and Ingenium at her feet.On the title page, which also bears a double portrait of Filareteinside the intial letter E, the woman is pouring a liquid out oftwo bowls into the mouths of the children (see Figure 1). Fortheir part, each of the children is emptying a jug. The accom-panying bees identify the liquid as honey or nectar. In the de-piction on the cover of the Golden Book, the woman simplylays her hands on the childrens heads (see Figure 2).18Fil-aretesLibrois thus represented as identical with the ancientCodex Aureus, or at least as a vessel for the same memoria,from which intellectusand ingeniumdraw sustenance.

Such devices link the present with the past and attachFilaretes architectural treatise with the Golden Book, ensur-ing that his architecture is identified with that of antiquity.Through Filarete, antiquity is not only reborn in the mindand spirit, but also re-erected in fact.

However, the antique architecture that Filarete was intenton reviving had little to do with actual Roman buildings,which were then being studied and measured with archaeo-logical interest by contemporary architects, includingBrunelleschi and Alberti. Since Filarete himself spent fourteenyears in Rome (143347) before writing hisLibro Architetto-nico, the differences between his favored architecture and that

of Roman antiquity cannot be attributed to ignorance. Thesedifferences were conscious, and they require explanation.

Filarete makes remarkably few specific references to thebuildings that he had seen in Rome. And even when he does,it is immediately clear that he is not interested in archaeo-logical reconstruction. Neither the elevation nor certainlythe ground plan of the Colosseum that are depicted by Fil-arete correspond to the actual structure (Figure 3).19And inhis discussion of the Circus of Maxentius, he shows interestchiefly in the obelisk and its hieroglyphs (Figure 4).20

Figure 4 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XII, fol. 87r, detail,

Circus of Maxentius (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit


Figure 3 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XII, fol. 87v,

detail, Colosseum (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le

Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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Egypt: The Origin of Architecture

Filaretes interest in Egypt was very strong. He writes thatFederico Gonzaga, upon viewing the architects buildings,proclaimed the advent of the Renaissance and acclaimed thereappearance of the noble buildings that were once inRome and those that we read were in Egypt. Like the an-cient buildings of Rome, the buildings of Egypt were thusalso intended to rinascere.For modern observers whounlike Filareteare familiar with Egyptian art, this is likelyto come as a surprise, since the two styles have little to dowith each other. However, this is not the only passage inFilaretesLibroin which Egypt is presented as the model tobe revived. There are a large number of references to ancientpyramids and obelisks, sometimes illustrated, in which theyusually appear as elements in complex compositions, such asthe Monument for Re Zogaglia (Figure 5).21A single free-standing obelisk is placed on a central city square, like theEgyptian ones.22Eight labyrinths are mentioned, five ofwhich are illustrated and one of which is called Egyptian;Daidalos is twice mentioned as the architect (Figures 69).23

One of these labyrinths is of particular interest, as itsdiscussion reveals why Filarete placed such great importanceon this type of structure. He prescribes that the House of theArchitect is to be adorned with, among other things, picturesof the inventors of the various arts and sciences, in chrono-logical order.24Architecture occupies the very first position,and depicted are to be two Egyptian architects, Menedotusand Velnaron, who are said to have built the first labyrinth.25This makes the labyrinth the very first work of architec-turethe absolute commencement of architectureand thesine qua nonof human society, since architecture comes firstin the chronology of all the arts and sciences. These begin-nings lie in Egypt.26

The age and venerability of Egyptian buildings inspiresmany of Filaretes architectural decorations. The descrip-tion of the paintings adorning the ducal palace begins andends with Egyptian motifs: The paintings representedamong other things the origins and beginnings of the kingsof Egypt as well as other most ancient histories, for examplethe life of Cyrus. . . . There were also buildings, as for

Figure 5 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XIV, fol. 102v, Monument

for Re Zogaglia (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit


Figure 6 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. VI, fol. 40v, detail, Layout

of the fortress of the Signore of Sforzinda, surrounded by a labyrinth and

a moat (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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F I LA RE T E A ND T H E E A ST 23

Figure 7 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus,

Lib. XIII, fol. 99r, detail. The castle at the Indo

mountain, at a bridge over the river Indo (per-

mission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit

CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di

Firenze)

Figure 8 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XIV, fol. 110r, detail. Plusiapolis, castle/lighthouse

at port entrance (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca

Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

Figure 9 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus,

Lib. XV, fol. 121r, detail. Plusiapolis, a garden

designed as a mappamondo, with a ground plan

of the palace complex covering 3--3 squares in

the center, surrounded by a labyrinth (permission

of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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example the pyramids of Egypt, which are large and eternal.There was also the great Egyptian Thebes, which had onehundred gates, and, in sum, all the noble things of that place.Many other noble ancient things were represented in ourcourt.27

India: The Architecture of a Paradisal Location

While Filarete identifies numerous works of architectureand ornamentation whose Egyptian origins are emphasized,Sforzinda lies in India. It is certainly no coincidence that thecapital city of the Sforza family is named Sforzinda; it lies onthe river Sforzindo (one passage refers to the river as Indo),in the Indavalley, at the foot of the Indo mountain (Figure10). The siting of the city in India is emphasized repeatedlythrough the use of these names.28Sforzinda is described

several times as an earthly paradiseremote, enclosed,and richly endowed with water, animals, and fruits of everytype, as well as precious stones and valuable buildingmaterials.29

In Filaretes time the termIndia referred to a muchlarger geographical area than the present-day nation.30China, for example, was at that time often designated IndiaUlterior or Interior. Even Africa was referred to as India Ter-tia, India Aegypti, or India Aethiopiae, as there was generalagreement with Ptolemy that the Indian Ocean was an inlandsea, making Africa and India a single entitya misconcep-tion that was finally corrected only toward the end of the

fifteenth century. The designation India is often simply syn-onymous with the East or, even more broadly, the distant.This should be taken into consideration, in view of the manymentions of ancient cities and marvelous sights in Filaretes

Libro Architettonico. The eighth book, for example, listsRome, but also Troy, Carthage, Nineveh, Babylon, Thebesin Egypt and Cathay, a very large country. They say it is inTartary, where some report there are more than 20,000bridges.31

These 20,000 bridges, or the one hundred gates of thegreat Egyptian Thebes, presumably originatedas did thecity namesin medieval and contemporary literature ontravel and wondrous sights. Marco PolosMilione, to nameonly the most famous example, describes huge cities withone hundred gates and six thousand stone bridges (Filaretehas a particular fondness for depicting bridges)32and largeand small canals, which are used to remove refuse from thecity in the same way as in Filaretes Sforzinda.33Marco Polodescribed a tomb that a very rich king had built for himselfin antiquity, with high towers topped with gilded spheres

and equipped with apparatuses that transform wind intomusic. This description could have been one of the inspira-tions for Filaretes Monument for Re Zogaglia, erected inthe main piazza of Plusiapolis, to mark the site where theGolden Book had been discovered (see Figure 5).34How-ever, spheres atop towers or obelisks, figures of angels orwind gods that make music of the wind (Figure 11),35light-houses (see Figure 8), lighted columns,36towers or col-umns with water fountains at their tops,37revolving towers(Figure 12),38and towers that can be climbed on horsebackvia spiraling ramps on the inside or outside (Figure 13, seeFigure 11)39are all stock themes of the medieval literature

devoted to travel and wonders.40Filaretes references to suchtowers and columns may have been influenced by reports ofactual monuments, especially the early Islamic minarets inSamarra and Cairo (Mosque of Ibn Tulun), as well as the

Figure 10 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. II, fol. 11v, detail. The site of Sforzinda in the Inda Valley (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e

le Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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Figure 11 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XV, fol. 122r, detail. Plusiapolis, Palace and detail with one of the rotating

and sound-producing wind figures (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Cen-

trale di Firenze)

Figure 12 Filarete, Codex Maglia-

bechianus, Lib. XXI, fol. 172r,Plusiapolis, revolving tower (per-

mission of the Ministero per i Beni

e le Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca

Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, all of which could beclimbed by horses. Benjamin of Tudela, for example, re-ported on the monuments of Cairo and Alexandria in thetwelfth century.41The Pharos of Alexandria is said to havehad a water source at its center.42A column with a water pipeleading to its tip is described in Baalbek in several eigh-teenth-century travel accounts; yet another example of awater-bearing column was excavated in Chirbethamsn,north of Akka, at the beginning of the twentieth century.43

Of special interest is the tower of Firuzabad (Gur) inIran, now known as minar but formerly called tirbal.This was originally the core of a square tower with a stair-case; the stairs and exterior walls have been lost, and thetower today rises some 30 meters above an expanse of rubble(Figure 14).44Gur, the capital of the Sassanid empire, wasset in a fertile valley surrounded by mountains on the river

Firuzabad; it was arranged on a circular plan, surrounded bytwo clay walls and a wide ditch; twenty radially arrangedstreets led to the towerlike building at the precise center ofthe complex, which probably had been a group of palacebuildings. From the top of the tower it would have beenpossible to overlook the whole city, and water flowed like aspring from the towers pipe.45The correspondences withFilaretes Sforzinda are conspicuous (see Figure 10). In thesecond book, the Renaissance architect had proposed tomark the center of his circular city, surrounded by a moat,with a tall tower that was to symbolize in various ways thecycle of the year.46However, in the sixth book, in the more

detailed description of the center of the city, the tower is nolonger mentioned.47Filarete had apparently abandoned theoriginal ideal plan, derived from Eastern models, in favor ofmore realistic and nearby sources. But this concession tem-pered the original idea without abandoning it. The idealproject is now transferred to the central building of a for-tress, the function and siting of which in the city are leftunclear (see Figures 6, 14). Channeling water to the centerof the complex via an aqueduct continues to be described.Now, however, it does not flow into the canals and along thestreets, but into the passages of a labyrinth that encircles thefortress.48The notable ground plan of the fortress is a square

3-by-3 grid (see Figure 6). The same 3-by-3 grid plan isadopted for one of the palace complexes in Plusiapolis,which is set in the midst of a garden laid out as a map orimage of the world, surrounded by a labyrinth (see Figure 9).In Plusiapolis the central square of the complex is occupiedby the main building of the palace, while in Sforzinda thecentral square is the site of the central tower of the fortress.49As simple as this gridded layout may be, it does not seem toappear in the Western tradition before Filarete. It does,however, appear in numerous Eastern traditions, such as

Figure 13 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XIII, fol. 41v, detail.

The central tower of the dukes castle of Sforzida (cf. Figure 6) (permis-

sion of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazio-

nale Centrale di Firenze)

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that of the Indian mandala.50Moreover, this pattern wasused in laying out cities in China, as well for the semilegend-ary cosmological temple known as the ming-tang(hall oflight or cosmic house), the ritual residence where the em-peror performed the seasonal ceremonial acts necessary tomaintain the unity of heaven and earth.51Further parallelsat a morphological level suggest themselves.52

Knowledge and Notions of the Far EastFilarete demonstrates that he was familiar with the architec-ture of the Near and Far East, especially as it was describedin the medieval and early Renaissance literature devoted totravel and wonders. Labyrinths, pyramids, obelisks, crowningspheres, and shining towers that rotate and can be climbed onhorseback via spiraling ramps can all be found in this litera-ture, but in no cases do the descriptions correspond exactly toFilaretes designs. This suggests that he was working frommemory or that his primary source was oral tradition.

In addition to Filaretes knowledge of the literary tra-dition, he may have also had more direct, personally com-municated knowledge of Eastern buildings. Although weknow little about the links between East and West in thisperiod, and the sparse written evidence is overlaid withmedieval or ancient literary traditions, the contacts were cer-tainly more intensive than these literary sources would leadus to conclude. The importance of oral transmission of suchinformation should not be underestimated; this has beenshown very clearly by recent publications and conferences.53While it is true that the surviving written accounts suggesttravelers rather limited interest in foreign architecture,much more might have been drawn out had they been ques-tioned by a contemporary architect.

Filarete might have consulted at least four possible au-thorities on the Orient. The first is the humanist Francesco

Filelfo, who spent the 1420s in Constantinople (where he hadmarried a Greek woman), before meeting and becoming Fi-laretes friend in Florence.54This friendship, which continuedin Milan, is attested to by several letters by Filelfo to Filareteand by an epigram that the humanist scholar dedicated to thearchitect.55Filelfo appears at several points in FilaretesLibrofor example, as the author of inscriptions that are tobe placed on the buildings, as interpreter of hieroglyphs, andas the translator from Greek of the ancient Golden Book.56

Filarete must have also known Filelfos friend CiriacodAnconaif not through Filelfo, then through Pope EugeneIV, who had employed both of them at the time of the Coun-

cil of Ferrara/Florence in 143839 and thereafter. They wereresident in Rimini and Venice at the same time.57Accounts ofseveral of Ciriacos travels to Constantinople, to the Aegean,and three journeys to Egypt are extant, and there is evidencethat he made drawings of the buildings he sawdrawings thatwere presumably destroyed in 1514 by a fire in the Sforza li-brary in Pesaro.58Furthermore, it is very likely that Filareteknew both the Florentine Benedetto Dei, who began travel-ing through the Orient in 1458 and reported on his travels inletters,59and Niccol de Conti, who traveled through Indiaand perhaps even China between about 1414 and 1439, andwhom Filarete could have met in Florence or Venice.60

Filaretes multiple periods of residence in Venice could,of course, have led him to make other valuable acquain-tances and receive first-hand news from the Orient. Forexample, the Persian ambassador from Tabriz (an importanttrading city on the Silk Road, which was frequented by Ital-ians) was in Venice at the same time as Filarete, and he orsomeone from his entourage could have told Filarete aboutthe mosque in Tabriz.61

Filaretes architectural concepts, although inventive, arenot purely imaginary, and it is likely that verbal resources

Figure 14 Firuzabad (Gur), third century AD, aerial photograph (fromGeorg Gerster, Flug in die Vergangenheit. Archologische Sttten der

Menschheit in Flugbildern(Munich: Schirmer-Mosel, 2003), 48, fig. 14)

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16, 17, 19). His first version of the Temple of Plusiapolisresembles yet another Mughal monument, the tomb of Iti-mad-ud-Daulah in Agra (completed 1628; Figure 22). Inboth, octagonal towers at the corners advance beyond theplane of the faade. Since it is highly improbable that Filareteinfluenced the Mughal architects, it may be assumed that

these architectural forms derive from a common source.

Imaginary Utopia or Serious Program?

Filarete places his ideal architecture in India and refers atnumerous points to Egypt as the home of the ideal art that isto be revived. His imagination was fed by information aboutstrange and distant lands gleaned from medieval literatureand heard about from contemporary travelers. Filaretes an-tiquity stands temporally before and geographically outsideGreek and Roman classical antiquity. What was it that firedthis interest in the distant Orient, a place he had never vis-ited? Was this land more than a surface onto which he couldproject his fantasy of an ideal? In other words, was Filareteonly concerned with establishing an unknown and thus in-disputable authority, which was defined loosely enough togive his own imagination free rein? Because a utopian stateneeds to be protected from reality, utopians of all periodshave set their creations in the past or future, or on inacces-sibly distant islandsor in India. As early as the Hellenisticperiod, India was a byword for the end of the Earth anda symbol of an exotic world, alternately imagined as a placeplagued by horrible monsters, or as an earthly paradise, with

Figure 15 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. VII, fol. 46r, detail,

Cathedral of Sforzinda (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le

Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

Figure 16 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XIV, fol. 108r, detail,

Temple of Plusiapolis (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Atti-

vit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

inspired the minaret-like towers of his four-spired Cathedralof Sforzinda (Figure 15) and the two versions of his Templeof Plusiapolis (Figures 16, 17).62

While the mosque of Tabriz has not survivednor hasany other early mosque with four minaretsan understand-ing of it can be assembled from literary sources and archaeo-logical remains, and Filaretes designs can be compared withsimilar mosques of a later date.63The conical termination ofFilaretes towers resemble those of the great Ottoman mosques,such as the Selimiye at Edirne by Sinan (Figure 18).64Theminarets of Filaretes second version of the Temple of Plu-siapolis stand on octagonal bases like those at the Taj Mahalin Agra (163249) and the tomb of Jahangir at Shahdara,Lahore (162838) (Figure 19, see Figure 17). Those minaretsresemble the semi-engaged minarets of the Gol Gumbaz atBijapur; in both, the minarets are octagonal, are seven storiestall, and are perforated by windows (Figure 20, cf. Figure 17).Like Humayuns tomb in Delhi (1570), or Akbars tomb atSikandra (1613), both variants of Filaretes temple stand onarcaded platforms, and like the Taj Mahal in Agra, the plat-form is reached by stairs parallel to it (Figure 21, see Figures

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a perfect climate, where mighty kings and peaceful peoplelived in great wealth under just laws.65The early church fa-thers and, in particular, influential medieval encyclopedistssuch as Isidore of Seville (early seventh century) and Vincentof Beauvais or the Florentine Brunetto Latini (thirteenthcentury) placed the Garden of Eden in India. Numerousmappae mundisuch as the famous Ebstorf world map, theHereford map, and many of the Spanish Beatus maps locateParadise in the Far Eastin India.66The ideal lands of sev-eral chivalric romances and many versions of the Alexanderromance were located in India, as was the mythical kingdomof the priest-king Prester John.67The main river of thisearthly paradise is, of course, the Indus; sometimes a moun-tain is also mentioned, also called Indus or a similar nameexactly as in FilaretesLibro Architettonico.68

At the time of Filarete, Egypt was considered by manyto be a part of India, and Filarete states in the eighth bookthat Egypt is located in Asia.69Moreover, at least since Plato,everything Egyptian (not least the hieroglyphs, whichserved as a hermeneutic model) was seen as exemplary em-bodiments of idealism and timelessness.70The Renaissance

enthusiastically adopted this fashion by 1419 at the latest,the date of the discovery of HorapollonsHieroglyphica, acopy of which Filaretes friend Filelfo owned.71

However, Filarete was seeking to do more than adoptFar Eastern and Egyptian clichs for literary purposes, as hisdiscussion of the Golden Book reveals.

Hermes TrismegistosScholars have interpreted Filaretes account of the discoveryof the Golden Book as an allusion to the rediscovery ofVitruviuss treatise by Poggio Bracciolini in 142172or as areference to the Bibliotheca historicaby Diodorus Siculus.73However, a different identification fits extremely well withthe known facts.

Filaretes account of finding a treasure and the GoldenBook, which contains ancient knowledge, is reminiscent ofstories from Arabian literature, known since the tenth cen-tury, that describe the discovery of the Tabula Smaragdinaand similar alchemistic texts attributed to Hermes. The oldestof these narratives recounts the discovery of Hermetic booksin Egyptian pyramids and burial chambers. Later versionsattempt to give credibility to the idea that these books madetheir way through inheritance to other countries, where theywere later discovered.74The latter category includes The Bookof the Treasures of Alexander (Kitab dahirat Aliskandar), pre-sumably written in the eleventh century.75Its account of a dis-covered treasure, developed through a multilayered backgroundstory, bears such a strong resemblance to Filaretes narrative thatone is forced to conclude that direct derivation is involved.

Figure 18 Sinan, Selimiye mosque, Edirne, 156975

Figure 17 Filarete, Codex Magliabechianus, Lib. XV, fol. 119v, detail,

Temple of Plusiapolis, variant (permission of the Ministero per i Beni e

le Attivit CulturaliBiblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)

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30 JSAH / 70 : 1 , MARCH 2011

Figure 19Tomb of Mumtaz Mahal,

known as the Taj Mahal, Agra, 163148

Figure 20 Gol Gumbaz, Bijapur,

162656

In the Book of the Treasures of Alexander, Prince Al-Mutasim learns after the destruction of Amorium that amonastery in that city holds a number of recorded revelationsand relics of the prophets. He dispatches his architect and anastrologer, who search the monastery for hidden rooms butfind none. Just as Al-Mutasim is about to give up the search,Al-Mamun, the legendary first opener of pyramids, appears tohim in a dream, saying: O brother, begin tearing down thewalls, for in them is the treasure of DuIquarnain and the sci-ence of Aristotle and the great Hermes! I congratulate you, O

brother, on the honor, victory, spoils and splendid possessions

that are to be given to you!76The following morning, theprince orders his architect to tear down the walls as quickly aspossible. And indeed, in the foundations is found a copper boxcontaining a gold box with an inscription in Greek. In this box,finally, is found a Golden Book written in Greek.

The prince sends for an interpreter, who begins translat-ing the inscriptions and the Golden Book. The inscriptionon the outer box tells of King Alexander, and why, when, andunder which constellation he had had the treasure buried, sothat only the next most worthy person would be able to find

it, a person who would be both philosopher and king, and

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who would guard the treasure just as Alexander had done andprotect it from unworthy persons. In a postscript that Aris-totle addresses to Alexander, the origins of the treasure aretraced back, by way of Apollonius of Tyana, to the pre-Floodwisdom of Hermes Trismegistos. This account is followedby ten chapters that present the alchemistic treatises and theformulas taken from the Golden Book.

This narrative has notable elements in common withFilaretes tale: the excavation of wall foundations in an an-cient structure by an architect at the behest of his prince-patron; the subsequent discovery of the treasure of an ancientking; the location of the treasure in a box containing another

box, which in turn contains a Golden Book bearing a Greekinscription; both the inscription and the book have to betranslated by an interpreter who is summoned for this task;in addition, Filaretes king gives his servants instructions tobury the treasure so that only a most worthy person will beable to find it.77While his account of the Golden Book doesnot include an astrologer to determine the suitable celestialcircumstances for the concealment of the text, that detail isin his story of the Bronze Book.78And, finally, FilaretesGolden Book also contains alchemistic secrets.

In Filaretes story, within the boxes found while layingthe foundations for the walls of the port city are, among other

Figure 21Tomb of Humayun, Delhi,

156272

Figure 22Tomb of Itimad-ud-Daulah,

Agra, completed 1628

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32 JSAH / 70 : 1 , MARCH 2011

objects, two vases containing mysterious powders.79The pa-tron, who is summoned when the box is opened, and his soninitially mistake these for the ashes of a dead person and wantto discard them, but the wise architect intervenes, suggestingthat they should wait until the book has been translated. SoFrancesco Sforza returns to his court with the book and haltsconstruction until the contents of the Golden Book have beentranslated. After a few days, he sends to his princely son, whohas remained at the building site, these instructions:

My dearest son, you will say thus to the architect, and I say to

you that you should be pleased and willing to undertake noble

things, for we have had the letters written on the golden book

translated as well as all the others. We have understood the

tenor of the whole. Among other things the dust that we wanted

to throw away is such that, spend money as you will, it will never

be lacking, for the contents of one vase are related to the sun

and of the other to the moon. This makes a great multiplication

in the god who cut off the head of Argus of the hundred eyes.

We have discovered even better things, that is, the way to do it.

So be of good cheer and do great and noble things. Forget the

expense but build eternal things.80

The god who cut off the head of Argus was Mercury,a key figure in alchemy. And since the contents of one vaseare related to the sun and that of the other to the moon, thepowders can be identified as alchemical sulfur and mercury,the two generative principles of all material and components

of the philosophers stone (quinta essentia). Its father is thesun; its mother is the moon, as the Hermetic Tabula Sma-ragdina states.81

Mercury is the Latin name of the Greek Hermes, andthe reference to the Book of the Treasures of Alexander,which deals with alchemical texts attributed to Hermes, sug-gests that Filaretes Golden Book was conceived as a refer-ence to a collection of alchemical texts attributed to Hermesthat, according to the inventory of 1459, was located in thelibrary of Francesco Sforza in Filaretes time.82Thus thecontents of the Golden Book and the architecture that itdescribesFilaretes architectureare linked to Hermes.

Prisca architectura

Filaretes Indian Egypt establishes architectures venerableideal beginnings, before Greece and Rome, before it was cor-rupted and distorted. He attempted to devise an original, trueprisca architectura. In the 1460s he could not have initiated aproject of this type by himself. He contributed to a generalmovement that was launched in his home city of Florenceby Gemistos Plethon (whom Filelfo knew) and other Neo-platonists at the time of the Council of Ferrara/Florence

(143848) under Filaretes patron Pope Eugenius IV. The ob-jective of this movement was to rediscover the original truth,aprisca theologia(orprisca philosophia,philosophia priscorum,etc.),before it was split into pagan philosophy and Judeo-Christiantheology. The aim was to harmonize the former with the lat-ter.83In the same years when Filarete was writing hisLibroArchitettonico, Marsilio Ficino was working on a translation ofthe Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of writings that in 1460had made its way to Florence from the East.84Although thesetexts actually originated in the second or third century AD,they were regarded as the oldest writing and were attributedto the mythical Egyptian king and priest Hermes, who at thattime was generally considered to be a real historical figure. Inthe preface to his translation of the first book of the Corpus(1464), Ficino describes the content of the work as apriscatheologia. . . which has its origins in Mercury, 85thus for the

first time outlining a concept that he repeated in his subse-quent writings and that was to vastly influence Europeanintellectual history in the century that followed. He pro-posed that human wisdom had its origin not in Greece withSocrates or Plato, but in a much more distant period andplacein Egypt with Hermes Trismegistos, and then later inthe Near or Far East.86To learn this absolute, primal truthbefore it was divided and corrupted, he argued, it is necessaryto search for the oldest preserved manuscripts, to study them,and to translate and adapt them for the present.

Filarete appears to have carried out in the field of archi-tecture what his humanist colleagues were doing in theology

and philosophy in Florence (and shortly thereafter in otherplaces as well). He assimilated everything he could find per-taining to the Far and Near East in classical sources, themedieval literature of travel and wonders, and conversationswith his contemporariesin every source where he believedelements of genuine, pure antiquityaprisca architecturawere preserved.87

Filarete must have had a yearning to travel to India him-self. In fact, just like his humanist contemporaries who trav-eled to the East in search of writings that might contain themost ancient truth, theprisca theologia, Filarete planned tojourney to the East after completing hisLibro Architettonico

in 1466. However, he died before he could fulfill this wish.88If Filarete had lived longer, he would have been disap-

pointed. Had he been able to travel all the way to India, hewould have seen that Indian architecture by no means cor-responded to his colossal ideals. Moreover, he would havelived to see that the architectural style that he had created didnot attract any followers. Itmay have influenced an architecthere or there in some manner, but the only faithful copies ofhis drawings appear in two codices of sketches for ephemeral,fantastic architectural works that Vasari and others labeled

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bizzarie.89The sole structure built according to theLibroArchitettonicowas a floating theater of wood and paper de-signed by Antonio Rusconi in 1564 for the Compagnia degliAccesi in Venice.90

Notes1.Wolfgang von Oettingen,ber das Leben des Antonio Averlino, genannt Filarete(Leipzig: Seemann, 1888); Michele Lazzaroni and Antonio Muoz,Filarete,scultore e architetto del secolo XV(Rome: Modes, 1908); A. M. Romanini: s.v.Averlino (Averulino), Antonio, detto Filarete, in Dizionario Biografico degli Ital-iani, vol. 4 (Rome: Scarano, 1962), 66267; Peter Tigler, Die Architekturtheoriedes Filarete(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963); Luisa Giordano, On Filaretes Libroarchitettonico,inPaper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise,ed. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress, 1998), 5165; Valentina Vulpi, Finding Filarete: The TwoLibro architet-tonico, inRaising the Eyebrow: John Onians and World Art Studies. An AlbumAmicorum in His Honour, ed. Lauren Golden (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2001),

32939; and, most recently, the essays published inArchitettura e Umanesimo:Nuovi studi su Filarete, ed. Berthold Hub,Arte Lombarda155, no. 1 (2009).2.The report forms the framing narrative for the first 21 books, which arefollowed by three additional books in which the architect fulfils his earlieroften-repeated promise to give the prince instruction in the art of disegno.Originally, in 1464, Filarete had dedicated his book to Francesco Sforza, butwhen he was forced shortly afterward to look for a new employer, he prefacedhis text in 1466 with a new dedication to Piero de Medici (Figure 1) andadded a twenty-fifth book praising the deeds and works of the Medici family,particularly their appreciation and patronage of architecture. The originalhas been lost; the most important extant manuscript is the Codex Magliabe-chianus (II,I,140) in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze; AntonioAverlino Filarete, Trattato di architettura, ed. Anna Maria Finoli and LilianaGrassi (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1972), 2 vols. Hereafter, the work is cited from:

Antonio Averlino Filarete, Treatise on Architecture: Being the Treatise by Antoniodi Piero Averlino, known as Filarete, ed. and trans. John R. Spencer (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1965), vol. 1: The Facsimile, vol. 2: The Trans-lation. On the dating of the work: John R. Spencer, La datazione del Trattatodel Filarete desunta dal suo esame interno,Rivista darte31 (1956), 93103;Liliana Grassi, in Trattato di architettura1: xixiii; most recently Mia ReinosoGenoni, Filarete in Word and Image: Persuasion and Invention in theArchitettonico Libro(Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 2007), 14956.On the manuscript tradition, see in particular Liliana Grassi, in Trattato diarchitettura, 1: cviicxxix; and the excellent summary by Genoni,Filarete inWord and Image, 145203. The modern edition gave the text the misleadingtitle Trattato di Architettura. Filarete himself evidently did not give it atitle, but in the dedication prefaced to the twenty-five books the architecthimself refers to the work as architettonico libroa title, or at least a

description, that descibes its contents far better and has therefore replacedthe older, secondary description in most recent studies.3. See the introductions and annotations to FilaretesLibroby Spencer andGrassi quoted in note 2 above. Cf., e.g., Ulrich Pfisterer, Filaretes Knstlerwis-sen und der wiederaufgefundene Traktat De arte fuxoriades Giannantonio Por-cellio de Pandoni,Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz46(2002), 12151; Peter Fane-Saunders, Filaretes Libro architettonico and Plinythe Elders Account of Ancient Architecture, inArchitettura e Umanesimo: Nuovistudi su Filarete, ed. Berthold Hub,Arte Lombarda155, 1 (2009), 11120.4.John Onians, Alberti and: A Study in Their Sources,Jour-nal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes34 (1971), 96114 (cf. JohnOnians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages,

and the Renaissance(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 15862);Alessandro Rovetta, Filarete e lumanesimo greco a Milano: viaggi, amici-zie e maestri,Arte Lombarda66 (1983), 89102.5.The term prisca architettura is the authors creation in analogy to Fil-aretes humanist contemporaries who, like Francesco Filelfo or MarsilioFicino, tried to reconstruct an original truth beyond both biblical and classicalsources, which they coinedprisca theologia,prisca philosophia, orphilosophia pris-corum. See below, and note 83.6. Lib. VIII, fols. 59r; XIII, 100r100v; ed. Spencer, 102 and 176.7.Thus, at the beginning of the dialogue, Filaretes patron Francesco Sforza,pointing to the cathedrals of Milan and Florence, defends the moderni.e., Gothicstyle against the new building practice, which follows modelsof antiquity (Lib. I, fol. 2r). In the middle of theLibrohe seems undecided:now he likes the modern Gothic style and the ancient style equally andthinks that perhaps everyone should simply decide according to his owntaste (Lib. XIII, fols. 99v100r). At the end of the dialoguethat is, at theend of the education process that his architect Filarete subjects him tothepatron is convinced, and he joins in the praise of the ancient building styleas the only true one, and even the only possible one (Lib. XVI, fol. 128v).

8. Lib. XIII, fol. 100r; ed. Spencer, 175.9. Lib. XIV, fol. 101r.10.The fates of his grandfather and father consist of the deeds of IacopoMucio (Locuimo) Attendolo and Francesco Sforzas path to power in Milan,from the defeat of Braccio (Ciobra) da Montone to his marriage to BiancaMaria, the daughter of Filippo Maria (Polifiamma) Viconti.11. Lib. XIV, fols. 107v ff, passim.12.The reading from the Codex Aureusruns from Lib. XIV, fol. 103r to Lib.XXI, fol. 173r.13. Lib. XIV, fol. 104r.14.This literary process, which consciously mixes the past and present and theancient Golden Book with FilaretesLibro architettonico, is especially clear inthe description of the famous House of Virtue and Vice (Lib. XVIII). Filaretefirst presents it to his patron as his own invention (fantasia). He speaks in the

first person present or in the future form: First of all, I will take a space of 600braccia; It is better for me to tell you all my fantasy and then clarify point bypoint my reason for making it in this form; Now I will tell you why I devisedthis edifice in this form when I made my fantasy and for what end and purposeit was done; Now I will tell you what I have thought about the form of thisbuilding; Now I shall discuss the use of its interior division of this house; Ithought; I made; I depicted.; I placed; etc. In the course of his furtherdescriptions of the construction, Filarete changes now and then to the thirdperson and to the past tense, until finally he is using these forms exclusively. Thefact that this past tense refers to a building described in the Golden Book finallybecomes clear at the latest when Filarete again has himself represented by theanagram Onitoan Nolivera: There was also a place here appointed for thearchitect, where he who had built this entire building was to live. . . . His namewas Onitoan Noliaver [sic]. . .. Finally, at the end of the section, the patrons

son turns not to Filarete but to the translator of the Golden Book (FrancescoFilelfo) with the question: What follows now?, as though everything else hadpreviously been read to him from the Golden Book.15. Lib. IV, fols. 24r25v.16. Lib. IV, fols. 25r25v; ed. Spencer, 445.17.Title page of Codex Trivulzianus 863, lost in Milan around 1945. TheArchivio dellOspedale Maggiore, Milan holds a copy of the first pages ofTrivulziano, up to fol. 34r. See Lazzaroni and Muoz,Filarete, scultore earchitetto, 23839; Wolfgang von Oettingen,Antonio Averlino Filaretes Trac-tat ber die Baukunst nebst seinen Bchern von der Zeichenkunst und den Bautender Medici(Vienna: Graeser, 1890), 1316. The illustration is not found inthe Codex Magliabechianus. Since the Codex Trivulzianus is not dedicated

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to Piero de Medici, like the copy preserved in Florence, but instead is stilldedicated to Francesco Sforza, it is the older version and thus closer to theoriginal. A reproduction of the cover of the Golden Book is not preservedin the Codex Trivulzianus, but the depiction is found in the Codex Maglia-bechianus, Lib. XIV, fol. 108v. See note 2, above.18. For an extensive interpretation of this depiction, see Ulrich Pfisterer,Ingenium und Invention bei Filarete, inNobilis Arte Manus. Festschrift zum70. Geburtstag von Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, ed. Bruno Klein and HaraldWolter-von dem Knesebeck (Dresden: n.p., 2002), 26589; Ulrich Pfisterer,I libri di Filarete, inArchitettura e Umanesimo: Nuovi studi su Filarete, ed.Berthold Hub,Arte Lombarda155, 1 (2009), 97110, here 10610.19. Lib. XII, fol. 87v.20. Lib. XII, fol. 87r. It is telling that the box containing the Golden Bookthat is found during work on the foundations has an inscription in Greek,Hebrew, and Arabic, but not in Latin, the ancient and in part still currentlanguage of Filaretes homeland (Lib. XIV, fols. 101r101v). Hebrew,Arabic, and Greek inscriptions are also found on the bronze door of St.Peters by Filarete, commissioned by Pope Eugene IV (143345). Cf. AngeloMichele Piemontese, Le iscrizioni arabe nella Poliphili Hypnerotomachia,

inIslam and the Italian Renaissance, ed. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini(London: Warburg Institute, 1999), 199220; here 2012. Cf. note 87 below.21. Lib. XIII, fols. 102v103r.22. Lib. XII, fol. 89r; cf. XII, 88r.23. Four of the labyrinths illustrated surround a castle or palace (Lib. VI,fols. 38r; VI, 40v; XIII, 99r; XIV, 110r); one encloses a garden (Lib. XV, fol.121r). Cf. Lib. I, fols. 2r (Daidalos); I, 7r (Persenna); VI, 37v (Daidalos,Persenna); XIX, 151v (Egyptian). The earliest labyrinth in Greek litera-ture is Egyptian, mentioned in Herodotus (Historiarum libriII.148). Strabomentions several Egyptian labyrinths (GeographicaXVII.1, 3, XVII.1, 37)and describes the first Greek one as having been erected by Minos in Crete(X.4, 8). Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca historicaI.61) and Pliny (NaturalishistoriaeXXXVI.19, 84ff) link the Cretan and Egyptian constructions to avisit to Egypt by Daidaloson the same journey on which he learned about

the Egyptian method of creating statues. Cf. Allen B. Lloyd, The EgyptianLabyrinth,Journal of Egyptian Archaeology56 (1970), 81100; Sarah P. Mor-ris, Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art(Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1992), 186 and 24041. In Lib. VIII, fol. 59r, Filarete praises theantique style of Brunelleschis architecture, calling him a most subtle fol-lower of Daidalos (cf. Brunelleschis epitaph of 1447 in Florence Cathedral,composed by Chancellor Carlo Marsuppini, who praises his outstandingservices in the arte daedalea). In an epigram dedicated to Filarete in De iociset seriis(Codice Ambrosiano G 93 inf., fols. 218v219r) his friend FrancescoFilelfo calls Filarete a Daidalos; Maria Beltramini, Francesco Filelfo e ilFilarete: Nuovi contributi alla storia dellamicizia fra it letterato e larchitettonella Milano Sforzesca,Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ser. IV,12 (1996), 11925, here 121. On the medieval tradition of honoring artistsby comparing them with Daedalus, see Albert Dietl, In arte peritus: Zur

Topik mittelalterlicher Knstlerinschriften in Italien bis zur Zeit GiovanniPisanos,Rmische Historische Mitteilungen29 (1987), 75125, here 11421.24. Lib. XVIII, fols. 150rXIX, 157r.25. Lib. XIX, fol. 151v; I have been unable to find either a source or parallelsfor either of these names.26. Incidentally, Egyptian origins are attributed to several of the other artsas well, such as astrology (Lib. XIX, fol. 154r). And although Filarete callsthe Greek Volari the inventor of painting in his discussion of this art, he adds,Some say it was discovered in Egypt. The Egyptians say that they had theart of painting more than six thousand years before the Greeks (Lib. XIX,fol. 152v). See also Lib. I, fol. 3v, where Filarete traces the Greek orders ofcolumns (and their anthropomorphic measurements) to the Egyptians.

27. Lib. XIV, fols. 105v107r; ed. Spencer, 18587. See also Lib. XX, fol. 169r,where, at the end of the description of the administration of his ideal city,Filarete appends a report by Diodorus Siculus on the laws of the Egyptians.28. Lib. II, fols. 11v; III, 19v, 20v20r; IV, 24v, 26v; VI, 43v; XII, 89r, 91v,93r; XIII, 93v, 94v, 95v; XIV, 109r; XX, 161v, 164v.29. Particularly in Lib. II, passim.30. See, for example, James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in AncientThought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction(Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1992); Klaus Karttunen,India in Early Greek Literature(Helsinki:Finnish Oriental Society, 1989); Klaus Karttunen, The Country of FabulousBeasts and Naked Philosophers: India in Classical and Medieval Literature,Arctos: Acta Philologica Fennica21 (1987), 4352; Edgar C. Polom, TheVision of India in Medieval Encyclopedias,Interpreting Texts from the MiddleAges: The Ring of Words in Medieval Literature, ed. Ulrich Goebel and DavidLee (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1994), 25759; Wilhelm Baum and RaimundSenoner,Indien und Europa im Mittelalter. Die Eingliederung des Kontinents indas europische Bewusstsein bis ins 15. Jahrhundert(Klagenfurt: Kitab, 2000).31. Lib. VIII, fols. 60r61v; ed. Spencer, 105.32. Lib. XIII, fols. 93v, 94v, 95v, 97r; XIV, 109r; XV, 120v; XIX, 160r; see

Marco Polo,Milione Le divisament dou monde: il milione nelle redazioni toscanae franco-italiana, ed. Gabriella Ronchi (Milan: Mondadori, 1982), 147 (CLI).33. See Lib. VI, fol. 43v and Milione, 84 (LXXXV). Cf. Liliana Grassi,Sforzinda, Plusiapolis, Milano: Citt ideale, citt del mito, citt della storianel trattato del Filarete,Le citt ideali della letteratura(Florence: Olschki,1985; Studi di Letteratura Francese, 11), 35 ff; Luciano Patetta, Il Mito diPlusiapolis, dellinsula Citera e la citt ideale del Rinascimento, inIl mitonel Rinascimento. Atti del III Convegno internazionale di Studi Umanistici, Chi-anciano-Montepulciano 1991, ed. Luisa Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (Milan: NuoviOrizzonti, 1993), 10116. Cf. Hartmann Schedels Nuremberg Chronicle,which relates that the streets in Lbeck were clean because they sloped awayfrom the center in all directions; Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik(Nurem-berg, 1493; repr. Augsburg: Weltbild, 2004), fol. 266r.34. See Lib. XIII, fols. 102v103r andMilione,121 (CXXV).

35. Lib. V, fols. 34v; XV, 122r; XVIII, 149v.36. Lib. XIV, fols. 110r110v; XX, 164v.37. Lib. XV, fols. 121v122r.38. Lib. XXI, fol. 171v.39. Lib. V, fols. 30v; XIII, 99r; XV, 122r.40. See, for example, Ernesta Calderoni, Le citt ideali nel medio evo:realt, retorica, immaginazione,Le citt ideali della letteratura (Florence:Olschki, 1985; Studi di Letteratura Francese 11), 725. A lighthouse is alsofound in the astral magic manual Picatrix(IV.3), which places it in the centerof Adocentyn, the legendary city that Hermes Trismegistus founded inEgypt; see Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition(Lon-don: Routledge, 2002), 5760.41. See Wolfgang Born, Spiral Towers in Europe and their Oriental Proto-types, Gazette des Beaux-Arts24 (1943), 23348. Shortly after Filaretes time,

Francesco di Giorgio Martini was actually to construct several ramps of thistype (Rocca of Sassocorvaro, Ducal Palace, Church and Convent of SantaChiara in Urbino, Ducal Palace at Urbania, all in the 1470s or early 1480s).See Sarah Edwards, La Scala Elicoidale: The Spiral Ramps of Francesco diGiorgio Martini, inReconstructing Francesco di Giorgio Architect, ed. BertholdHub and Angeliki Pollali, forthcoming in early 2011 with Peter Lang.42. Hermann Thiersch, Pharos: Antike, Islam und Occident. Ein Beitrag zurArchitekturgeschichte(Leipzig: Teubner, 1909).43. On the column in Baalbek, see Bruno Schulz and Hermann Winnefeld,Baalbek. Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen in den Jahren 1898bis 1905(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1921; repr. 1973), vol. 1, 3233; on the columnin Chirbethamsn, see Hermann Thiersch and Gustav Hlscher, Reise

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durch Phoenizien und Palaestina,Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesell-schaft zu Berlin23 (1904), 10. The Baalbek column has been lost, and onlyremnants of the other column survive.44. See in particular Dietrich Huff, Zur Rekonstruktion des Turmes vonFiruzabad,Istanbuler Mitteilungen1920 (196970), 31938; Dietrich Huff,An Archaeological Survey in the Area of Firuzabad, Proceedings of the 2ndAnnual Symposium on Archaeological Research in Iran(Tehran: Iranian Centrefor Archaeological Research, 1974), 15579; R. Ghirshmann, Firuzabad,Bulletin de lInstitute Franais dArchologie Orientale46 (1947), 128; GeorgeMichell and Richard Eaton, Firuzabad: Palace City of the Deccan(Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1992).45. Leo Trmpelmann, Zwischen Persepolis und Firuzabad. Grber, Palste undFelsenreliefs im Alten Persien(Mainz: von Zabern, 1992), 6568.46. Lib. II, fol. 14r. Discussed in greater detail in Berthold Hub, La plani-metria di Sforzinda: un interpretazione, inArchitettura e Umanesimo: Nuovistudi su Filarete, ed. Berthold Hub,Arte Lombarda155, no. 1 (2009), 8196.47. Lib. VI, fols. 37v42v.48. See also Darabjird, also located in todays Iran. The city also has featuresnotably in common with Filaretes Sforzinda: the circular outer wall follows

a concentric inner wall with half of the diameterFilarete shows an orbitalstreet coursing at this point in the ground plan; from the eight gates set inthe major and intermediate directions, eight streets lead to the centerexactly as in Filarete; the streets rise toward the center, where a palace ortemple was probably locatedthe streets in Sforzinda also rise toward thecenter. Similar plans are found in Baghdad (laid out in AD 762 by theAbba-sid Caliph al-Mansu-r), and the description of Ecbatana, the capital ofthe Medean empire, in Herodotus,HistoriesI.98 (the city lies still unexca-vated underneath the modern city of Hamadan in todays Iran). Cf. Mller,Heilige Stadt, esp. 13233; Hans Peter LOrange, Studies in the Iconography ofCosmic Kingship in the Ancient World(Oslo: Aschehoug, 1953; rpt. NewRochelle, N.Y.: Caratzas, 1982), esp. 913.49. Castle: Lib. VI, fols. 37v40v; garden: Lib. XV, fols. 120r121v.50. Sonit Bafna, On the Idea of the Mandala as a Governing Device in

Indian Architecture,JSAH59, no. 1 (2000), 2649.51.William Edward Soothill, The Hall of Light: A Study of Early ChineseKingship(London: Lutterworth Press, 1951); Paul Wheatley, The Pivot ofthe Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of theAncient Chinese City (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971), 411ff; Nelson I. Wu, Chinese and Indian Architecture: The City of Man, the Moun-tain of God, and the Realm of the Immortals(New York: Braziller, 1967),2944; Goerge William Skinner,The City in Late Imperial China(Palo Alto:Stanford University Press, 1977), 3373, esp. 4450. There are severalother possible connections to India. As Gerhard Goebel (who, significantly,is a historian not of art but of literature) correctly pointed out, in the caseof the famous House of Virtue and Vice (Lib. XVIII) Filarete might havedrawn inspiration from the devotional literature of the Middle Ages as well,such as the Romance of the Seven Wise Men, a framework story from

India that has come down in various Eastern and Western versions. SeeGerhard Goebel, Poeta Faber. Erdichtete Architektur in der italienischen,spanischen und franzsischen Literatur der Renaissance und des Barock(Heidel-berg: Winter, 1971), 30; cf. Rudolf Palgen, Malebolge and the Pedagogi-cal Tower: Outlines of a Method, Modern Language Review43 (1948),196212. It may be mentioned in passing here that according to TheodoreA. Wertime (Asian Influence on European Metallurgy, Technology andCulture5 [1964], 39197), the iron smelter that Filarete comes across onan excursion in the vicinity of Sforzinda, and which he subsequentlydescribes in book XVI, represented a technology that in Filaretes day wascommon only in the East. Evidence of its use in the West appears only afterFilaretes lifetime. Although I cannot independently vouch for the accuracy

of this, I have not found any evidence that Wertimes view has since beencontested.52. For examples, see Paolo Marconi, Filarete e la citt sul fiume Indo: Temivitruviani e temi orientali a confronto, inLa Citt come forma simbolica: Studisulla teoria dellarchitettura nel rinascimento, ed. Paolo Marconi, Francesco PaoloFiore, Giorgio Muratore, et al. (Rome: Bulzoni, 1973), 5967; Giorgio Mura-tore, Citt rinascimentale e trattatistica estremo-orientale, ibid., 33585;Giorgio Muratore,La Citt rinascimentale: Tipi e modelli attraverso i trattati(Milan: Mazzotta, 1975), 99195. However, Marconi and Muratore confinedthemselves to noting very general morphological similarities and did notaddress the question of whether, in what way, and for what purpose Filaretemight have obtained information about the motifs described. Ralph Quadfliegconsidered that Filaretes Ospedale Maggiore adopted various architecturalmotifs and organizational ideas from the Maristan Qalaun in Cairo, built inthe reign of the Mameluke Sultan Qalaun in 128384. See Ralph Quadflieg,Filaretes Ospedale Maggiore. Zur Rezeption islamischen Hospitalwesens in der ital-ienischen Frhrenaissance(Cologne: Abt. Architektur des KunsthistorischenInstituts der Universitt zu Kln, 1981), esp. 13947; cf. Ralph Quadflieg, ZurRezeption islamischer Krankenhausarchitektur in der italienischen Frhre-

naissance,Europa und die Kunst des Islam 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert, ed. OlegGrabar (Vienna: Bhlau, 1985), 7381. Gulru Necipoglu-Kafadar regarded themethod, described by Filarete in Lib. XIV, of drawing plans to scale by using acheckered grid subdivided into smaller squares corresponding to multiples ofthe cubit as having been influenced by grid-based plans from the East. SeeGulru Necipoglu-Kafadar, Plans and Models in 15th- and 16th-CenturyOttoman Architectural Practice,JSAH45 (1986), 22443, esp. 23334.53. Gift, Good, Theft: Circulation and Reception of Islamic Objects in Italyand the Mediterranean World, 12501500, symposium, KunsthistorischesInstitut in Florenz, 912 March 2006; Renaissance and the Ottoman World,symposium, Warburg Institute, London, 2627 April 2006); Bellini and theEast, exh. cat., The National Gallery, London, ed. Caroline Campbell (Lon-don: National Gallery Company, 2005); and Venice and the Islamic World8281797, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2007). See also, for example, Lisa Jardine and JerryBrotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West(London:Reaktion Books, 2000); Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar: From the SilkRoad to Michelangelo(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Rosamond E.Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 13001600(Berkeley:University of California Press, 2002); Marco Spallanzani, Oriental Rugs inRenaissance Florence(Florence: SPES, 2007).54.The earliest evidence of Filaretes friendship with Filelfo is a letter tohim from Filelfo dating from 1447; Michele Lazzaroni and Antonio Muoz,Filarete, scultore e architetto del secolo XV(Rome: Modes, 1908), 111. On Fil-arete and Filelfo, see Susi Lang, Sforzinda, Filarete and Filelfo,Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes35 (1972), 39197; Onians, Alberti and; Rovetta, Filarete e lumanesimo greco, esp. 98 ff; Beltra-mini, Francesco Filelfo e il Filarete, 11925.

55. See note 23, above.56. Lib. XI, fol. 83v (inscriptions); Lib. XII, fol. 87v (hieroglyphs); Lib. XIV,fols. 103rXXI, 173r (Golden Book).57. Filarete visited Venice at least three times, in 1449, 1458 and 1459. SeeLionello Puppi, Filarete in gondola,Arte Lombarda38/39 (1973), 7584;John R. Spencer, Filarete and the C Del Duca,JSAH35 (1976), 21922;Richard Schofield and Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi, Bartolomeo Bon, Fil-arete e le case di Francesco Sforza a Venezia,Annali di architettura 1819(20067), 951.58.There is an extensive literature on Ciriaco; a good introduction is pro-vided by Karl August Neuhausen, Die vergessene gttliche Kunst derTotenerweckung: Cyriacus von Ancona als Begrnder der Erforschung der

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36 JSAH / 70 : 1 , MARCH 2011

Antike in der Frhrenaissance, Antiquarische Gelehrsamkeit und bildendeKunst. Die Gegenwart der Antike in der Renaissance, ed. Gunter Schweikhart(Cologne: Knig, 1996), 5167. In a letter to Filippo Maria Visconti datingfrom 1443, Ciriaco dAncona himself testifies that during his travels acrossthe sea or the egyptian Nile or the immeasurable expanse of so much sandhe had made proper sketches of all kinds of things, not only in words, butalso in true and proper drawings; cited after Phyllis Williams Lehmann,Cyriacus of Anconas Egyptian Visit and Its Reflections in Gentile Bellini andHieronymus Bosch (Locust Valley, N.Y.: Augustin, 1978), 10. The fact thatFilarete was actually familiar with a sketch by Ciriaco and also made use ofit is confirmed by the reproduction of Hadrians tomb (Castel SantAngelo)in the depiction of the martyrdom of St. Peter on Filaretes bronze door inSt. Peters in Rome, which represents an exact replication from a source byCiriaco preserved in a copy; see Bernard Ashmole, Cyriac of Ancona,Proceedings of the British Academy 45 (1959), 2542, esp. 3638.59. Paolo Orvieto, Un esperto orientalista del 400: Benedetto Dei,Rinas-cimento. Rivista dellIstituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento , 2nd ser., 9(1969), 20575.60. Thomas Christian Schmidt, Die Entdeckung des Ostens und der

Humanismus. Niccol de Conti und Poggio Bracciolinis Historia de Vari-etate Fortunae,Mitteilungen des Instituts fr sterreichische Geschichtsfor-schung103 (1995), 392418; Joan-Pau Rubis, Travel and Ethnology in theRenaissance: South India through European Eyes, 12501625(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000), 85 ff.61. Guglielmo Berchet,La repubblica di Venezia e la Persia(Turin: Paravia,1865; repr. Tehran: Imperial Organization for Social Services, 1976);Jacques Paviot, Les marchands italiens dans lIran Mongul, inLIran face la domination mongole, ed. Denise Aigle (Tehran: Institut Franais deRecherche en Iran, 1997), 7186; Giorgio Rota, Under Two Lions: On theKnowledge of Persia in the Republ ic of Venice(Vienna: Verlag der ster-reichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009).62. Cathedral of Sforzinda: Lib. VII; Temple of Plusiapolis, description:Lib. XIV, fols. 107v108r, construction: Lib. XV, fols. 119r120r; cf. VII,

52v; XI, 83v; XIV, 109r; XVI, 123r.63. I am in agreement here with R. A. Jairazbhoy, The Taj Mahal in theContext of East and West: A Study in the Comparative Method,Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961), 5988, esp. 704; cf. AlirezaNaser Eslami, Mobilit, diffusione e architettura della contaminazione.Architettura e citt del Mediterraneo tra Oriente e Occidente,Architettura ecitt del Mediterraneo tra Oriente ed Occidente, ed. Alireza Naser Eslami (Genoa:De Ferrari, 2002), 958; Alireza Naser Eslami, Poetica della contaminazionenelle citt del Mediterraneo: da Filarete a Le Corbusier,Le Citt del Mediter-raneo: alfabeti, radici, strategie. Atti del II Forum Internazionale di Studi Le cittdel Mediterraneo, Reggio Calabria 68 giugno 2001, ed. Massimo Giovanniniand Daniele Colistra (Rome: Kappa, 2002), 21931. The mosque of theProphet in Medina and the Haram at Mecca originally had four minarets; inthe fifteenth century, in addition to Tabriz, there is evidence that there were

four minarets in the Chihil Sutun (Hall of Forty Columns) in Isfahan, Iran,built ca. 1400 by Tamerlane (whom Filarete himself mentions in Lib. IX, fol.68v), as well as in the Serefeli mosque in Edirne (143847), which until1453 was the capital of the Ottoman Empire. See Jonathan Bloom,Minaret:Symbol of Islam(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).64.The church of the Ospedale Maggiore (Lib. XI, fol. 83v) as well as theHermitage church dedicated to St. Jerome (Lib. XVI, fol. 123r) also haveminarets of this type.65. See Joseph Duncan,Miltons Earthly Paradise: A Historical Study of Eden(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972); Alessandro Scafi,Map-ping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2006).

66. On the Ebstorf world map, see for example Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte. Kom-mentierte Neuausgabe in zwei Bnden, ed. Hartmut Kugler (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2007). On the Hereford Map, see for example Scott D. Westrem,The Hereford Map: A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Com-mentary(Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). Examples of Beatus maps are found inMappae mundi. Die ltesten Weltkarten, ed. Konrad Miller (Stuttgart: Roth,1895), vol. 2, pls. 29; cf. Ingrid Baumgrtner, Visualisierte Weltenrume.Tradition und Innovation in den Weltkarten der Beatustradition des 10. bis13. Jahrhunderts, Tradition, Innovation, Invention. Fortschrittsverweigerungund Fortschrittsbewusstsein im Mittelalter, ed. Hans-Joachim Schmidt (Berlin:de Gruyter, 2005), 23176.67. For example, Orlando Furiosos love is fulfilled in India, Wolfram vonEschenbachs Parzival brings the Holy Grail to India. An interesting examplein the period following Filarete is the Florentine Antonio Brucioli: in hisDialoghi of 1526, line 1270, he places his model city, which he calls Autricch,in India (la verso i confini dellindia; Antonio Brucioli, Dialogi, ed. AldoLandi (Naples: Prismi, 1982), 199). Tommaso Campanella also locates hisutopian Sun State (1602) not in the newly discovered continent of Americain the West, but rather in the East, in Taprobane, today Sri Lankaalso part

of India, according to contemporary geographical conceptions.68. See, for example,Mappemonde de Pierre, ca. 1200; Polom, Vision ofIndia in Medieval Encyclopedias, 271.69. Lib. VIII, fol. 61v.70. Here we may recall Plato, who in Timaeus3, 2223 and Critias6, 113attributes to the Egyptian priests the merit of being the only ones to preservea knowledge of the ideal city community of Atlantis; cf.Nomoi2, 656d657a.71. Karl Giehlow, Die Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Alle-gorie der Renaissance, besonders der Ehrenpforte Kaiser Maximilians I. EinVersuch,Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhchsten Kai-serhauses32, 1 (1915), 1232, here 19 note 4. In Lib. XII, fols. 87rv, Filaretedescribes the lettere egiziache of the Obelisk in the Circus at the Capodi Bove outside of the city walls of Rome and remarks that Francesco Filelfohad explained them to him; the list of hieroglyphs appears to have been

borrowed from HorapollonsHieroglyphica; see Brian A. Curran, The Egyp-tian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy(Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2007), 85. The best general summary of theintense interest in everything Egyptian during the Renaissance is still ErikIversen, Hieroglyphic Studies of the Renaissance, Burlington Magazine100 (1958), 1521; cf., e.g., Cesare Vasoli, Il mito dei geroglifici comelinguaggio sacro e simbolico, in Il simbolo dall antichit al Rinascimento.Persistenza e sviluppi, ed. Luisa Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (Milan: Nuovi Oriz-zonti, 1995), 21345; and most recently Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance,with bibliography.72. See, for example, Hans W. Hubert, In der Werkstatt Filelfos: Bemerkun-gen zur Praxis des Architekturzeichnens in der Renaissance,Mitteilungen desKunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz47 (2003), 312.73. Liliana Grassi, Diodoro Siculo nel Trattato del Filarete: Un codice

Diodoreo nelle Biblioteca degli Sforza,Aevum. Rassegna di Scienze storichelinguistiche e filologiche61 (1987), 5358.74.Julius Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der herme-tischen Literatur(Heidelberg: Winter, 1926), 618. Cf. Andr Marie JeanFestugire,La rvlation dHermes Trismgiste,vol. 1 (Paris: Gabalda, 1950),31924. On the topos of the finding of a book in general, see WolfgangSpeyer, Bcherfunde in der Glaubenswerbung der Antike. Mit einem Ausblick aufMittelalter und Neuzeit(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970).75. Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina, 68107, esp. 7379.76. Cited after Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina, 68.77. Lib. XIV, fol. 103r.78. Lib. IV, fols. 24v ff.

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79. Lib. XIV, fol. 101v.80. Lib. XIV, fol. 102r.81. Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina, 2; cf. Hortulanus, A Briefe Commentarie ofHortulanus the Philosopher, upon the Smaragdine Table of Hermes ofAlchemy, in The Mirror of Alchimy Composed by the Thrice-famous and LearnedFryer, Roger Bachon (1597) , ed. Stanton J. Linden (New York: Garland,1992), 16 ff. FilaretesLibro architettonicoalso includes other alchemical pas-sages, to which only Silvana Sinisi has so far given any consideration,although without bringing out their full significance: Silvana Sinisi,Filaretenascosto(Salerno: Universit degli Studi di Salerno, 1971), and Silvana Sinisi,Il Palazzo della Memoria,Arte Lombarda38 (1973), 15060. An article bythe present author that examines these passages and their background indetail is in preparation and is to appear inAmbix: Journal for the Society forthe History of Alchemy and Chemistry.82. Elisabeth Pellegrin,La Bibliothque des Visconti et des Sforza ducs de Milan,au Xve sicle(Paris: C.N.R.S., 1955), n. B. 96 (A. 144): Paris, Bibl. Nat. Lat.6514. In addition to the Tabula Smaragdina and other writings attributed toHermes, this includes Albertus Magnus (De minaralibus), Marbodus (Delapidibus pretiosis), the writings of (Pseudo-) Geber, des Razes, and others, as

well as the Turba Philosophorum; see Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques latins,ed. J. Bidez et al. (Brussels: Union Acadmique Internationale, 1939), vol.1, 1836 and 294309. Hermes (Trismegistos) had been regarded since thetime of Cicero (De natura deorumIII.2) as the inventor of hieroglyphics;according to Ficino, following the killing of Argos he made his way to Egypt,where he gave the people script and law; see Yates, Giordano Bruno, 182ff.Hermes/Mercury appears to have enjoyed great popularity in Filaretescircle. Filarete himself depicts him twice on his bronze door in St. Peters(see. e.g., Claudia Cieri Via, La casa del sole: Fonti e modelli peruniconografia mitologica,Le Due Rome del Quattrocento: Melozzo, Antoni-azzo e la cultura artistica del 400 romano, ed. Sergio Rossi and Stefano Valeri(Rome: Lithos, 1997), figs. 3, 4), and he is also depicted in surviving draw-ings by Ciriaco dAncona (Bodley MS Canonici Misc. 280; Charles Mitchell,Ex Libris Kiriaci Anconetani,Italia medievale e umanistica5 (1962), 285;

cf.

filarete y la arquitectura prisca

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