THE HUMANISTIC ASPECTS OF ARCHITECTURE IN THE TREATISES OF FRANCESCO DI GIORGIO MARTINI
Text topic: Studies
Text author: Тадија Стефановић
The treatises on architecture by Francesco di Giorgio Martini occupy an important place in the Renaissance thought and they place him deservingly among the most important artists, architects and theorists of his time. They reflected the need to render both humanism and the ways of its realization as accurately measured processes, while architecture itself was interpreted from functional, social and artistic points of view.The important questions of humanism in architecture, the relations between the anatomy of a city, its structures and the man were the focal points of Martini’s architectural theory. They were deeply woven into the physiognomy of the Renaissance humanism and into architecture as an autonomous creative discipline. Thus, the thoughts about the nature of Man and about the role of architecture in the world of Renaissance,were actualized in his treatises: the world that was to be measured according to Man. It launched the humanistic revitalization of spiritimminent to Man, who in his very spirituality found a way to elevate the corporeal to the godly, and to express it in art and architecture.Martini’s architectural principles understood the humanist ideal of the beauty of Man, which introduced his corporeality into the structural and functional aspects of architecture, in proportionality of design,as well as in the wider idea of humanization of architecture, which formulated humanism after the image of a dignified man. Conscious of social circumstances, in his architectural thought he set the path for the development of urban landscape. With humanization of social space, he has laid the basic principles of the socially sensible urbanistic and architectural practices. These ideas demonstrated a tendency to widen the field of implications and meanings. Thus, it may rightly be concluded that Martini’s treatises on architecture have deepened the Renaissance architectural thought, whose universality and specificity were confirmed by the relationship between creativity and the character of the humanistic tradition.
