The actual buildings, too, show a preference for dimensions which can be related by harmonic ratios, although not quite to the extent of the plans published in the Quattro libri. Palladio often made no attempt to make his published measurements accord with musical harmonies where this could have been done by minor alterations, such as insignificant changes in wall thicknesses. Only about two-thirds of all the dimensions in the Book II plans are numbers which can be incorporated into musical ratios. However, he does not make any consistent attempt to render his designs completely harmonic. Our results show that Palladio did indeed have a definite preference for numbers which can be related in ratios corresponding to the standard musical intervals. In the present study, a systematic, quantitative analysis of all the plans in Book II of the Quattro libri is carried out to discover to what extent musical harmonic ratios were an important principle behind Palladio's ground plans. This theory, expounded in Part IV of Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, has been widely accepted, despite the fact that his research was based on detailed analysis of only 8 of the 44 plans in Book II. In 1949, Wittkower proposed that musical harmonic ratios were a principle underlying Palladio's designs illustrated in the ground plans of Book II of the Quattro libri.
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