BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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Transcribed version of the text

French

     Francesco Mario (Maria) Grapaldo (Grapaldi) lived his whole life under the influence of humanism. A man of letters and prominent in Parma, the city of his birth, he taught there, participated in political life as a member of the Consilio degli Anziani and ambassador, and wrote a few poems, a partial commentary on Plautus, a translation of Aesop and a lexicon based on residential architecture, the De partibus ædium, which were all printed by the local printer and man of letters, Angelo Ugoleto.
The De partibus ædium or “On the parts of the house” is a book in Latin giving in minute detail all the words for all the objects and structures which can be found in all the rooms of a great house. The most widespread edition is the posthumous one from Parma, 1516, in which the De partibus ædium itself is accompanied by an alphabetical list of the most difficult words contained in the different parts of the book, a list which was established a posteriori by Grapaldo himself. On the whole one cannot say that the text was spread widely, but it was not confidential either; the French in the Milanese area brought it to France, where it was published twice in Paris (1511 and 1517), a few separate times in Strasbourg, Turino, Venice and Basel, twice in Lyon in 1535 and a few more times until the 17^th century. Jean Le More (Maurus) adapted it in French/Latin/Gascon, as a trilingual lexicon, published in Montauban at the presses of Gilbert Grosset probably in 1519, according to the dedication dated February 20, 1518 (old style).
Therefore the De partibus ædium is a thematic lexicon of the words concerning the house, but it is erudite and encyclopedic, rather than being concerned with construction or building techniques. In fact, Grapaldo specifies right in the preface that he is not writing the work of an architect, but of a man of letters. He intends to grasp the exact meaning of words, and implicitly, rediscover, beyond the so much denigrated “ignorance” of the Middle Ages, all the richness of language as it was practiced during Antiquity. Therefore the book is the painstaking catalogue of the surroundings and objects of domestic life, in a residence of a palatial type that Grapaldo hardly defines. His house is the all-purpose archetype of a palace at the end of the 15^th and beginning of the 16^th century: a parallelepiped organized around a central cortile, in which the ground floor consists of various storerooms for foodstuffs, for the chancellery, with pleasure gardens and market gardens, whereas the living and entertaining space is found on the second floor, the piano nobile. Other spaces for practical use such as the kitchen, attic and infirmary are found on one or more upper floors, not precisely located, crowned by the tower and the roof. The book is presented according to the “memory palace” principle, a technique that had already been used in some medieval lexicons of objects of daily life: in a way the vocabulary list is introduced as one walks mentally from room to room through the house, in which one describes in detail the name and the function of each object or element one comes across (dishware, utensiles, wall coverings, furnishings, vegetables, flowers and animals in the garden or the stables, foodstuffs…), while embellishing it with quotations from antique authors. This quickly makes of this catalogue a kind of manual of antique civilization, a compilation of Varro, Vitruvius but above all Pliny. This pedagogical procedure, to be taken up and perfected in the middle of the 16^th century by Giullio Camillo, aimed at facilitating memorization. Here it offers Grapaldo a handy means of classification, allowing him to digress and be comprehensive at the same time. It also retains a rational appearance more than an arbitrary alphabetic order alone. The aim of the book is therefore clearly encyclopedic; it is not a treatise on construction, and the technical lexicon and the strictly architectural passages are rare. One chapter on construction materials at the beginning of book 1, at the sort of “entrance” of the house, another on stairways, floors and pavements at the beginning of book 2, going from floor to floor, and a last one on wood framing and roofing at the end of the book bring together the strict minimum on house construction itself.
Grapaldo was not a backward-looking person and was especially interested in the civilization of his times; his book contains several digressions on modern features (paper and printing for example), and in updating Latin words he tried to adapt them to contemporary life. Thus, the basilica chapter shows the great hall of pomp in the princely residence. There one sees the waiting solicitors, the pacing servants, but also justice being dispensed, and the games and celebrations taking place there, with physical exercises as well as intellectual recommended for educating youth. Grapaldo knows that here he is using a word, basilica, which signified the Greek royal palace, and the public square or the Roman market, but he renews its meaning, by transposing it into the contemporary world in the place which seems best to bring together the notions of splendor and public life which were scattered in the ancient world. Lastly, although the book has no illustrations or plates, it could be used as a sort of “princely” manual, at least in the sphere of setting up a residence. Whoever brought together all the objects and elements he described, in following Grapaldo’s plan, would find himself in a sumptous, above all ideal, lordly residence.

Martine Furno (Institut d'histoire de la pensée classique,
UMR 5037, Ens, Lyon) – 2014

Critical bibliography

J.-L. Charlet, “Nicole de la Chesnaye lecteur de F. M. Grapaldo et visiteur de la Sainte-Baume en 1538”, Provence historique, 44, 1994, pp. 89-96.

J.-L. Charlet, “La bibliothèque, le livre et le papier d’après F. M. Grapaldo”, Studi Latini in ricordo di Rita Capeletto, Urbino, Quattro venti, 1996, pp. 71-89.

J.-L. Charlet, “Trois témoignages humanistes sur les débuts de l’imprimerie, N. Perotti, F. M. Grapaldi et Polidoro Virgili”, Helmantica, 50, 1999, pp. 97-107.

J.-L. Charlet, “Grapaldo, Francesco Maria”, Centuriae Latinae II (ed. C. Nativel), Geneva, Droz, 2006, pp. 361-366.

M. Furno, “Le lemme Basilica dans le De partibus ædium de F. M. Grapaldo”, I. Cogitore & F. Goyet (ed.), Devenir roi: essais sur les textes adressés au prince, Grenoble, ELLUG, 2001, pp. 213-222 et Annexe 3 pp. 274-279.

S. Rizzo, Il lessico filologico degli umanisti, Rome, Bulzoni, 1973.