“Ars sine scientia” or rather “Ars sine geometria”? The debate of 1400 on the elevation of Milan cathedral

The construction of Milan Cathedral from 1386 was one of the most important episodes in the history of Italian and European architecture because of the uniqueness of the building itself — the largest Gothic church ever constructed in Italy — and because of the presence of some of the most authoritative architects of the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries in Europe (Lombard, French, German).The documentation about the discussions on how to build the Duomo in the late Trecento and early Quattrocento, especially on the structural choices to be made and the different Lombard and Northern building-site practices, made famous to English readers in a celebrated article by James Ackerman, is extraordinarily rich and extensive, permitting considerations on the relationship between medieval architectural ideals and an actual project.The paper focuses on the famous discussions of 1400, in part a re-run of those of 1392. It will be argued that famous criticism by the French expert Jean Mignot of Milanese architects involving the terms ars and scientia could have a very different meaning from the one generally accepted in the literature. Consequently, it will result that Mignot wanted to return to the original project proposed by Gabriele Stornaloco, which embodied the desired correspondence between the sacred architecture and the perfect God’s world.All of which, could be of some interest to medievalists in general, and to those concerned with architectural theory and with the relationship between Gothic architecture and literature in particular.

Is architectural history getting any bigger?

Vincent Scully's recent death serves as reminder that the discipline of architectural history is not so old, with only a few intellectual generations needed to skip back to the turn of the twentieth century. Heinrich Wölfflin died in 1945 and Scully started writing his dissertation the following year, under the supervision of Henry-Russell Hitchcock. James Ackerman, whose death was also recent, co-taught with Scully in those years while being advised by Richard Krautheimer, who had completed his own dissertation under Paul Frankl. Students of both Scully and Ackerman are today adjusting the contours of the field with their books, articles, and lectures.The scope of the development of architectural history is perhaps more limited than chronological age might suggest, and certainly that in comparison to the existence of its presumed subject matter – architecture – has barely made it to infancy. Without diminishing the hours of archival labour, field work, and writing that have been undertaken over the past century and a half, and without understating the contributions to knowledge and understanding those efforts have produced, the implication should be admitted: there really isn't very much architectural history. Not that many architectural historians, not that many books, not that much history, relatively speaking. This is not necessarily to say that architectural history is marginal, for it has attained points of instrumentality and effect along the way, but the admission is the necessary starting point for reflection on the future of the discipline, because architectural history needs to think about how to get bigger.