Organized by Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza

MARGARET DALY DAVIS

The wooden inlay decoration of the Sacristy: perspectival intarsie, pictorial intarsie

Many of the exercises presented in Part IV of Piero's Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus, a book on the measurement and representation of regular and irregular stereometrical bodies, concern, too, the measurement and representation of building parts -- columns, vaults, apses, domes and the like. The results of Piero's mathematical research in his Libellus, and in the earlier Trattato dell'Abaco as well, were applied some years later to his methods for drawing stereometric bodies and many architectural elements in the Prospectiva pingendi; the methods he had established there, in fact, had their greatest resonance in the architectural theory. At the same time, his ideas and methods were immediately taken up by designers of intarsia for the perspectival representation of single objects and scenographic views. The intarsiasts' simple stereometric designs were the basis for their virtuoso representations of all kinds of sacred and profane still-life objects. Many of the intarsia makers, who also were practiced in fabricating wooden architectural models, were or were to become architects; this is confirmed in Benedetto Dei's list of "maestri di prospettive" or intarsia makers in Florence. What has come down to us of Piero's stereometrical writings is certainly only a fraction of what he knew and produced and certainly among his most eager students must have been the intarsia designers. We know for one that the artist from Sansepolcro was "caro quanto fratello" to Lorenzo da Lendinara, and similarly, though we cannot connect him directly with Giovanni da Verona, Piero's theories were at the basis of his very elaborate intarsia. Similarly, Piero's rules that structured such paintings as his Flagellation in Urbino structured, too, contemporary scenographic intarsia. The examples of intarsia, in fact, in the choir at S. Francesco in Arezzo lead one to wonder if indeed he did not have a hand, even indirectly, in their elaboration.

The intarsia panels in the sacristy of the Duomo are of two types: on the one hand there are those which represent sacred still-life objects behind the latticed open doors -- mostly books, but also sacred objects such as a chalice, mitre, and candlesticks. These follow from Piero's stereometric tradition. There is a subtle ability in the elaboration of the perspective representations though they differ distinctly from the very elaborate geometrical feats we know in the still-life objects found, for instance, in Federico da Montefeltro's studio in Urbino and in the works by Fra Giovanni in Verona. Beyond demonstrating the objects in correct perspective, the designer in the Florentine sacristy was concerned with showing his skills in representing in hard wood the undulating page of a book, or similarly, representing in wood a manuscript page with musical notes and written text in perspective as if in a painting. His only real tour de force, as it were, is found in the representation of a folded out stand with a candlestick and lighted candle. Even the classical mazzocchio of Piero della Francesca and Uccello, used again and again in wooden inlays, and used by Carpaccio as a kind of symbol of the unity of perspective and the study of architecture, is, in the version in the sacristy, simply more decorative variant of a garland.

The second type of intarsia in the sacristy is the perspectival, figural representation, as a painting executed in wood. Vasari had included a chapter on wooden inlay in his introduction to painting:
"Del musaico di legname, ciò è de le tarsie, e de le storie che si fanno di legni tinti e commessi a guisa di pitture". He wrote, "Le miglior cose che in questa spezie già si facessero, furono in Firenze ne' tempi di Filippo di Ser Brunellesco e poi di Benedetto da Maiano", and certainly among the works Vasari had in mind were the intarsia in the cathedral. The Aretine noted that "Questo lavoro [tarsie] ebbe origine primieramente nelle prospettive, perché quelle avevano termine di canti vivi, che commettendo insieme i pezzi facevano il profilo e pareva tutto d'un pezzo il piano de l'opera loro, se bene e' fosse stato di piú di mille".
With technical innovations and improvements the intarsia came closer to imitating painting and their importance lay in this new fiction. Indeed the representations of the Annunciation and of the representation of the Saints Zanobi. Eugenio, and Cresenzio, are taken from painters' designs. The perspectival skills shown in the representation of the ceiling and floor squares, it is that found in most avantgarde Quattrocento painting; the architectural background of the Annunciation is, too, conventional, as are the niches of the three saints; what is striking and admirable is the artist's ability to transfer from wood into painting graceful figures, expressive faces and soft, complicated draperies.