Abstract:
Vitruvius’ text, De architectura, described the practice of architecture and
urban strategies for the late Roman Republic. Later use of the text and its
messages, emerging with the growing impact of printing on specific changes
in power relations associated with governance of cities, provided the
opportunity for a politicized agenda to be incorporated to appease these
differing contexts. It was during the Renaissance that Vitruvius and other
antique authorities were employed in discourses on citizenry where
architecture’s attributes were used to reinforce ideals of good governance in
the emerging urbanity of city-states. This paper investigates Paolo Paruta’s
Della perfettione della vita politica, a work of sixteenth-century political theory
on the Venetian Republic, to examine how politically inspired uses of
Vitruvius’ concepts supported the survival of Venice’s model of a republic.
Paolo Paruta was to become Procuratore of San Marco in 1597. Fundamental
to his validation of Venetian governance was Vitruvius’ representation of the
body-of-state being reflected in the architectural make-up of the city.
Paolo Paruta’s Della perfettione is a dialogue in which the relationship
between the body politic of Venice and its embodied presence in the
organization and representation of the city, are debated. In the first instance
this paper establishes how Renaissance dialogue form could use the authority
of Vitruvius to validate Venice’s patriarchal form of republic and its mirrored
urbanity. In the second the paper evaluates Paruta’s text to show how
Vitruvius’ ideas were made relevant to the Renaissance Venetian context.
Finally, within the context of Venice’s architecture it explores how this new
political agenda, which uses Vitruvius as its authority, was rationalized.
