Overbalanced wheel and war machines,
by Taccola.
Machines, by Taccola,
De
ingeneis.
Paddle boat system, by Taccola,
De
machinis (1449).
Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola (1382 – c.
1453), called Taccola ('Crow'), was an
Italian administrator, artist and engineer of
the early
Renaissance. Taccola is known
for his technological treatises
De ingeneis and
De
machinis, which feature annotated drawings of a wide array of
innovative machines and devices. Taccola’s work was widely studied
and copied by later Renaissance engineers and artists, among them
Francesco di Giorgio
Martini, and perhaps even
Leonardo
da Vinci.
Life and career
Mariano
Taccola was born in Siena
in
1382. Practically nothing is known of his early years of
training or apprenticeship. As an adult, he pursued a varied career
in Siena, working in such diverse jobs as notary, university
secretary, sculptor, superintendent of roads and hydraulic
engineer. In the 1440s, Taccola retired from his official
positions, receiving a pension from the state. He is known to have
joined the fraternal order of San Jacomo by 1453 and presumably
died around that date.
Work and style
Taccola left behind two treatises, the first being
De
ingeneis (Concerning engines), work on its four books starting
as early as 1419. Having been completed in 1433, Taccola continued
to amend drawings and annotations to
De ingeneis until
about 1449. In the same year, Taccola published his second
manuscript,
De machinis (Concerning machines), in which he
restated many of the devices from the long development process of
his first treatise.
Drawn with black
ink on
paper and accompanied by hand-written annotations,
Taccola depicts in his work a multitude of 'ingenious devices' in
hydraulic engineering, milling, construction and war machinery.
Taccola’s drawings show him to be a man of transition: While his
subject matter is already that of later Renaissance
artist-engineers, his method of representation still owns much to
medieval manuscript illustration. Notably, with
perspective coming and going in his
drawings, Taccola seemed to remain largely unaware of the ongoing
revolution in perspective painting. This is the more curious, since
he is the only man known to have interviewed the 'father of linear
perspectivity' himself,
Filippo
Brunelleschi. Despite these graphic inconsistencies, Taccola’s
style has been described as being forceful, authentic and usually
to be relied upon to capture the essential.
Influence and rediscovery
Being named as the 'Sienese
Archimedes',
Taccola’s work stands at the beginning of the tradition of Italian
Renaissance artist-engineers, with a growing interest in
technological matters of all kinds. Taccola’s drawings were copied
and served as source of inspiration by such as Buonacorso Ghiberti,
Francesco di Giorgio
Martini, and perhaps even
Leonardo
da Vinci.
Special historical importance hold his
drawings of the ingenious lifting
devices and reversible-gear systems which
Brunelleschi devised for the construction of the dome of the Florence cathedral
, at the time the second widest in the
world.
Taccola is also known for pioneering the keel breaker, a
lever-based device designed to tear holes in the hull (keel) of a
ship using its fork or spike. Primarily used against pirates,
though supposedly used by Mediterranean navies.
Interest in Taccola’s work, however, practically ceased some time
after his death until quite recently, one reason perhaps being that
his treatises only ever circulated as handcopied books, with at
least three of them remaining extant today.
Taccola’s original
manuscripts, whose style turnt out to be more sophisticated than
those of its copies, were rediscovered and identified in the state
libraries of Munich
and Florence
only in the
1960s, giving impetus for the first printed editions of both De
ingeneis and De machinis in subsequent
years.
References
- A history of engineering in classical and medieval
times Donald Routledge Hill, Routledge, 1996 ISBN 0415152917
p.143 [1]
- Lawrence Fane, p.136
- Lon R. Shelby, p.466
- Lawrence Fane, p.137
- Lon R. Shelby, p.467
- Lawrence Fane, p.138
- Lawrence Fane, p.139
- Lawrence Fane, p. 137ff.
- Lawrence Fane, p.140
- Smith College History of Science
- Lawrence Fane, p.143
References
Facsimile editions:
- J.H. Beck, ed., Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola, Liber
tertius de ingeneis ac edifitiis non usitatis, (Milan:
Edizioni il Polifilo, 1969), 156 pp., 96 pls.
(This edition reproduces Books III and IV of de
Ingeneis)
- Frank D. Prager and Gustina Scaglia, eds., Mariano Taccola
and His Book "De ingeneis" (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press,
1971), 230 pp., 129 pls.
(This edition also reproduces Books III and IV of de
Ingeneis)
- Gustina Scaglia, ed., Mariano Taccola, De machinis: The
Engineering Treatise of 1449, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig
Reichert Verlag, 1971), 181 and 210 pp., 200 pls.
Secondary sources:
- Lawrence Fane, "The Invented World of Mariano Taccola",
Leonardo (2003), Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 135–143
(Taccola’s drawings from the perspective of an artist)
- Lon R. Shelby, "Mariano Taccola and His Books on Engines and
Machines", Technology and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Jul.,
1975), pp. 466–475
(Review of Taccola’s treatises and its three modern editions (see
above))
See also
External links
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