JOURNAL OFINTERDISCIPLINARYHISTORY OF IDEAS

2012

Volume Issue Item

– Section : Notes –

Of Engineers and Dragonse JIHI Logo

byEnrico Pasini

c b n a

JIHI 2012

Volume Issue

Section 1: Editorials

. A New Journal (M. Albertone – E. Pasini). Une nouvelle revue (M. Albertone – E. Pasini)

Section 2: Articles

. Open Society or Closed Salon? A Reading of Brillat-Savarin’s “Physiologie du gout” (C. Hashimoto). Interet immediat et vanite. Vers un individualisme re-sponsable et organisateur (A. Tiran)

Subsection: Method. Skinner contra Skinner. Civic Discord and RepublicanLiberty in Maiavelli’s ‘Mature’ Texts (M. Suchowlan-sky)

Section 3: Notes

. Of Engineers and Dragons. e JIHI Logo (E. Pasini)

Section 4: Reviews

. Book Reviews (C. Carnino, R. Gronda, S. Mammola)

Section 5: News & Notices

.Activities of the GISI | Les activites du GISI (-)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of Engineers and DragonsThe JIHI Logo

Enrico Pasini

We inaugurate here a series of unpretentious short notes devoted to episodesin the history of ideas that in one or the other way display our concept of itsinterdisciplinarity. e first one is about the Journal’s logo.

Serpens ni edat serpentem, draco non fiet(Erasmus, Adag. )

0 W it succeeds or not, the logo of the JIHI has been chosento embody the character of the project. It consists, in fact, of a

graphic elaboration based on an early modern iconographic source thatdelightfully reflects the features of what we are seeking when we do in-terdisciplinary history of ideas. It is a dragon, a fabulous beast, drawn bya ᵗʰ century engineer, Mariano Taccola (-), to mark the titlepage of a manuscript that was the second part of a portfolio, if we maycall it so, displaying his skills to a king he hoped would employ him.

1 M di Iacopo, named Taccola (‘jackdaw’), came from Siena,where he also spent most of his life. He was one of those Sienese

engineers who paved the way for the new intellectual artist-engineers,

Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas (), , p. :–:. Non peer-reviewed.

whose best known personification is Leonardo da Vinci (Galluzzi ;Long ). He was a friend of Leon Baista Alberti and Toscanelli DalPozzo, and even got to know Brunelleschi at some point. Like Francescodi Giorgio Martini, who owned part of his writings and whose work isclearly influenced thereby (Degenhart and Schmi ), his own workis descended from that of Vitruvius and Philo of Byzantium. But he wasalso quite inventive and his manuscripts, as it happens, were influentialcopybooks for other engineers throughout the fieenth century.

Self-described as ‘the Archimedes of Siena’, Taccola was as much anengineer as an artist and the principal book that has been wrien on him(Prager and Scaglia ) required, as had been the case for their book onBrunelleschi as well, the cooperation of a historian of technology and ahistorian of art. He was a painter, sculptor and woodcarver: from to he carved more than thirty gargoyles (“ghorgolle cioè animaluzzi dilegname”) and scores of wooden heads for the choir of the main altar inthe Duomo of Siena (Milanesi , ; Beck , ).

Taccola’s best known work is a De mainis that he completed in ;he is also remembered for his early capitula (short texts) on hydraulics,composed between and , and for the work we shall be dealingwith: his De ingeneis, ‘On Engines’, dated . It is a four-part¹ picto-rial treatise on engineering, which Taccola prepared for Sigismund, kingof Hungary and, since , king of Italy, when he stopped off in Sienawhile traveling to Rome, where he would be crowned emperor. e trea-tise is nicely illustrated and it is not only machines that are depicted. esecond part is opened by our dragon (f. r); a similar dragon fights, asusual, against St. George (III, f. r); real and fantastic animals² embel-lish the pages; there is a full-person portrait of king Sigismund himself,who treads on the tail of the Florentine lion, and an elegant and dignifiedSaint Dorothy, bringing the child Jesus by the hand, makes an unexpectedappearance (III, f. r) to recommend the author to his royal—and soonimperial—dedicatee. One cannot forget to mention the incredible depic-

¹ e first and second parts are reproduced in Taccola , vol. ; the third is reproducedin Taccola .² Concerning these, “Taccola works with facts and fantasy” (Prager and Scaglia , ).

: Enrico Pasini

tion, at f. r of the first part, of a man in armour riding a giant fish, inthe mouth of which he is pouring oil with the help of a sponge: Taccolaadds to it a promotional note of a suitably mysterious tone¹.

2 O dragon is a big (full-page, like King Sigismund’s portrait),imposing, two-legged dragon with wings and a barbed tail. In

heraldic terms, it would be called a wyvern. Such dragons are an ancientsymbol of power. It was well known to military engineers like Taccolathat the roman cohorts raised dragons (“dracones et signa constituunt”²).And an order of the Dragon had been erected in by the same Sigis-mund to whom Taccola addressed his pleas³.

e dragon is intrinsecally polysemic, and an emblem of the permeabil-ity between zoology and the symbology of power: a permeability whichis comprehensibly higher with fantastic animals, that, as such, inherentlybear the marks of symbolization and are easily endowed with the traitsof ominous puissance.

Were there, from the point of view of late mediaeval or early mod-ern engineers, other and more specific reasons for interest in dragons?On f. r of Taccola’s second part, near the depiction of a war machinewith a movable projecting beam (a sort of ram) in the form of a unicorn,

¹ e purpose and functioning of this device is a secret of his that, as might be expected, hasremained unexposed. On Taccola and the practices of secret by ᵗʰ century engineers seeLong , -; in Prager the first detailed analysis of the passages where Taccolareproduces a conversation on such maers with ‘Pippo Brunelleschi’.² Vegetius, De re mil. I , see also II and .³ See Du Cange, Gloss., s.v. Draco; Wojatsek , ; although Giustiniani , II, -brings documents in favor of the pre-existence of the order, or of an order with the samename. Its emblem, though, seems to have been an overthrown dragon (Ashmole , ),the pliable symbol of heresy, pagan foes, sin and temptation.

Of Engineers and Dragons :

there is a smaller drawing of a chariot in form of a dragon, near otherchariots with seemingly incendiary devices. Indeed the connection be-tween fire-arms and dragons is easy, tempting and historically returning.e term ‘dragon’ will be used aer another century or so to describe asort of handgun or blunderbuss, early versions of which might have beendecorated with a dragonhead carved around the muzzle, so that the blastwould seemingly come out of the mouth of a dragon (for centuries, to besure, musket side plates will be designed to look like a dragon).

A fearsome-looking contrivance (a so-called maina Arabica), in theshape of a great dragon, with between its teeth a cannon throwing anarrow, is depicted by Roberto Valturio in his De re militari. It has a look-out perched, not, as its remote descendant Puff, on its ‘gigantic tail’, buton its head. It is a mobile fortress equipped with mounted guns, with amovable ladder on the front, to be used in siege warfare¹. In the CodexAtlanticus, c. r, we find the famous Giant Crossbow, whose arc callsto mind a dragon’s wings. It is in turn reminiscent, likely, of Valturio’sdragon war machine (Landrus , -).

On the one hand, a dragon stands for any powerful and invincible fire-spouting device. On the other hand, both in narratives and in iconogra-phy, a dragon is the symbol of sheer power. Even the vanquished dragonis a symbol of power, although it is the overturned power of a formerfiend.

Both in the ancient and in the Christian tradition there is an overlap-ping of snake and dragon. e major snake-slayers—Cadmus and Jason,St. Michael and St. George—fight against ‘dragons’. But the dragon, as itis a purer symbol of power, is a kind of Über-snake. is conspicuity ismost effectively expressed in Erasmus’ Adages by the saying: Serpens niedat serpentem, draco non fiet. It is for Erasmus a less vulgar version of thecommon saying according to which ‘big fish eat small fish’², that “A ser-

¹ Valturio , ; the Library of Congress provides a digital reproduction from Bruno (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006680134/ consulted on Jan. , ).² And thus we may have come full circle, since on f. v of the III part of Taccola’s Deingeneis there is represented a large fish swallowing a smaller one, with the inscriptionMinor piscis semper a maiore sorbetur (‘the smaller fish is always devoured by a bigger one’;Taccola , ).

: Enrico Pasini

pent, unless it devours a serpent, will not become a dragon”. Its meaningis strictly political: that “the powerful grow at the expense of others”¹.

3 E and dragons together: that’s a nice piece of interdisci-plinarity in intellectual history. But in such maers there’s always

more. At the time of our engineers, the best-known version of the slayingof Ares’ dragon by Cadmus is that of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (III ff.),due to the dragon’s teeth turned into armed men. Here the dragon is a“Martius anguis” of caeruleus color²,

Martius anguis erat, cristis praesignis et auro;igne micant oculi, corpus tumet omne veneno;tresque vibrant linguae, triplici stant ordine dentes.

ere dwelt a snake, a snake of Mars. Its crestShone gleaming gold; its eyes flashed fire; its wholeBody was big with venom, and betweenIts triple rows of teeth its three-forked tongueFlickered.³

At that time, there also existed an Italian prose version of the Meta-morphoses, composed in the s by a Giovanni Bonsignori from Ciàdi Castello⁴, with ample commentaries that reproduced the allegoric in-tepretations devised by Giovanni del Virgilio. Here we find another andsomewhat divergent way of looking at dragons.

¹ Adag. ; CW , -.² Oen interpreted as a color so dark as the sky at night: “Caeruleus serpens. Niger etpropter hoc horrendus”, as we can read in the commentary added to the first print editionby the Venetian humanist Raphael Regius (Regio , c. d [v] verso).³ Ovid, Met., III, -; , .⁴ In the editio princeps (Bonsignori ) the proemium is dated ; the DBI (XII, s.v.Bonsignori) prefers the datation - provided by a Magliabechian ms.

Of Engineers and Dragons :

Bonsignori, in his commentary, first narrates the history of Cadmus’foundation of the city of ebes as a true and mundane tale of kings,treasures, cities, and peoples. But aer that he explains the Allegory ofCadmus and of the “fabulous history” of his bale with the dragon: thetruth is, he tells the readers, that Cadmus was a “preeminent philosopher”(vero è e Cadmo fu summo philosopho) and the dragon a competitor inthe trade.is quite surprising idea comes directly, as already mentioned,from Giovanni del Virgilio¹. But the laer’s Latin commentary remainednearly entirely ignored, while Bonsignori’s Italian version was a massivesuccess.

Cadmus the philosopher, aer the foundation of his own city ofebes,heard tell that in Athens another philosopher was spreading false opin-ions (con falsa opinione) that brought about many errors in the world. Hesent his disciples against him, but they were all won over in dispute bythe enemy, who was able to confound them (li confuse e vinse): in the al-legory they were killed by the dragon-snake, whose venom is a simile forthe philosopher’s fallacious doctrines. Cadmus himself did balewith himthen, and first posed him easy questions that the other answered withoutmuch bothering (corresponding to the stone that Cadmus threw againstthe dragon, with no result, in Ovid’s narration), then pressed him withother and more difficult questions (con forte questione—corresponding tothe first wound). Finally, since the dragonwas still baling, Cadmus killed

¹ “Prima transmutatio tercii libri est de Cadmo. NamCadmus fuit quidammaximus philoso-phus in ebis, qui suos discipulos misit Athenas ut disputarent cum quodam alio doctoresapientissimo quem intelligo per serpentem” (in Ghisalberti , ). e following versesby John of Garlandia might have inspired, or rather confounded, his interpretive genius: “Estserpens sapiens quem Cadmus vincit et illi | Machina plena viris bellica fundit eos. | Ut ser-pens serpit pauper sed pectore prudens | Invenit hic tandem gramata greca prius” (Johannesde Garlandia , vv. -).

: Enrico Pasini

him with his steeled-tip spear: that is, he aacked him not with ordinaryquestions, but with “profound doubts” and thereby defeated him ( Cioevol dire e vene con profundi dubii: per li quali quel philosopho fu vinto )¹.

Belligerent ideology of evil power defeated by doubt: they be dragonsor philosophers, that would have pleased Erasmus immensely.

References

Ashmole, Elias. . e history of the most noble Order of the Garter […] To whiis prefix’d, A Discourse of Knighthood in General, and the several Orders extantin Europe. London: Bell, Taylor, Baker, and Collins.

Beck, James H. . “e Historical ‘Taccola’ and Emperor Sigismund in Siena”.e Art Bulletin : -.

Bonsignori, Giovanni. . Ovidio methamorphoseos vulgare, Venetia: per ZoaneRosso vercellese ad instantia del nobile homo miser Lucantonio Zonta fioren-tino.. . Ovidio Metamorphoseos Vulgare di Giovanni di Bonsignori da Cià diCastello, ed. E. Ardissino. Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di lingua .

Bruno, Leonard C. . e Tradition of Tenology. Washington, D.C.: Library ofCongress.

Degenhart, Bernhard and Schmi, Annegrit. . Corpus der italienisen Zei-nungen -, . Teil. Venedig -; Addenda zu Süd-und Mielital-ien, IV vol. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag.

¹ e text of the princeps from which we are quoting (Bonsignori , c. XXr) is onlyslightly different from that of Ardissino’s critical edition (Bonsignori , -). In thefollowing, the reader learns that Pallas Athena’s intervention and the bale between thearmed men born from the dragon’s teeth allude to Cadmus’ wisdom and lore, that destroythe errors the enemy has spread. at only five of them survived is in turn an allegory forthe vowels a e i o u, by the use of which Cadmus lay the foundation of all sciences. is isall a bit professorial.

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Galluzzi, Paolo, ed. . Prima di Leonardo: Cultura delle macine a Siena nelRinascimento. Milano: Electa .

Giustiniani, Bernardo. . Historie cronologie dell’origine degl’Ordini Militarie di tue le religioni cavallerese infino ad hora instituite nel Mondo, Venezia:Combi & Là Noù .

Johannes de Garlandia. . Integumenta Ovidii. Poemeo inedito del secolo XIII,ed. F. Ghisalberti. Messina: Milano: G. Principato .

Ghisalberti, Fausto. “Giovanni del Virgilio espositore delle Metamorfosi”. Ilgiornale dantesco : - .

Landrus, Mahew. . Leonardo da Vinci’s Giant Crossbow, Berlin: Springer.Long, Pamela O. . “Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Me-

chanical Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age”. Isis :-.. . Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Tenical Arts and the Culture of Knowl-edge from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

Milanesi, Gaetano, ed. . Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese, Tomo II, SecoliXV e XVI. Siena: Porri.

Ovid. . Metamorphoses, ed. A. D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford UP.Prager, Frank D. . “A Manuscript of Taccola, oting Brunelleschi, on Prob-

lems of Inventors and Builders”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical So-ciety : -.

Praeger, Frank D. and Scaglia, Gustina. . Mariano Taccola and his Book ‘Deingeneis’. Cambridge, Mass.: e MIT Press.

Regio, Raffaele, ed. . P. Ouidii Metamorphosis cum integris ac emendatissimisRaphaelis Regii enarrationibus & repraehensione illarum ineptiarum: quibus ul-timusaternio primae editionis fuit inquinatus. Venetiis: SimonBivilaqua .

Scaglia, Gustina. . “An Allegorical Portrait of Emperor Sigismund by MarianoTaccola of Siena”. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes :-.

Taccola, Mariano. . Liber tertius de ingeneis ac edifitiis non usitatis, ed. J. H.Beck. Milano: Il polifilo.. . De Mainis: the Engineering Treatise of , ed. G. Scaglia. Wiesbaden:L. Reichart Verlag.. a. De Ingeneis: Liber Primus Leonis, Liber Secundus Draconis, AddendaBooks I and II, on Engines, and Addenda (the Notebook), ed. G. Scaglia and F.D. Prager, vols. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert Verlag.e ms. is reproduced in vol. , that can be viewed and downloaded at http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/k/kmoddl/browse.html. e dragon can be reached directlyat http://tinyurl.com/dragon-for-jihi.

: Enrico Pasini

. b. De rebus militaribus (De mainis, ), mit dem vollständigen Faksim-ile der Pariser Handsri, ed. E. Knobloch. Baden-Baden: V. Koerner. Frenchedition: . L’art de la guerre: maines et stratagèmes de Taccola, ingénieur dela Renaissance. Paris: Gallimard.

Valturio, Roberto. . De re militari. [Verona]: Jo. Nicolai de Verona.. . De re militari. Riproduzione facsimile dell’editio princeps () e saggicritici, ed. P. Delbianco. Milano: Guaraldi .

Wojatsek, Charles. . “Les cinq couronnes de l’empereur-roi Sigismond deLouxembourg”, Slavic and East-European Studies : -.

Taccola a, II, f. v, particular.

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