Nexus Network Journal 11,3 (eBook)

Title Page 
3 
Table of Contents 
4 
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 5
Reflections on the Relationship between Perspective and Geometry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 
7 
1 Introduction 7
2 Treatises on perspective in the Renaissance 8
3 Towards projective geometry 11
4 The conics according to Desargues and Pascal 13
5 Conclusions 14
Note 14
References 15
About the author 16
Guarino Guarini and his Grand Philosophy of Sapientia and Mathematics 
17 
Introduction 17
The treatise on architecture 19
Guarini and Baroque intellectual culture 21
The grammar of elements 22
Conclusion 23
Notes 24
Bibliography 25
About the author 25
A Structural Description of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in Torino 
26 
About the author 43
The Unpublished Working Drawings for the Nineteenth-Century Restoration of the Double Structure of the Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Torino 
44 
Introduction 44
1 The morphology of the double structure of the Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo 44
2 The nineteenth-century restoration 47
Conclusions 65
Acknowledgments 66
Notes 66
About the author 67
Guarini et la structure de l’Univers 
68 
L’oeuvre publiée de Guarino Guarini 68
Le contexte de l’étude de la cosmologie 69
Opposition des images et du contenu 69
Le plan des traités d’astronomie 72
Les Coelestis mathematicae publié par Guarino Guarini en 1683 75
Le plan du Traité et description générale 75
Les auteurs cités par Guarini 76
Revenons sur certains chapitres des Coelestis mathematicae 77
Conclusion 88
Bibliographie 89
L’auteur 89
Guarino Guarini and Universal Mathematics 
90 
Introduction 90
Guarini and the Euclides adauctus 92
Conclusion 105
Appendix I: Index of Euclides adauctus et methodicus mathematicaque universalis (Torino 1671) 
106 
Appendix II: Index of the Modo di misurar le fabriche (Torino 1674) 108
Notes 109
Bibliography 112
About the author 114
Appendix II: Index of the Appendix ad Euclidem adauctum (Torino 1671 1-24 non-numbered pages)
108 
Projective Architecture 115
Introduction 115
Light and shadow 117
Abstract line and plane 117
Projective geometry 119
Notes 125
References 127
About the author 128
A Neglected Harbinger of the Triple- Storey Façade of Guarini's Santissima Annunziata in Messina 
129 
Notes 143
Bibliography 144
About the author 144
Unfolding San Lorenzo 145
Fold as conceptual framework 145
The contemporary architecture of the Fold 145
The philosophical origins of the Fold 146
How Deleuze is led to the Fold as the essential criterion of Baroque 146
Fold, to fold, in the work of Deleuze and as a tool of analysis 147
“Reading” San Lorenzo 148
Presence of elements: the folds 148
Renaissance Folds. 148
Gothic folds. 149
Islamic folds. 150
Partial folds 150
Relation of elements-Differential relations: The mathematics of folding 151
Materiality: Pleats in matter 154
Light and depth: Folds of the soul 156
The “two floors”: a Baroque allegory 157
Acknowledgments 160
Notes 160
Bibliography 161
About the author 162
The Architecture of the New Baroque : A Comparative Study of the Historic and the New Baroque Movements in Architecture 
163 
References 165
About the reviewer 165
Guarino Guarini 166
About the reviewer 167

"James McQuillan (S. 341-342)

Introduction

The purpose of this contribution to Guarinian studies is to establish the ulterior or ultimate meaning of this complex figure of the High Baroque, which has not been fully dealt with previously, leading to even wayward results in the literature. So this will be an exploration of the hermeneutical significance of the polymathic attributes of the Theatine architect, who was also a theologian, an area in which he did not publish, as well as an encyclopaedic writer on philosophy, mathematics and astronomy.

As Joseph Mazzeo put it, the breakdown of hermeneutics in Biblical exegesis, has been followed by a reverse movement – ‘the secularization of hermeneutica sacra and its amalgamation to hermeneutica profana open the way to two opposing tendencies in modern humanistic and literary interpretation, the sacralization of the secular and the secularization of the sacred’ [Mazzeo 1978, 24]. Three hundred years ago, such confusion was impossible, and age-old conventions were in place to secure man’s place in the world, mainly through a cosmology which was being questioned, of course, but only by an elite.

In the time of Milton, everyone was an artist in the sense of participating in thought and enquiry, so that he could call Galileo ‘the Tuscan artist’. An encyclopaedic survey of optics and perspective was entitled the ‘Great Art of Light and Shadow’ (Athanasius Kircher SJ, Ars magna lucis et umbrae in decem libros digesta, Rome, 1646). The liberal arts still reigned as the introduction to philosophy both moral and natural (the trivium) as well as mathematics (the quadrivium).

The human mind was a reflection of the cosmic order under neo-Platonic-Aristotelian norms, shared by the great artists and architects of the Baroque, especially the only one who was also a scholar and mathematician: Guarino Guarini (1624-1683). Due to the breakdown in pre-understanding necessary to consider Guarini after his death with the rise of modern science, a fresh effort must be made to restore the conditions to read this Baroque figure as he deserves to be read.

Only since 1970 has this Theatine priest, a member of the Clerks Regular who practised as a court architect in Turin where he built the astounding Chapel of the Holy Shroud, been recognised on a par with the architects Bernini and Borromini. The young Guarini studied in Rome where the others were then flourishing, and presumably the novitiate studied these masters in detail. An attempt has already been made to construct a connection between Guarini artista and Guarini scienziato: Marcello Fagiolo’s ‘La Geosofia del Guarini’ [1970] presumed to explicate Guarini’s thought more geometrica. As Guarini seems to have made no change"