Proportion, Symmetry and Mathematics in the Renaissance Theory of Construction: Vignola's Treaty of Architecture and its Musical Mirror

This paper tries to explain the close relationship between the late-medieval musical methods of composition and the Renaissance and Baroque construction history, using the example of Vignola's treaty Regole delli cinque ordine d'architettura, in its first Spanish version by Patricio Caxés (1593). This is a very important way to understand Renaissance construction techniques. Concepts of proportion and symmetry, and the mathematical bases of the construction after Vignola, are very similar to the theoretical writers and composers of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries. The text shows a new point of view about the building profession and the construction history during the Renaissance. The following analysis is a part of the ATENEA Research Project, about Spanish Treatises of Art, consisting of a computerized source that brings together a Terminological- Conceptual Thesaurus and a Textual Corpus. The author is a Pre-doctoral Researcher for the Research and Development Department of the Galician Government (Xunta de Galicia), supervised by professor Miguel Taín Guzmán (Santiago de Compostela University).