Right at the start of (1970) “Brunelleschi: Studies of His Technology and Inventions” (pp. xi-xiii), Frank Prager summarizes Gustina Scaglia’s research into how Brunelleschi’s ideas for machines spread. They posit a key missing manuscript (dubbed “The Machinery Complex“): but their discussion is fairly specialised, and so it is quite tricky to follow. Here’s my attempt at representing the argument – green boxes represent manuscripts that still exist, red boxes represent lost works, while blue boxes I’m not sure about:-
Which is to say: while all the early Renaissance machine ideas ultimately stemmed from Brunelleschi, later machine authors (such as Francesco di Giorgio) relied not just on Taccola’s De Ingeneis but also on the missing “Machinery Complex” manuscript. However, nobody knows who wrote this or what subsequently happened to it – we can perceive it only by its shadow, hear it only by its echo in other manuscript and copyworks.
I think the reason that Prager & Scaglia’s text is a little confused is that, because the Machinery Complex ms has disappeared, they can’t quite make up their minds how much it influenced subsequent writers on machines such as Bartolomeo Neroni, Antonio da San Gallo, Oreste Biringuccio, and Pietro Cataneo. It’s an open question.
But here’s where it becomes a cipher history issue. As I mentioned here a few days ago, the text around what Prager and Scaglia call “the secret hoist” is written in an simple substitution cipher (one letter back in the alphabet) – but because this would have been seen as a childishly simple cipher by 1450, I infer that this ciphertext was not only present in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s original (but now lost) Zibaldone, but also that he probably wrote it in the 1430s or, at a push, the 1440s.
There’s also a cipher / codicological element to this argument, based on the observation that the pages containing the secret hoist are separated by several pages in the later copy of the Zibaldone (by Lorenzo Ghiberti’s grandson Buonaccorso Ghiberti). My suggestion is that Buonaccorso received the folios out of order, but copied them in precisely the same order – had he deciphered the two “secret hoist” pages and grasped that they were referring to the same thing, my guess is that he would have put them back into their correct order.
All in all, then, my inference here is that the simple cipher on the secret hoist was in place in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s original Zibaldone, and that even though Ghiberti himself died in 1455, we can probably date his missing Zibaldone to around the 1430s purely from the simplistic cipher used in it. (Of course, scientists hate this kind of art history “probabilistic proof”, but that’s how history works.)
So far, so marginal: but here’s my “aha” moment of the day, that propels all this into a different league.
One of the things I flagged in my book “The Curse of the Voynich” (pp.141-142) was that Antonio Averlino (Filarete) may have based his (now-lost) book of Engines (“when the time comes, I will mention all these engines“, etc) on this (also now-lost) Machinery Complex – and that some of these engines may well be visually enciphered in the Voynich Manuscript’s Herbal-B pages.
However, on further reflection, it seems I really didn’t go far enough: because Antonio Averlino almost certainly started his career in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s workshops, before suddenly leaving Florence in 1433 for Rome. If we were looking for someone to carry Brunelleschi’s ideas (via Ghiberti’s Zibaldone, probably written in the 1430s) into the world, we could surely do no better than look to Antonio Averlino – I strongly suspect that he was the intermediary.
So, the question then becomes: was Antonio Averlino the author of the Machinery Complex? I strongly suspect that he was, and that the Machinery Complex will turn out to be a synthesis and development of Ghiberti’s ideas as seen from Averlino’s edgy and ambitious perspective – that is to say, that the Machinery Complex will turn out to be Averlino’s missing book of Engines. And if it also turns out (as I suspect it will) to be the case that this Machinery Complex lies visually enciphered in the Voynich Manuscript’s Herbal-B pages, what an extraordinary story that would be…
PS: as a footnote for further study, the only other paper I have found on the Machinery Complex was on The Art of Invention bibliography webpage: Gustina Scaglia’s (1988) “Drawings of forts and engines by Lorenzo Donati, Giovanbattista Alberti, Sallustio Peruzzi, The Machine Complex Artist, and Oreste Biringuccio“, Architectura, II, pp. 169-97. Definitely a paper to go through to see what conclusions Scaglia had reached about this intriguing missing document. But please let me know if you find any other references!
Hi Nick! When you say, “[we] hear [the Machinery Complex] only by its echo in other manuscripts and copyworks,” are you saying that the subsequent authors refer specifically to a Ms named “The Machinery Complex,” or are their references more indirect than that?
Gustina Scaglia inferred the existence of the manuscript from copies of drawings taken from it that appear in other later manuscripts (she then named it for convenience). But nobody wrote anything as useful as “I copied this from x’s manuscript”, unfortunately. 🙁
Hi Nick, not finished looking at Taccola’s drawings, but the (as translated) AD 1430 reference in drawing 2 to the fountain being driven by gravity is interesting.
Hi Keith,
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Of course, since 2006 I’ve had a fair amount of ribbing from people who fail to see why I get so excited about the idea that the VMs somehow fits into the whole “secret Quattrocento books of machines” genre. But we shall (I hope) see if I’m basically right with this…
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….
When I google on a subject so often I find that Mr. Pelling has already had something to say on the matter. I read that in order to keep his ideas for the dome of Florence cathedral secret Brunelleschi wrote them down in code. So I was curious as to what kind of code he used; which brought me here. I guess it was a simple substitution cipher, but I think in that regard Ghiberti is mentioned in this post, but Brunelleschi not.
M R Knowles: Nick Pelling as the Dome of Florence is cheeky but fits. Your infinate jest puts me in mind of Filarete the apiarist of Florence and a humourist of note. Puts a smile on my dial Mark.
Prayingmantis – Prayingmantis. According to C G Cramer, who should know, a pair of silent assassins and frontline commandos have been recalled to duty for a mission of honour at Somerton Beach S A. Several high ranking officers of the former nationalist New Guard order, resurrected post war as the Returned Service League, are about to create a scare amongst groups of godless communists who dared to enter the fabled land of Oz, under the guise of being fully tooled up third officer seamen off ore ships. First cab off the rank being to inlist the pair of ex AIF Glenelg taxi drivers George (PMT) and Jim (GAB) to take out a particularly brutish target in GRU operative in exile Major Pavel Fedosimov….More details to follow.
I’m guessing that ‘Filarete’ was a nick-name? It might.. possibly.. suggest he was interested in medicine beyond just making a herbal text.
A reference I’m reading now includes among the authorities commented upon by ‘Peter of Spain’:-
[quote] Hippocrates, Constantine, Johannitius, Galen, Isaac, the Jew and … *Filareto* … [end quote]
I’ve put Peter’s name in single quotes because as soon as you go below the wiki-level surface, such a debate about his identification that it makes the head spin. Some possibility that Peter might be Portuguese, and a conflation of two or three individuals.
Nothing else so far on the earlier Filareto, but context indicates 13thC or earlier for his life, and that he may have written on the subject of the pulse.
Or have you said all this already somewhere else?