concinnitas

"The ontological concept of proportion in Pacioli's work ... owes a greater debt to the tradition that extends from Plato himself to Nicholas of Cusa's coincidentia oppositorum and Alberti's concinnitas" (Pérez-Gómez, "Glass Architecture," 259). back

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

The belief in a syncretic union between sight and hearing, "the ministers of reason," 216 is expressed by Alberti: "The very same numbers that cause sounds to have that concinnitas, pleasing to the ears, can also fill the eyes and mind with wondrous delight."

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

Note 308: As Joseph Rykwert and Alberto Pérez-Gómez observe, doubt was formally cast on Alberti's concinnitas by Claude Perrault, whose archaeological and anatomical research demonstrated "no close correspondence between musical and visual harmony as earlier theorists of both music and of architecture implicitly believed."

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

Note 10: For a discussion of concinnitas, see Alberti, Art of Building, 9.5.305, as well as Joseph Rykwert's gloss on the subject (421 – 22).

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

The mnemonic role of architectural ornament casts a different light on Alberti's seemingly contradictory discussion of concinnitas, whereby an architectural construct is conceived as an irreducible whole, yet structure is distinguished from ornament.

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

If the studioli embody harmony and concinnitas, why then does each studiolo present instruments with broken strings?

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

Themes of reconciliation and universal harmony, such as Alberti's concinnitas and Cusa's coincidentia oppositorum, were counterposed to a litany of crises in faith, politics, and scholarship.

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

Admiranda profecto res est, et digna expensione, quod sonorum concinnitas mentem emolliat, sistatque procellosas ipsius affectiones.

Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

Non est ornamentum virile concinnitas: as he said of a nightingale, — — — vox es, praeterea nihil, &c.

Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

“Hercle quanta dorsi concinnitas! ut exuberantes lumbi amplexantes manus implent! quam scite circumductae clunium pulpae in se rotundantur, neque tenues nimis ipsis ossibus adstrictae, neque in immensam effusae Pinguedinem!”

Travels through France and Italy 2004