The Francesco di Giorgio Material in the Zichy Codex

The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze part of the contents of an Italian manuscript and model book compiled in Venice by Angelo dal Cortivo between 1489 and 1536-the Zichy Codex, now in Szabó Ervin Központi Könyvtár (Erwin Szabo Public Library), Budapest. This analysis demonstrates that the contents of the manuscript represent the earliest version thus far discovered of Francesco di Giorgio Martini's first treatise as found in Saluzzianus 148, Biblioteca Reale, Turin. The article proceeds from an account of the history of the manuscript, including an extensive bibliography and unpublished documents for the life of its compiler, to comparisons of the material in the Zichy Codex with that in Saluzzianus 148 of the Biblioteca Reale, Turin. A list, paragraph by paragraph, of the contents and their parallels in the Turin manuscript is found in Table I. Table II compares the subject matter organization of the two texts. Textual and visual material from the Zichy Codex is discussed, showing that it contains material not found in other Francesco di Giorgio texts, that the understanding of Vitruvius found in the Zichy Codex is poorer than that demonstrated in Saluzzianus 148, and that a purposeful re-organization of the material in the Zichy Codex occurred before the writing of the Turin manuscript. A date in the 1460s is proposed for the Francesco di Giorgio material found in the Zichy Codex.