Empirical Knowledge and Antiquarian Architecture in Sixteenth-century Venice

Cesare Pastorino will carry out this two-year Marie Curie Global Fellowship at Princeton University (USA) and the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari (Italy), with the supervision of Anthony Grafton (Princeton) and Marco Sgarbi (Venice).

The overarching aim of the ANTIQUITATES project is to investigate the quantitative empirical practices of the early modern historical disciplines. Pastorino will analyze the case of antiquarian architecture in the Republic of Venice during the sixteenth century.

He will consider a group of groundbreaking architects from Veneto, including Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616), and their patronage networks.

The activities of these architects moved seamlessly from texts to objects and back, merging the study of classical authors with archeological reconstructions, surveying, and practical mathematics. In their antiquarian analyses, these figures blended historical and quantitative empirical knowledge. Historiography usually associates quantitative empirical methods with the early modern growth of the natural sciences.

Analyzing the patronage networks of antiquarian architecture in the Republic of Venice during the sixteenth century, this project will open a very different and innovative perspective: it will show how the humanistic and antiquarian study of the past included established practices of measurement and quantification.

In sum, Cesare Pastorino will lay the foundations for a new and cutting-edge area of historical research on the role of quantification, measurement, and testing in the historical studies of antiquity in early modern Europe. This new research and the skills acquired during the fellowship period will impact his career very significantly.

They will expand his current area of expertise, create new academic collaborations and provide him with the training required to achieve a permanent academic position and establish a research group on this topic.