Abstract
Although many scholars suppose that the concept of bilateral symmetry was known in Classical times, the earliest evidence of it does not appear before the second half of the fifteenth century: it is a concept that originated in the Italian Renaissance. From the outset it was not only a descriptive concept but a normative one, which asserted that to be beautiful a design must be symmetric. The only person during the Renaissance known to have offered a rationale for this norm was L. B. Alberti, who claimed that Nature’s forms are symmetric and that the Ancients, recognizing as much, saw to it that their artifacts and buildings were always given symmetric shape. These claims (whether original to Alberti or not is unclear) would prove to be immensely influential and durable and are the origin, not only of the preponderance of symmetrical architecture, but of tenacious scientific fallacies such as the alleged symmetry of snowflakes and other crystals.
References
Alberti, Leon Battista. 1966. In Leon Battista Alberti l’Architettura [De re aedificatoria], ed. Orlando and Portoghesi. Milano: Polifilo.
Colonna, Francesco. 1499. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Venice: Aldus.
Buonarotti, Michelangelo. 1875. In La Lettere di Michelangelo Buonarotti, ed. Milanesi. Firenze: successore Le Monnier.
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de. 1825. Oeuvres. Paris: Bavoux.
Pius II. 1984. Pii II commentarii rerum memorabilium, que temporibus suis contigerunt. Vol. II, ed. van Heck. Città del Vaticano: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana.
Plutarch, A. 1932. In Lives, vol. VI, ed. Perrin Bernadotte. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library/Harvard University Press.
Selzer, Michael. 2016. The symmetry norm and the asymmetric universe, 2nd ed. Colorado Springs: KeepAhead Press.
Serlio, Sebastiano. 1584. Tutte l’opere d’architettura, vol. VII. Venice: Francesco de’Franceschi Senese.
Tavernor, Robert. 1998. On Alberti and the art of building. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Vasari, Giorgio. 1568. Le Vite … Architettura, cap. VII. Florence: Giunti.
Wotton, Henry. 1624. Elements of architecture. London: Bill.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this entry
Cite this entry
Selzer, M. (2016). Symmetry. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1153-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1153-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Symmetry in Renaissance Art- Published:
- 16 April 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1153-3
-
Symmetry in Renaissance Art
- Published:
- 17 October 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1153-2
-
Original
Symmetry- Published:
- 02 August 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1153-1