On the Trail of a Peripatetic Vitruvian Reader

New Insights on Giovanni Battista Fontana in the Late Seventeenth-Century Eastern Adriatic

Abstract

This article revolves around a copy of Vitruvius’s De architectura once owned by the master builder Giovanni Battista Fontana. Firstly, it proposes the identification of this individual as the elder brother of the Ticino-born architect Carlo Fontana through a comparative analysis of handwritten samples from different archives. Secondly, it attempts a tentative reconstruction of Giovanni Battista Fontana’s career in the Eastern Adriatic. Old and newly discovered sources from state and monastic archives indicate that Fontana arrived in the Eastern Adriatic via Rome and settled in Korčula. From 1670 to the end of the century, he participated in various building projects in Kotor, Zadar, Cres, and Perast. His copy of Vitruvius plays a central role in the argumentation, as the material evidence of use detected in its pages provides insight into his reading interests and practices. Thus, it greatly contributes to the reconstruction of his corpus of works and architectural language. The article portrays a peripatetic master builder characterized by a high degree of mobility between his homeland in Ticino and the Eastern Adriatic via Rome, Ancona, and Dubrovnik, with a marked skill in combining the classical language of architecture with the local style of Korčula stonemasonry.