Abstract
Volume II of Juan Battista Villalpando’s Ezechielem Explanationes of 1604 contains a re-creation of the Temple of Solomon illustrated by a portfolio of exceptionally detailed architectural drawings. His designs were built on the principles of Platonic musical harmonies and his interpretation of ancient measurements. Villalpando envisaged the temple as a building encapsulating the entire formal grammar of classical architecture. However, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries his critics included Louis Cappel, Samuel Lee, Louis Compiègne de Veil, Nicolaus Goldmann and others who produced alternative reconstructions of Solomon’s Temple. In the twentieth century criticism from what appears to be an unusual source was uncovered. In Sir Isaac Newton’s unpublished manuscripts he claimed that although Villalpando had created the best of the reconstructions of the Temple of Solomon, the reconstruction had many problems. This paper examines Villalpando’s reconstruction of the Temple in the light of Newton’s unpublished commentary.
First published as: Tessa Morrison , “Villalpando ’s Sacred Architecture in the Light of Isaac Newton ’s Commentary”. Pp. 79–91in Nexus VII: Architecture and Mathematics, Kim Williams, ed. Turin: Kim Williams Books, 2008
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The translations of Villalpando ’s Ezechielem Explanationes and Newton ’s Babson MS 0434 and Yahuda MS 14 from Latin are by the author.
- 2.
Taylor (1972) is an excellent summary of the support and criticism of the Villalpando ’s reconstruction.
- 3.
For a full account of Newton ’s comments on Villalpanda’s reconstruction and his own attempt, see Morrison (2011).
- 4.
In Chapter XXX of Ezechielem Explanationes Villalpando clearly describes and illustrates a geo-centric system, where the Sun completes a circuit around the Earth every 24 h. There is some ambiguity in the light of the centralised “Sun of Justice” Christ reflecting back to the Earth through the illumination of the planet Sun. However the planet Sun is circling the centralised earth. Villalpando clearly held a hermetic view of geo-centricism. Since he also lived and worked in Rome in the early seventeenth century, he would have been aware of, if he had not personally witnessed, the burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600 in Rome for promoting a heliocentric view of the universe. Furthermore, Ezechielem Explanationes was published in Rome and would have been censored if there had been any hint of the promotion of a heliocentric system. It is possible that Newton did not see the original volumes of Villalpando, and that his knowledge of Villalpando came from the paraphrased section of Cappel (1660), which is not as detailed as the original. It is known that Newton owned a copy of Cappel; see Harrison (1978).
References
Cappel, Louis. 1657. Trisagion Sive Templi Hierosolymitani Triplex Delineatio. In: Biblia Sacra Polgotta, Brian Walton, ed. London.
———. 1660. Excerpta Ex Villalpando Ad Ezechielem. In: Critici Sacri, John Pearson, ed. London.
Castillejo, David. 1981. The Expanding Force in Newton’s Cosmos. Madrid: Ediciones De Arte Y Bibliofilia.
Friedman, John Block. 1974. The Architect’s Compass in Creation Miniatures of the Later Middle Ages. Traditio XXX: 419–429.
Harrison, John R. 1978. The Library of Isaac Newton. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Herrera, Juan de. 1935. Sobre la Figura Cúbica. Santander: Universidad de Cantabria.
Morrison, Tessa. 2011. Isaac Newton’s Temple of Solomon and his Reconstruction of Sacred Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Newton, Isaac. (n.d.). Miscellaneous Notes and Extracts on the Temple, the Fathers, Prophecy, Church History, Doctrinal Issues, ets (Yahuda Ms. 14). Unpublished manuscript, Jewish National and University Library.
———.1680. Prolegomena ad Lexici Prophtici partem secundam in quibus agitur De forma Sanctuarii Judaici (Babson Ms. 0434). Unpublished manuscript, Babson College, Massachusetts.
———. 1988. The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. London: Histories and Mysteries of Man.
Stukeley, William. 1936. Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton. London: Taylor and Francis.
Taylor, Rene. 1972. Hermetism and Mystical Architecture in the Society of Jesus. Pp. 63–97 in Rudolf Wittkower and Irma B Jaffe eds., Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution. New York: Fordham University Press, 1972.
Villalpando, Juan Bautisa and Hieronymus Prado. 1604. Ezechielem Explanationes Et Apparatus Urbis Hierolymitani Commentariis Et Imaginibus Illustratus. Rome.
Vitruvius. 1960. The Ten Books on Architecture. Trans. Morris Hickey Morgan. New York: Dover.
Wittkower, Rudolf. 1988. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London: Academy Editions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Morrison, T. (2015). Villalpando’s Sacred Architecture in the Light of Isaac Newton’s Commentary. In: Williams, K., Ostwald, M. (eds) Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00143-2_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00143-2_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-00142-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-00143-2
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)