Francesco Milizia e i Principj di architettura civile: disegno e iconografia

Published in 1781, Principj di Architettura civile (Principles of Civil Architecture) by Francesco Milizia was the most influential book in Italian architectural culture between the late eighteenth century and the second half of the nineteenth century.
Based on the concepts Vitruvian beauty, comfort and solidity, and upon the sovereignty of the laws of nature, the book expressed a great freedom of judgment and a singular originality despite its “looting” of many previous treatises, defiantly confessed to by the author. For Milizia - and also for his critic Angelo Comolli - plagiarism of the writings of others, was of trifiling importance when considered next to his main objective that of reforming the concept of architecture and filling the void of knowledge of it that existed among practitioners of the profession of architecture.
The idea of architecture Milizia proposed to his readers referenced structural coherence, simplification of volumes, simplicity of decoration. This idea, inspired by abstract Greek and Roman models already adopted by the French and English architectural literature, gradually penetrated the educational system of Italian architecture.
In 1817, Giovanni Antonio Antolini, a master of neoclassicism, convinced of the “very great advantages” that young people drew from the study of the Principj, published a series of comments and additions to the 1785 edition, designed to extend its editorial life.
In 1800 the architect Giovanni Battista Cipriani published a small book of illustrations consisting of twenty-seven figures, Indice delle figure relative ai Principj di Architettura civile di Francesco Milizia, endowing the work with a graphic aspect that claimed to be respecting the wishes of the recently deceased author.
Regardless of the actual desires of Milizia, Cipriani’s Figure constituted an essential complement to a reading of the Principj, and certainly contributed to the universal success of his work, as indicated by the inclusion of the Figure in the edition of 1804, as well as in the reprints of 1813 and 1823 which further widened its reach among students of architecture.
In this sense, the later editorial operation by Antolini should be considered to be complementary to that of Cipriani in conferring upon the Principj the status of instruction manual, as evidenced by the three Milanese editions of 1832, 1847, 1853 (including both graphic and textual appendices). It is precisely for this complex editorial layering, that the present contribution analyzes the work of Milizia in relation to its many international cultural references.