Taccola

Mariano di Jacopo detto Taccola (* 1382, † 1453 ), called Taccola, was an Italian engineer, artist and official of the city of Siena.

Work

Taccola is known, who described himself as ' Archimedes of Siena ', for his technical drawings, which stood in the tradition of the artist - engineers of the Italian Renaissance and in his time found a wide reception among artists and architects. Taccolas designs were probably known to Leonardo da Vinci and possibly served as a source for its notebooks.

Unlike his famous contemporaries such as Brunelleschi, the Taccola knew personally, but Taccolas got work after his death gradually into oblivion. Only in the early 1960s, the original manuscripts have been located again in Munich and Florence, after centuries only handwritten copies of other had circulated. Taccolas work consists of five books:

• De ingeneis I-IV ( completed in 1433 )
• De machinis ( completed in 1449 )

The books show numerous ink drawings of engineering designs, which were provided with handwritten comments. They point out Taccola as an artist of the transition between medieval and modern times. In the innovative power of its ideas already a child of the Renaissance, Taccola remains rooted in the Middle Ages in the pictorial representation; his understanding of linear perspective and partially remains incomplete, however, the function of the machine illustrated can be clearly seen, even if there is a lack of display in detail.

His designs include cranes, gear circuits and a so-called Kiel crusher, a standing underwater device to ram holes in enemy ships.