Antonio Becchi

Biography

Antonio Becchi graduated at the University of Genoa (1988, cum laude and dignità di stampa) with a thesis on the Radici storiche della teoria molecolare dell’elasticità, con particolare riguardo alla Theoria philosophiae naturalis di R.G. Boscovich. Since 1992 he has been collaborating with the international project Between Mechanics and Architecture initiated by Patricia Radelet de Grave and Edoardo Benvenuto. 1994 he earned his PhD in Storia delle scienze e delle tecniche (dissertation: I criteri di plasticità: cento anni di dibattito, 1864-1964) at the University of Florence. Between 1989 and 2001 he regularly spent research periods in Bologna, Venice, Berlin, Göttingen, Paris (École Polytechnique and École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées) and he taught at Genoa University and at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura of Venice (IUAV). 
2002-2024 he was a Visiting/Research scholar at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (MPIHS, Dept. I, Berlin) working on following projects: Epistemic History of Architecture (MPIHS and Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome), Transformations of Antiquity/Transformationen der Antike (Sonderforschungsbereich 644, MPIHS and Humboldt University, Berlin), In-Camera-Out (with Montserrat de Pablo) and Disiecta membra. Tracing the History of the Albani Libraries (with Brunella Paolini). In 2018-2019 he was a Visiting fellow at the Warburg Institute and in 2021 he curated with Sabine Hoffmann, Jürgen Renn, Matteo Valleriani and Serge von Arx the exhibition Leonardo’s intellectual Cosmos (Staatsbibliothek, Berlin). 
Since 2010 he has been on the editorial board of the Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge, since 2012 a correspondent member of the International Academy of the History of Science, since 2014 a member of the Conseil d’administration of the Association Francophone d’Histoire de la Construction, and since 2016 a member of the Scientific Board of the Werner Oechslin Library Foundation (Einsiedeln) and of the Centro Interdipartimentale Urbino e la Prospettiva (University of Urbino). 
 

Research

Antonio Becchi is currently working on the history and reception of Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s (1439-1501) Trattato di architettura (Ms. Ashb. 361, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) which contains some marginalia that have, until now, been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). The Ms. Ashb. 361, carefully studied by Aby Warburg (1866-1929), has often been described as the only volume certainly belonging to Leonardo’s library. Antonio Becchi’s research focuses on the annotations usually ascribed to Leonardo and on related documents which have in the past been the subject of erroneous attributions and dating. 
 

Selected Publications

Books

• 2024    Il biberon di Leonardo (with Marco Biffi), Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 2024.
• 2017    Naufragi di terra e di mare. Da Leonardo da Vinci a Theodor Mommsen, alla ricerca dei codici Albani, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 2017.
• 2004    Q. XVI. Leonardo, Galileo e il caso Baldi: Magonza, 26 marzo 1621, Marsilio, Venice, 2004.
• 2002    Degli archi e delle volte. Arte del costruire tra meccanica e stereotomia (with F. Foce), Marsilio, Venice, 2002.

e-Book

• 2007    I criteri di plasticità: cento anni di dibattito (1864-1964), PhD Diss. (University of Florence 1994), www.bma-project.org, 2007.

Edited books

• 2023    Jacques Heyman, Hooke, Wren and the Dome. A seventeenth century crossing space between architecture and engineering (with F. Foce, ed.), Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 2023.
• 2022    Jacques Heyman, Skeletons. A technical autobiography written for instruction and entertainment (with F. Foce, ed.), Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 2022.
• 2021    Leonardo’s intellectual Cosmos (with S. Hoffmann, J. Renn, and M. Valleriani, eds.)
  Giunti, Florence, 2021 (German edition: Leonardos intellektueller Kosmos, Giunti, Florence, 2021).
• 2018    L’Histoire de la construction. Relevé d’un chantier européen / Construction History. Survey of a European Building Site (with R. Carvais and J. Sakarovitch, eds.), Classiques Garnier, Paris, 2018.
• 2013    Philippe de La Hire entre architecture et sciences (with H. Rousteau-Chambon and J. Sakarovitch, eds.), Picard, Paris, 2013.
  Guidobaldo del Monte (1545-1607). Theory and Practice of the Mathematical Disciplines from Urbino to Europe (with D. Bertoloni Meli and E. Gamba, eds.), edition-open-access, Berlin, 2013.

Articles

• 2024    Vitruvius’ Historiae and the Love of Learning, in I. D. Rowland and S. W. Bell (eds.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Vitruvius, Chapter 25, Brill, Leiden - Boston, 2024, pp. 627-684.
• 2021    “Veggiamo se tal fabbrica può reggersi”: misurare l’ignoto, secondo natura, in F. Camerota (ed.), Dall’Inferno all’Empireo. Il mondo di Dante tra scienza e poesia, Sillabe, Leghorn, 2021, pp. 56-57. 
• 2020    La Bibliotheca Albana Urbinas nel carteggio tra Bernard M. Peebles e M. Howard Rienstra, in “Studia Oliveriana”, IV ser., Vols. V-VI, 2019-2020, pp. 143-166.
• 2017    I commenti di Daniele Barbaro al Proemio della ‘terza parte principale dell’Architettura’ (1556-1567), in F. Lemerle, V. Zara, P. Caye, L. Moretti (eds.), Daniele Barbaro 1514-1570, Brepols, Turnhout, 2017, pp. 187-198.
      La lezione di Salmacide: Vitruvio e il potere delle acque, in T.G. Schattner, F. Valdés Fernández (eds.), Wasserversorgung in Toledo und Wissensvermittlung von der Antike ins Mittelalter, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, Tübingen/Berlin, 2017, pp. 371-385. 
• 2016    Drawing Proofs: lo sguardo cinematico di Robert Willis, in A. Buchanan, J.W.P. Campbell, J. Girón, S. Huerta (eds.), Robert Willis. Science, Technology and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century. Proceedings of the ‘Robert Willis Symposium’ (Cambridge UK, Gonville and Caius College, 16th-17th September 2016), Instituto Juan de Herrera, Madrid, 2016, pp. 141-165.
      Learning from falling stones, in “Science et technique en perspective”, IIe série, vol. 18, fasc. 2, 2016, pp. 3-18.