Bernardo Buontalenti interpreted more faithfully than any of his contemporaries the aims and principles of the Florentine culture of the second half of the sixteenth century, and was so highly regarded in his own time as to be described in 1586 as ‘a most excellent architect; in his work as engineer and...

In the cultural environment of the sixteenth century, the fashion for collecting works of art and the influence of patronage were to result in the steady erosion of Aristotelian concepts. The Great Cosmic Machine, which had already been the subject of intensive study, particularly in terms of the true relationship between man and nature, the principles of ‘symmetry’ and the affinity...