Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the journey and revelatory influence of the labyrinth garden in Filarete's ideal city of Sforzinda from the "Libro Architettonico" in the fifteen century. Specifically questioned is the role of the garden as a microcosm for the social body of the ideal humanist city.

Paper long abstract:

Written between 1461-63, Filarete's "Libro Architettonico" depicts the ideal city of Sforzinda, the first ideal city conceived by an architect in the Western tradition. The treatise discloses principles of an ideal humanist society through the revival of many ancient Greek and Eastern building principles and typologies. The labyrinth and garden are two recurring examples of this throughout the text where together they are reinvented in the design for the Plusiapolis palace complex. Here, the new typology serves the role of a microcosm of man in the cosmos. The central palace complex has multiple garden terraces filled with a highly organized plant and statue program surrounded by a circular moat of water and an elaborate labyrinth through which the visitor must pass. Unique to this treatise, this peculiar and under-acknowledged design appears within a period of the theory of architecture where gardens were first being discussed in parallel to the art of building by seminal figures such as Leon Battista Alberti. Though not built during Filarete's lifetime many labyrinth gardens were later built between the fifteenth and eighteenth century. This paper explores the journey and the revelatory influence of the labyrinth garden within this early modern period and specifically questions what role the palace as a microcosm was meant to fulfill for the social body of Filarete's idealist city. The paper will analyze how the garden and labyrinth are regarded throughout the treatise in a more general sense and to what extent ancient sources such may have supplied influence.