Apart from being introduced into building and painting young Antonio Rusconi studied
mathematics at the
University of Padua under
Giovanni Battista Memmo and
Niccolò Tartaglia. Extensively consulting Vitruvius’
"Ten Books on Architecture" while he was constructing a novel type of
watermill Antonio became aware of many grave technical errors within the work's early Renaissance editions and commentaries. Finally
Pietro Lauro, who had rendered
Leon Battista Alberti's “De Architectura” into the vernacular, convinced Rusconi to set out with a translation of his own. The text was finished until 1552 and illustrated with more than three hundred supplementary
woodcuts. Earlier, Rusconi had already provided the illustrations for
Lodovico Dolce's version of the
Ovidian “Metamorphoses”. Yet, since then countless treatises on architecture and commentaries on
Vitruvius (e.g. by
Daniele Barbaro,
Gicaomo Vignola and
Andrea Palladio) were being published, Rusconi's Venetian editors,
Giolito and
Tommaso Porcacchi, saw no benefit in printing another title on the subject. Together with
Palladio Rusconi draughted the
"Palazzo municipale" (Brescia) in 1562, they also took part in rebuilding the
Doge's Palace after the fire of 1577 and constructing the
Palazzo Grimani. Nevertheless, throughout his life Rusconi's main occupation was that of a
hydraulic engineer for the
Republic of Venice. After having fallen gravely ill in 1575 Giovan Antonio died in 1579. == Rusconi's "Della Architettura" ==