ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Capomaestro at Work: Profiling a Sixteenth-Century Tuscan River Technician

• In Event: Early Modern Intersections of Knowledge

English Abstract

For a variety of environmental, demographic, and political reasons, territorial river management became a major preoccupation of the consolidating states of Italy during the sixteenth century. Before a dedicated science of rivers emerged in the seventeenth century, territorial rulers turned routinely to architects, engineers, masons, and other artisans versed in practical mathematics and in the building arts to mitigate floods and order waterways for the purposes of commerce and industrial development. Focusing on the Duchy of Florence and Grand Duchy of Tuscany, this paper will study the technicians appointed to the Ufficiali dei Fiumi (est. 1549), the state’s first river management office. It will analyze the responsibilities and aptitudes of the many lesser-known artisans and builders who served this office as capomaestri, and how they related to those of the architects and engineers under whom they worked. Translated loosely today as “first building master” or “foreman,” the capomastro performed a variety of tasks only partially evoked by these titles: first responders in the face of water problems, they conducted visitations, surveyed and assessed land, interpreted and enforced ducal river laws, inspected alluvial landscapes and structures, anticipated risks, and communicated their findings in word and image to ducal administrators. Study of their empirical work reveals the wide array of skills and knowledge corralled to address problems of territorial river engineering, as well as the practice-based origins of several scientific and political insights about river management that would become axiomatic by the seventeenth century.

Author

• Caroline Elizabeth Murphy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology