Cartesian Aesthetics of Architecture and the School of Andrea Musàlo in Eighteenth-Century Venice

René Descartes addresses aesthetic pleasure explicitly in his Compendium musicae (1618), in which—contrary to the prevailing Pythagorean approach—he grounds musical theory in the physical properties of sound and the perceptual capacities of the human subject. This article explores, for the first time, the influence of Descartes’s musical theory on architectural thought. It focuses on manuscripts associated with the Venetian architect Andrea Musàlo—often regarded as a precursor to Carlo Lodoli—who, as this study demonstrates, incorporated Cartesian musical principles into his discourse. The article traces the emergence of Cartesian currents in architectural theory beginning with the early circulation of the Compendium in the Netherlands and their further transmission through the teachings of Nicolaus Goldmann’s followers. These findings shed new light on Venice as a vibrant center of Cartesianism and the new science, as well as on the theoretical orientation of eighteenth-century Venetian architecture.