Architectural ideas and publications - Les années 1540: regards croisés sur les arts et les let

If one considers that the 1530s was still a period of recovery in Rome and Florence, the most creative architectural centres of the time, and that up-to-date architectural publications before Serlio’s Regole of 1537 (reprinted in Venice in 1540, 1544 and 1551) did not exist, one can begin to appreciate the importance of the 1540s²⁸. Serlio in 1537 had clearly described and il-lustrated everything that an architect who was not himself a scholar or antiquarian needed to know about the orders, summarising what Vitruvius writes about them and illustrating their use in ancient works. He also pro-vided designs showing how each order could be applied in ﬁreplaces, por-tals and altars, as well as in complete facades. He provided many models to follow and thereby introduced his readers to the vocabulary of leading con-temporary architects, including Bramante, Peruzzi, Sansovino and Giulio Romano. In Il terzo libro di Sabastiano Serlio bolognese, nel qual si ﬁgu-rano, e descriuono le antiquita di Roma, e le altre che sono in Italia, e fuori d’Italia (Venice, 1540), Serlio described and published many important ancient and modern buildings which could serve as models for architects:

among modern works he published Bramante’s cortile del Belvedere, the Tempietto and the plan and dome of Bramante’s design for St Peter’s, as

27 For Giulio Romano’s copy of the editio princeps of Alberti’s De re aediﬁcatoria (1485), preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, see the catalogue entry of H. Burns, in Giulio Romano, saggi di Ernst H. Gombrich [et al.], Milano, 1989, p. 304.

28 The principal architectural publications of the 1530s before Serlio’s Regole of 1537 were two translations of Vitruvius, both heavily indebted to Fra Giocondo’s edition of 1511 and Cesariano’s translation of 1521: the reissue in 1535 of Durantino’s Vitruvio of 1524 (In Vinegia: per Nicolo de Aristotele detto Zoppino, 1535 del mese di marzo), and Caporali’s Vitruvio (Perugia, 1536).

The 1540s: a turning point in the development of European architecture

well as material relating to the villa of Poggio Reale, the projects of Raph-ael and Peruzzi for St Peter’s and the Villa Madama. His book is thus a formalised version of the collections of ancient and sometimes also modern buildings, which architects had compiled for themselves since at least the 1460s, with the difference that Serlio provided ample written information and critical comment. The work is of great importance as it offered a mod-el for later architectural writers including Palladio, Philibert De L’Orme and Vincenzo Scamozzi. It also established a preliminary canon of modern works, starting with Bramante’s Tempietto, which could be considered as worthy of study and imitation, like the ancient buildings Serlio presented, not least because they were directly applicable to contemporary needs. The parallel here to the position of Bembo, Trissino and other literary theorists is clear: the work of the ancients provides models and guidance; modern creations however also require modern models, which Bembo found above all in the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and Serlio in that of Bramante and his immediate successors. Serlio, who was born in 1475, the same year as Michelangelo, was not Florentine, and moreover in the Terzo Libro pre-sents himself as an uncompromising Vitruvian. He does not refer (as Vasa-ri does in 1550) to Michelangelo’s architecture in Florence.

Serlio provides models, illuminating asides, guidance when Vitruvius and ancient details are in conﬂict. But he does not present an overall system of ideas relating to architecture and architectural design, beyond his idea that there are regole generali and optimal solutions which often need to be adapted to particular circumstances (accidenti), including different sites, cities or even countries. A modern system of architecture however already existed in Alberti’s De re aediﬁcatoria, a work which had been published in the original Latin in 1485, and reprinted in 1512 (in Paris), and in 1541 (in Strasbourg)²⁹. All three editions were without illustrations, following Al-berti’s probable intentions, though some early owners of the 1485, feeling

29 Leonis Baptistae Alberti ﬂorentini viri clarissimi Libri de re aediﬁcatoria decem.

Opus integrum et absolutum diligenterque recognitum. […] Facta est etiam capitum ipsorum non inelegans tabula cum dictionum et ipsarum rerum scitu dignarum quae in margine sunt indice admodum luculento Venundantur Parrhisijs: in sole aureo vici sancti Iacobi. Et in intersignio trium coronatum e regione diui Benedicti (Parisius: in sole aureo vici diui Iacobi impressum: opera magistri Rembolt & Ludouici Hornken, 1512); De re aediﬁcatoria libri decem Leonis Baptistæ Alberti Florentini … quibus omnem architectandi rationem dilucida breuitate complexus est. Recens summa di-ligentia capitibus distincti, & a fœdis mendis repurgati, per Eberhardum Tappium Lunensem. Quanti hoc opus Angelus Politianus acerrimi iudicij uir fecerit, in se-quenti pagina reperies, Argentorati: excudebat m. Iacobus Cammerlander Mogunti-nus, 1541.

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their absence, added them or had them added³⁰. Pietro Lauro’s careless translation came out in 1546, once more without illustrations³¹. Only in 1550 was Alberti’s message made plain to all, in Cosimo Bartoli’s lively and accurate translation, accompanied by simple and sensible illustrations (ﬁg. 6). The accessibility of Alberti’s text from this time onwards must have had a transforming inﬂuence on Palladio’s ideas: in the Quattro Libri he cites Vitruvius and Alberti as the twin authorities and in formulating basic architectural principles often simply paraphrases passages from Alberti.

Vitruvian studies, after Fra Giocondo’s fundamental edition of 1511, had long remained a specialised world. The impressive researches already revealed in the illustrated Vitruvius manuscript preserved in Ferrara did not result in a publication³². The more recent studies of Peruzzi (d. 1536) and of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and his brother Battista were important for their own architectural activity, but did not result in a publication. Their attitudes and researches were however probably diffused through personal contacts. Antonio da Sangallo’s insightful preface of 1539 to a never pub-lished translation of Vitruvius is similar in viewpoint to the agenda of the Vitruvian academy, whose interests are described at length by Claudio Tolo-mei in his letter of 1542, published in 1547, to Count Agostino de’Landi (one of the conspirators responsible for the assassination of Pier Luigi Farnese)³³.

30 For the copy of the edition princeps of the De re aediﬁcatoria with added illustra - tions added by hand in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (PML 44056) see A. Nessel rath, cat. III.1.13, in La Roma di Leon Battista Alberti: umanisti, architet-ti e ararchitet-tisarchitet-ti alla scoperta dell’anarchitet-tico nella città del Quattrocento […], a cura di Fran-cesco Paolo Fiore. Con la collaborazione di Arnold Nesselrath, Milano, 2005, pp. 300-301 (illustration on p. 295).

31 I dieci libri de l’architettura di Leon Battista de gli Alberti ﬁorentino, huomo in ogni altra dottrina eccellente, ma in questa singolare; da la cui prefatione breuemente si comprende la commodità, l’utilità, la necessità, e la dignità di tale opera, […] Nou-amente da la latina ne la volgar lingua con molta diligenza tradotti. In Vinegia: ap-presso Vincenzo Vaugris, 1546.

32 Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, ms. Classe II, n. 176. See De architectura.

Vitruvio ferrarese: la prima versione illustrata, a cura di C. Sgarbi, Modena, 2004.

For the development of Vitruvian studies generally see P.N. Pagliara, “Vitruvio da testo a canone”, in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, 3: Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, a cura di S. Settis, Torino, 1986, pp. 5-85.

33 Sangallo’s manuscript preface is published by A. Gotti, Vita di Michelangelo, Firenze, 1875, vol. 2, p. 179, and by G. Giovannoni, Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane, Roma, 1959, vol. 1, pp. 394-397. Tolomei’s letter dated 14 November 1542, ﬁrst appeared in De Le Lettere di M. Claudio Tolomei Lib. Sette […]. In Vinegia apresso Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari MDXLVII, f° 81r-82r; it is included in E. Bassi (ed.), Trattati: con l’aggiunta degli scritti di architettura di Alvise Cornaro, Francesco Giorgi, Claudio Tolomei, Gian giorgio Trissino, Giorgio Vasari, Milano, 1985.

The 1540s: a turning point in the development of European architecture

Fig. 6. Diagram of impost types (‘A’ and ‘B’ like those of the loggia of the Mercato Nuovo, Florence (1547ff.), in L’ architettura di Leonbatista Alberti tradotta in lingua ﬁorentina da Cosimo Bartoli …, In Firenze: appresso Lorenzo Torrentino impressor ducale, 1550, p. 88.

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Tolomei lists what is needed: “un libbro Latino, dove per modo di annota-zioni distese si dichiararanno tutti i luoghi difficili di Vitruvio possibili ad intendersi”; an edition based on a new collation of the manuscripts; a com-parison of Vitruvius’s rules with what one finds in surviving antique monu-ments; a new translation “in bella lingua Toscana” and a new set of illu-strations “disegnandole con più bella grazia e finezza che sarà possibile, emendando quelle, dove ha errato Giocondo, e aggiugnendone in varii luoghi molte altre, c’ hora non vi sono, le quali cose porgon grande aiuto a l’ intendimento di questo autore.” Already in 1544 Guillaume Philandrier in his Annotationes realized the first part of the programme; Palladio’s il-lustrations and Barbaro’s translation and commentary in the Vitruvio of 1556 satisfactorily covered other areas of the programme³⁴. The De Tournes Vitruvius of 1552 and Barbaro’s Latin edition of 1567, though they were not exactly what Tolomei had desired, did satisfy the need for a new edition.

The programme was informed by the necessity of updating Fra Giocondo’s edition and its illustrations and replacing the old-fashioned translation, com-mentary and illustrations of Cesare Cesariano, partly recycled in the only two translations to appear in the 1530s³⁵. Antonio da Sangallo and his brother and collaborator Battista da Sangallo, as Antonio implies, probably did not themselves intend to produce a new edition of the text, though Bat-tista had translated the work. As Pagliara points out, the result was disap-pointing. Antonio and Battista had however made many ﬁne drawings to illustrate the text, anticipating as Pagliara observes the convincingly antique character of Palladio’s illustrations to Barbaro’s Vitruvio of 1556³⁶. Trissino was also interested in the Roman author, as one can see from a plan of the ancient domus he had drawn himself, from his introduction to a probably never realised architectural treatise and descriptions of buildings in the Ita-lia liberata da Gotthi (1547)³⁷. Trissino probably involved Palladio in his

34 Gulielmi Philandri … In decem libros M. Vitruuii Pollionis De architectura annota-tiones. […] Cum indicibus Graeco & Latino locupletissimis (Impressum Romae:

apud Io. Andream Dossena Thaurinensem, 1544). The work was re-published in Paris a year later: Gulielmi Philandri […] In decem libros m. Vitruuij Pollionis de architectura annotationes è […] cum indicibus graeco & latino locupletissimis. Pari-siis: apud Iacobum Keruer, uia ad diuum Jacobum sub duobus Gallis, 1545.

35 See note 28, above.

36 P.N. Pagliara, ‘Cordini, Giovanni Battista (Battista da Sangallo detto il Gobbo’, in Dizionario Biograﬁco degli Italiani, 29, 1983.

37 La Italia liberata da Gotthi del Trissino. Stampata in Roma: per Valerio e Luigi Dori ci a petizione di Antonio Marco Vincentino, 1547. di maggio; Il decimo [-vigesimsetimo]

libro de La Italia liberata da Gotthi. Del Trissino (Stampata in Venezia: per Tolomeo Ianiculo da Bressa, 1548. di ottobre). See H. Burns, “Il ‘Giuoco del Pallagio’: il palaz-zo nella letteratura e nella trattatistica italiana del Cinquecento”, in Edilizia privata The 1540s: a turning point in the development of European architecture

researches: several early studies by the architect after Vitruvius survive, probably made around 1540, well before his collaboration with Daniele Barbaro³⁸.

Vitruvian studies in the 1540s were characterised by intensive research by individuals, many of whom were at least sometimes in contact: Guillaume Philandrier with Serlio when he was in Venice, as secretary to the French ambassador Georges d’Armagnac (1536-9); Philandrier in the Rome of Tolo-mei’s academy; Trissino and Palladio who may have been in touch with the Sangallo brothers and members of Tolomei’s circle when they visited Rome;

they also must have read Tolomei’s letter when it appeared in print. This was also a period of publication and interest in Vitruvius in France and Germany.

The French humanist scholar Philandrier is the key figure; his scholarly Anno tationes on many passages of Vitruvius was first published in Rome in 1544, with numerous unpretentious woodcuts. The content and title of the book, as we have seen, exactly correspond to one of the projects Tolomei outlined in November 1542, suggesting contact. Philandrier’s illustrations include a reproduction of the rusticated first floor window of Giulio Roma-no’s house in Rome (fig. 7), a demonstration of his engagement with contem-porary architecture. His work was republished in Paris in 1545 and in 1550 in the Strasbourg edition of Vitruvius. Philandrier amplified and revised his annotations for the illustrated Latin edition published by De Tournes in Lyon in 1552³⁹. Philandrier’s contribution was above all a scholarly one. Of great importance too was the fact that the Latin text appeared in new editions (in Strasbourg in 1544 and 1550) and in Walther Hermann Ryff’s German translation (1548), and in the French translation by Jean Martin (1547)⁴⁰.

nella Verona rinascimentale, a cura di P. Lanaro, P. Marini, G.M. Varanini, con la collaborazione di E. Demo, Milano, 2000, pp. 240-241. For Trissino’s preface, see L. Puppi, Scrittori vicentini d’architettura del secolo XVI, Vicenza, 1973, pp. 79-86, and for his reconstruction of the Domus romana, see H. Burns, “Da naturale inclina-tione guidato: il primo decennio di attività di Palladio architetto”, in Storia dell’archi-tettura…, 2002, pp. 382-383.

38 See H. Burns, “Andrea Palladio, Pianta e alzato del tempio monoptero vitruviano (RIBA x/4v.)”, in Palladio, ed. G. Beltramini and H. Burns, Venice, 2008, pp. 284-285.

39 F. Lemerle, “Philandrier et le texte de Vitruve”, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée, 106, 1994-2, pp. 517-529, and her studies of the anno-tations where it is convincingly argued that Philandrier was not himself the editor of this edition: F. Lemerle, Les Annotations de Guillaume Philandrier sur le De Archi-tectura de Vitruve, Livres I à IV, Introduction, translation et commentary, Paris, 2000;

F. Lemerle, Guillaume Philandrier, Les Annotations sur l’Architecture de Vitruve, Livres V à VII, Introduction, translation et commentary, Paris, 2011. See also the note by Lemerle (with bibliography): <http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/

Phil1552.asp?param=en>.

40 For all these books see the entries at: <http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr>.

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Fig. 7. The rusticated ﬁrst ﬂoor window of Giulio Romano’s house in Rome, in Guillaume Philandrier, In decem libros M. Vitruuii Pollio-nis De architectura annotationes, Rome, Gio vanni Andrea Dossena, 1544, p. 106. The draughtsman or woodcut engraver has not under-stood the meander pattern of the pedestal. © author.

All these books were fully illustrated. The Strasbourg editions and Ryff’s translation drew on Fra Giocondo and above all on Cesariano for their il-lustrations; they also copied some images from Dürer, Serlio and Philan-drier, thus offering their readers a wide range of images and models to follow, but no uniform architectural vision. This is not so with the ﬁne illustrations provided by Jean Goujon for the 1547 French Vitruvius. Although Goujon too often redraws Cesariano’s illustrations, a more classical spirit is present:

many illustrations are simply copied from Fra Giocondo, a better guide to Vitruvius’s meaning than was Cesariano. Others were designed by Goujon himself and reﬂect his elegant classicising taste⁴¹.

41 See the contributions of Lorenz Baumer and Francesco Paolo di Teodoro in the pre-sent volume.

The 1540s: a turning point in the development of European architecture

Apart from Bartoli’s Alberti, Serlio’s Books I and II published in Paris in a bilingual edition in 1545, followed by Book V, on churches (also bilingual) in 1547, and the Vitruvian publications mentioned above, no other im-portant new architectural treatises appeared⁴². Other publications however relating to architecture appeared and contributed to spreading the new style. There were works on Roman antiquities, like Bartolomeo Marliani’s work on ancient Rome⁴³, or Torello Saryana’s book on Veronese antiqui-ties⁴⁴, of 1540, impressively illustrated by Giovanni Caroto and probably an inspiration for Poldo d’Albenas’s similar beautifully illustrated book on the antiquities of Nîmes (1559 and 1560)⁴⁵. The Italian translation of Flavio Biondo’s De Roma Triumphante published by Michele Tramezzino in 1544, and dedicated by him to Michelangelo, was important for its anti-quarian material, and for its Libro Nono, in which Biondo discusses ancient

42 Serlio’s Books I and II were published in Paris in a bilingual edition in 1545, followed by Book V, on churches (also bilingual) in 1547.

43 Io. Bartholomei Marliani Patricii Mediolanen. Antiquae Romae topographia libri septem (Impressum Romae: per Antonium Bladum de Asula in Campo Floræ, in ædi-bus. D. Ioan. Bap. de Maximis, 1534 vltimo mensis Maij). In the same year there appeared in Lyon an edition edited by Rabelais, with his dedication to Cardinal Jean du Bellay, with whom Rabelais had stayed in Rome in 1534: Topographia antiquae Romae. Ioanne Bartholemaeo Marliano patritio Mediolanensi authore. Lugduni:

apud Seb. Gryphium, 1534 ([Lione: Gryphius Sebastien]); on this edition, see R. Coo-per, “Rabelais and the Topographia antiquae Romae of Marliani”, in Etudes Rabe-laisiennes, XIV, 1977, pp. 71-87. On Marliani see M. Albanese, ‘Marliani (Marlia-no), Bartolomeo (Giovanni Bartolomeo)’, in Dizionario Biograﬁco degli Italiani, 70, 2007. A further emended edition came out in Rome, published by Valerio and Luigi Dorico in September 1544 and an italian translation in 1548: L’antichita di Roma, di m. Bartholomeo Marliano, tradotti in lingua volgare per m. Hercole Barbarasa da Terni, 1548 (In Roma: per Antonio Blado: ad instantia di m. Giouanni da la Gatta, 1548), underlining the interest in the work at the time.

44 Torelli Saraynae Veronensis […] De origine et amplitudine ciuitatis Veronae. Eius-dem De viris illustribus antiquis Veronensibus. De his, qui potiti fuerunt dominio ciuitatis Veronae. De monumentis antiquis vrbis, & agri Veronensis De interpreta-tione litterarum antiquarum. Index praeterea huius operis in calce additus est. Vero-nae: ex ofﬁcina Antonii Putelleti, 1540 (VeroVero-nae: ex ofﬁcina Antonii Putelleti, 1540).

See also G. Schweikhart (ed.), Le antichità di Verona di Giovanni Caroto, trad. dal tedesco di A. Pasinato, Verona, 1977; Palladio e Verona, ed. P. Marini, 2. ed., Vero-na, 1980.

45 Poldo d’Albenas: Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes, en la Gau-le Narbonoise, auec Gau-les portraitz des plus antiques & insignes bastimens dudit lieu, reduitz a leur vraye mesure & proportion, ensemble de l’antique & moderne ville, par Iean Poldo D’Albenas. A Lyon: par Guillaume Rouille, 1559 [only a few copies]

and 1560; see F. Lemerle, “Jean Poldo d’Albenas (1512-1563), un antiquaire ‘studieux d’architecture’”, Bulletin monumental, 160-2, 2002, pp. 163-172.

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houses⁴⁶. In 1550 Leandro Alberti published his impressive Descrittione di tutta Italia, with its many descriptions of cities and buildings⁴⁷. Relevant to the diffusion of new architectural modes, particularly in north ern Eu-rope, were the published descriptions of the entries of rulers and princes into cities and of other festive occasions. This genre had existed since the publication in 1475 of an account of the wedding of Costanzo Sforza⁴⁸. However the publication of such booklets, complete with illustrations of triumphal arches and other temporary structures, was above all an innova-tion of the 1540s. Charles V’s entry into Milan in 1541, where the decora-tions were designed by Giulio Romano, was recorded in the book of Gio-vanni Alberto Albicante. Here the illustrations were somewhat schematic and contrast with the two ﬁne studies for the event by Giulio in the Louvre⁴⁹.

46 Roma trionfante di Biondo da Forli, tradotta pur hora per Lucio Fauno di latino in buona lingua volgare (In Venetia: per Michele Tramezzino, 1544). In 1548 two other important works of Biondo were published in translation: Roma ristaurata, et Italia illustrata di Biondo da Forlì. Tradotte in buona lingua uolgare per Lucio Fauno, (In Vinegia: per Michele Tramezzino, 1548).

47 Descrittione di tutta Italia di F. Leandro Alberti Bolognese, nella quale si contiene il sito di essa, l’origine, & le signorie delle città, & delle castella, co i nomi antichi e moderni, […] Et piu gli huomini famosi che l’hanno illustrata, i monti, i laghi, i ﬁu-mi. In Bologna: per Anselmo Giaccarelli, 1550 (In Bologna: per Anselmo Giaccarello,

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