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Les années 1540: regards croisés sur les arts et les lettres

BAUMER, Lorenz (Ed.), ELSIG, Frederic (Ed.), FROMMEL, Sabine (Ed.)

Abstract

Co-édité par les unités d'archéologie classique et d'histoire de l'art de l'Université de Genève, en partenariat avec l'équipe d'accueil Histara de l' Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes à Paris, le volume réunit les actes d'un colloque organisé à Genève les 11 et 12 avril 2011. Il se focalise sur l'extraordinaire vitalité des années 1540. Cette décennie de transition a vu l'émergence de phénomènes capitaux et de véritables révolutions dans l'histoire culturelle de l'Occident, dans tous les domaines : de la religion aux sciences en passant par l'architecture et les arts visuels. Son identité reste néanmoins difficile à cerner. Pour tenter d'en préciser les contours, le volume aborde les arts et les lettres sous une pluralité de perspectives, rassemblant des compétences dans différentes disciplines. Son originalité consiste précisément à articuler des approches transversales autour d'un moment crucial et d'en mesurer les conséquences à long terme. Il viendra renouveler, par ce point de vue inhabituel, les études consacrées à la Renaissance.

BAUMER, Lorenz (Ed.), ELSIG, Frederic (Ed.), FROMMEL, Sabine (Ed.). Les années 1540:

regards croisés sur les arts et les lettres. Bern : Peter Lang, 2015

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:44974

Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.

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LES ANNÉES 1540

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LES ANNÉES 1540 : REGARDS CROISÉS

SUR LES ARTS ET LES LETTRES

Lorenz E. Baumer, Frédéric Elsig

& Sabine Frommel (éds)

PETER LANG

Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

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Information bibliographique publiée par « Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek »

« Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek » répertorie cette publication dans la « Deutsche Nationalbibliografie » ; les données bibliographiques détaillées sont disponibles

sur Internet sous ‹ http://dnb.d-nb.de ›.

Illustration de couverture :

Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, La façade de la cour carrée du Louvre par Pierre Lescot, 1579 (tiré du Second volume des plus excellents bastiments de France).

Réalisation de couverture : Thomas Grütter, Peter Lang SA

ISBN 978-3-0343-1132-8 br. ISBN 978-3-0351-0799-9 eBook

© Peter Lang SA, Editions scientifiques internationales, Berne 2015 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Berne, Suisse

info@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com Tous droits réservés.

Cette publication est protégée dans sa totalité par copyright.

Toute utilisation en dehors des strictes limites de la loi sur le copyright est interdite et punissable sans le consentement explicite de la maison d’édition.

Ceci s’applique en particulier pour les reproductions, traductions, microfilms, ainsi que le stockage et le traitement sous forme électronique.

Imprimé en Suisse

Publié avec l’appui de l’Université de Genève : Commission administrative

Maison de l’histoire Faculté des Lettres

Département des sciences de l’Antiquité Département d’histoire de l’art et de musicologie

et de l’Equipe d’accueil Histara de l’Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes à Paris

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Table des matières

Introduction ... 7 LORENZ E. BAUMER et FRÉDÉRIC ELSIG

I. L’architecture et sa représentation

The 1540s: a turning point in the development

of European architecture ... 11 HOWARD BURNS

Le texte de Vitruve dans les années 1540.

Autour d’un manuscrit de l’Architecture ou Art de bien bastir:

le De architectura de Vitruve traduit par Jean Martin ... 55 FRANCESCO PAOLO DI TEODORO

Jean Cousin le Père et l’architecture fictive:

sa contribution à l’évolution des langages à l’antique

en France dans les années 1540 ... 87 SABINE FROMMEL

Fonctions et représentations de l’architecture dans l’Apocalypse de Jean Duvet: une figuration particulière

de l’architecture dans la France de la fin des années 1540 ...121 GAËTAN BROS

Sinan and Bramante: analogies and differences in

the evolution of Renaissance and Ottoman religious building ...143 CHRISTOPH LUITPOLD FROMMEL

II. Les modèles de la sculpture et de la peinture

A propos de Giorgio Vasari. Essai ...175 JACQUES CHAMAY

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Entre théorie et pratique: le mouvement de balancier

des années 1540 ... 181 FRÉDÉRIC ELSIG

Autour de Jean Goujon: ambitions et inflexions

de la sculpture française, royale et provinciale ... 187 MARION BOUDON-MACHUEL et PASCAL JULIEN

Jean Goujon et les modèles antiques: observations archéologiques

sur la Fontaine des Innocents et la Tribune des Caryatides... 217 LORENZ E. BAUMER

Epilogue

Machiavelli, Guicciardini e Castiglione: gli anni di svolta

nella cultura letteraria e politica del Cinquecento ... 231 GIAN MARIO ANSELMI

Conclusion

Une décennie qui innove sans oublier… ... 251 SABINE FROMMEL

Table des matières

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Introduction

Dans la pratique de l’histoire, le découpage du temps est généralement fon- dé sur des moments de fracture, dont l’impact se mesure dans la durée: une épidémie, une guerre ou un changement de régime. Fruit d’une interpréta- tion, il permet de comprendre les phénomènes du passé en fonction de la

«période» à laquelle ils se rattachent et qui en déterminent la lecture, selon une logique circulaire. Il peut ainsi paraître vain d’isoler une décennie dans le flux continu de l’histoire et de lui consacrer tout un ouvrage, en croisant les regards de spécialistes dans différents domaines. Pourtant, à y regarder de plus près, les années 1540 se prêtent parfaitement à une telle lecture.

Elles constituent, certes, une décennie riche en innovations durables. Ce- pendant, loin de correspondre à un moment de rupture, elles se définissent avant tout comme un temps d’accélération, une période dans laquelle on prend pleinement conscience de l’acquis des générations précédentes.

L’un des aspects les plus emblématiques de la décennie s’observe dans la publication croissante de traités théoriques sur l’architecture et sur les arts.

Ces traités, qu’ils soient antiques (Vitruve, Pline) ou modernes (Alberti, Serlio, Vasari), prennent en compte la production contemporaine, évoquée à travers les catégories classiques et dont ils infléchissent le cours, en pas- sant du descriptif au prescriptif. Ils entraînent ainsi une double prise de conscience. La première, chronologique, concerne la relation à l’Antiquité et se traduit par une observance accrue des modèles hellénistiques. La se- conde, géographique, correspond à la constitution d’identités culturelles qui se définissent par un principe d’opposition: Rome par rapport à Venise;

l’Italie par rapport à la Flandre. Dans cette dynamique, le royaume de France constitue un cas exemplaire entre la fin du règne de François Ier et le début de celui de Henri II. En procédant par une assimilation sélective, il cherche à produire un idéal de synthèse entre les traditions septentrionales et le modèle italien, un idéal que se chargent d’exalter des architectes et des artistes français: Philibert Delorme, Jean Goujon ou Jean Cousin Père.

Issu d’un colloque organisé à l’Université de Genève les 11 et 12 avril 2011, le présent ouvrage se propose d’analyser le phénomène. Il se divise en deux parties. La première explore les questions liées à l’architecture et à sa représentation. Analysé par Howard Burns, le tournant que constituent les années 1540 s’observe bien dans la relation entre la pratique et la théorie, notamment dans les textes fondateurs de Vitruve, dont Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro étudie la réception à travers la traduction française de Jean Martin

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et, plus précisément d’un exemplaire illustré par Jean Goujon. Les nou- veaux modèles de l’architecture sont également représentés dans les dessins, estampes et peintures qui en donnent une lecture reflétant la perception des contemporains. Sabine Frommel en décrypte ainsi la figuration dans la pro- duction de Jean Cousin Père; Gaëtan Bros dans celle de Jean Duvet. Enfin, Christoph Luitpold Frommel ouvre la champ géographique en étudiant les relations entre l’architecture de la Renaissance occidentale et celle de l’Em- pire ottoman.

La seconde partie de l’ouvrage se concentre sur la peinture et sur la sculpture. Elle est introduite par un bref essai de Jacques Chamay qui met en évidence l’adoption des catégories antiques par Giorgio Vasari. Ce mou- vement de balancier entre la théorie et la pratique est analysé par Frédéric Elsig à travers des exemples empruntés à la peinture. Le cas tout à fait em- blématique du sculpteur Jean Goujon fait l’objet de deux articles. D’une part, Marion Boudon-Machuel et Pascal Julien replacent l’artiste dans un contexte plus large qui permet d’en saisir le rôle central sur le plan stylis- tique. D’autre part, Lorenz E. Baumer se focalise sur la culture archéolo- gique de Jean Goujon à travers l’analyse de deux de ses œuvres majeures: la Fontaine des Innocents et la Tribune des Caryatides. En guise d’épilogue, Gian Mario Anselmi démontre que les années 1540 ont également consti- tué une période charnière dans la culture littéraire et politique de l’Italie qui renoue avec d’importants tournants qui se sont profilés dans les décennies pré cè dentes. Enfin, Sabine Frommel met en perspective un certain nombre de résultats des différents articles dans une réflexion conclusive.

Qu’il nous soit permis de remercier ici les auteurs du volume, qui ont apporté de nouveaux éléments à la réflexion sur le tournant des années 1540.

Nous tenons à exprimer notre reconnaissance à la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Genève, à l’unité d’archéologie classique et à celle d’histoire de l’art, ainsi qu’à l’équipe d’accueil Histara de l’Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes à Paris. Enfin, notre gratitude va à Imola Kiss et à Carmen Decu Teodorescu qui ont assuré le suivi éditorial du volume.

Lorenz E. Baumer et Frédéric Elsig

Introduction

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I. L’architecture et sa représentation

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

HOWARD BURNS

The topic of the colloquium was well chosen: the 1540s, in European cul- ture, and specifically in art and architecture, was a decade of great impor- tance, of change and transition1. The fruits of earlier researches and achieve- ments, were now publicised, codified and implemented, thanks to constant travel and networking, and greater peace security and confidence, at least in most of Italy. And perhaps above all as the result of the development of the book industry. Venice remained the most important centre for the pub- lication of illustrated works and of literary and scholarly books of high quality, followed by Lyon, Paris, and at a certain distance, by Basel. These four centres probably accounted for at least 80% of the total production of high quality texts. Florence, Rome, Strasbourg, Nuremberg, Antwerp, were also producing substantial numbers of fine scholarly and literary works.

New architectural books were published and old ones issued in new editions or translated from Latin into French and Italian, or from Italian into French. Vitruvius appeared in German, Serlio was translated into French but also, in 1539 into Flemish a mere two years after the first Italian

1 Though limited to a decade, and dealing principally with architecture, the theme is a large one and the bibliography very extensive. General bibliography on themes touched upon is not always cited in the notes below, not least because we now can have immediate access through the internet to updated bibliographies on most topics in the field (particularly useful, obviously, is the site “Kubikat”). For Italian archi- tecture in the period an invaluable panorama is offered by contributions in Storia dell’archi tettura italiana. Il primo Cinquecento, ed. A. Bruschi, Milano, 2002, where one also finds a year by year chronology of architectural and other events, compiled by M.V. Piñeiro and F. Cantatore (pp. 589-620). For architectural books of the pe- riod the site “Architec tura” (<http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr>) is indispens- able, offering in most cases access to the original editions, brief accounts of the books and their authors and relevant bibliography. I do not always cite the other contribu- tions to this volume, simply because they can all be considered essential reading on the questions discussed below. I would like to thank Imola Kiss for her patience and help during the process of transforming a brief conference paper into a miniature mosaic which attempts to represent at least some aspects of a complex international endeavor to change the architecture of Europe.

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edition2. Even in distant England, where Holbein was court painter from 1532 till his death in 1543, there appeared in 1549 William Thomas’s His- torie of Italie, containing information on leading Italian cities and a lengthy description of Rome3. The decade however was not just a period of con- solidation and diffusion of what the great literary and artistic figures of the previous thirty years had written or created. It was also one in which new approaches and personalities emerged, and a radically renovated architec- ture, whose full impact became clear only after 1550. In discussing these pivotal ten years I will concentrate on architecture, and on Italy and France, with some necessary reference to literature and the other arts, given the emergence of a new system of the arts, which stressed their common de- pendence on disegno, as well as their close analogies with literature as re- gards attitudes towards imitation and the importance, for architecture as for writing, of rules, grammar and a careful choice of vocabulary.

2 Regole generali di architetura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici, cioe, thoscano, dorico, ionico, corinthio, et composito, con gli essempi dell’antiquita, che, per la magior parte concordano con la dottrina di Vitruuio [oddly Serlio’s name does not appear on the title page!]. In Venetia: per Francesco Marcolini da Forli (Impresso in Venetia: per Francesco Marcolini da Forli apresso la chiesa di la Trinita, 1537). The first two translations were: Generalen reglen der architecturen…, Antwerp, Pieter Coecke, 1539; Reigles generales de l’architecture…, Antwerp, Pieter Coecke, 1542.

For information on all three editions see: <http://architectura.cesr.univtours.fr/traite/

Auteur/Serlio.asp?param=en>, and M. Vène, Bibliographia serliana. Catalogue des éditions imprimées des livres du traité d’architecture de Serlio (1537-1681), Paris, 2007. For a comprehensive treatment of Serlio and his work see S. Frommel, Sebastia- no Serlio architect [revised English version], London, 2003; S. Deswarte-Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie, vol. I, Le traité d’architecture de Sebastiano Serlio, une grande enterprise éditoriale au XVIe siècle, Lyon, 2004.

3 The historie of Italie a boke excedyng profitable to be redde: because it intreateth of the astate of many and diuers common weales, how thei haue ben, [and] now be gouerned. [Imprinted at London: In Fletestrete in the house of Thomas Berthelet], Anno Domini. M.D.XLIX; William Thomas, The History of Italy (1549), ed. George B. Parks, New York, 1963 offers a useful selection of sections from the book, includ- ing the descriptions of Rome and Florence. On the life of Thomas, see D.L. Hamilton,

‘Thomas, William (d. 1554)’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Ox- ford, 2005. Thomas, who knew Italy well, also produced the first Italian grammar in English, influence, as the title indicates by Bembo’s Prose and contemporary literary debates in Italy: Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer, with a Dictionarie for the better understandynge of Boccace, Petrarcha, and Dante, gathered into this tongue by William Thomas. London, Berthelet, 1550.

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Leonine Rome and the creation of Cinquecento culture

The 1540s was the decade in which an artistic and literary culture which had been created over a long period and had reached mature definition dur- ing the pontificate of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son, Leo X, was diffused and implemented. This was largely achieved by the heirs and surviving protago- nists of the Leonine years: Pietro Bembo, Gian Giorgio Trissino, Michel- angelo, Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Sebastiano Serlio, Jacopo Sansovino, Michele Sanmicheli and Pietro Are- tino, the leading publicist of the time4. The consolidation and development of this culture was favoured by another survivor of Leo X’s time, Alessan- dro Farnese, who as Paul III from 1534 to 1549 restored both Rome and the position of the Papacy after the traumatic Sack. He also made Pietro Bembo a cardinal, an illuminated move, constituting a sort of Nobel prize for his huge contribution to literary debate.

At the centre of discussion in Leo X’s time and subsequently was a concern with the choice of language and style in literature and the visual arts. Style was seen from the writer’s or artist’s point of view [as]: what models should be imitated and what rules followed. In literature this in- volved deciding which ancient writers offered the best models, whether a single ancient author should be followed or several, and how best to adapt Latin masterpieces to modern works in Italian. An analogous debate ex- isted in architectural discussion, now that Vitruvius’s text was available in the usefully illustrated editions of Fra Giocondo (1511, 1513), complete with indexes and captions: should Vitruvius’s recommendations be fol- lowed, or those of the surviving monuments? And which ancient buildings were most to be admired and imitated? The fundamental problem of the time however regarded the variety of Italian to be used in literature and in exchanges between the educated. This question was made more pressing by the revolution in printing in the early decades of the sixteenth century.

Large and costly early printed books were being replaced by elegant, legi- ble, portable and cheaper volumes: one could easily slip Petrarch’s poems or the 1513 Vitruvius into one’s pocket. Each printer needed to fix his own house style; at the same time the pressure to standardise language and or- thography generally in Venice, the main centre for publishing, must have been enormous. Some important literary theorists, including Bembo and Trissino, were aware of these problems, not just as writers but because of

4 One can note that the first five books of the Lettere of Aretino appeared in the years 1538-1550; the sixth and last book in 1557. All were published in Venice.

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their friendships with publishers and personal engagement with book de- sign5.

The informal intellectual and artistic group around Leo X (1513-1521) – a reincarnation of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s circle of cultivated intimates – did not only include writers, but brought together artists, architects, antiquar- ians, writers and specialists on linguistic questions. Among its members were Raphael, Pietro Bembo, and Baldassarre Castiglione, as well as so- phisticated patrons, like the Pope himself, Giulio de’ Medici, Cardinal Bib- biena (himself an author), and Raphael’s friend and patron, Giovanni Bat- tista Branconio dell’Aquila, who had himself trained as a goldsmith. This privileged group, by creating bonds between figures from different fields (and different social origins), though all directly involved in the arts or lit- erature as creators or patrons, widened the horizons of its members and furthered a more unified culture and a synoptic attitude towards artistic production of all sorts6. Indications of the dynamics of the group are the fact that Castiglione drafted Raphael’s letter to Leo X on the need to pre- serve Roman antiquities, the 1516 expedition of Raphael, Bembo and their friends to Tivoli and the Villa Adriana, and the close friendship between Bembo and Valerio Belli, the virtuoso crystal engraver7. Similar criteria of

5 On Bembo and book design see Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, pas- sim, and on Trissino, Giovan Giorgio Trissino and his printers: Ludovico degli Ar- righi Vi cen tino and ‘Tolomeo Ianiculo’, with a few related rarities, Catalogue 172, ed. P. Breman, London, 2001. On the printing house of Valerio and Luigi Dorico:

S.G. Cusick, “Valerio Dorico: music printer in sixteenth-century Rome”, Studies in musicology, 43, Ann Arbor, 1981; F. Barberi, Tipografi romani del Cinquecento:

Guillery, Ginnasio Mediceo, Calvo, Dorico, Cartolari, Firenze, 1983; L. Baldacchi- ni, ‘Dorico, Valerio’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 41, 1992.

6 See now on Leo X’s cultural world, Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, a cura di G. Beltramini, D. Gasparotto, A. Tura, Venezia, 2013, pp. 219-348. It is not clear to what extent the circle of Leo X’s cultural intimates overlapped with his po- litical inner circle, where matters often requiring secrecy and the planning of ruthless measures were discussed. Obviously Bibbiena, Giulio de’ Medici and while he lived his nephew Lorenzo were privy to such discussions, and Bembo given his secretarial role, must sometimes have been consulted. The extent to which intimates who were not close relations or trusted and essential functionaries were present during such discussions is a question difficult to answer, though indications are that at the time a patron sure of a dependent’s loyalty and discretion (qualities at the heart of being a faithful “servant” or adherent of any sort or status), would sometimes or often dis- cuss private or secret affairs with him or in his presence, as with any close family member. Figures like camerieri segreti (as was Branconio) were in any case, by their very role, always to hand, and de facto must have controlled access to the personages they served.

7 Indications of the social dynamics of the group are the fact that Castiglione drafted Raphael’s letter to Leo X on the need to preserve Roman antiquities (see F.P. di Teo-

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judgment were now applied to literature and to the visual arts. The pres- ence at the papal court, not only of Florentines but of the Venetian patri- cian Bembo, the Mantuan Castiglione, Raphael and Bramante from Urbi- no, Trissino and the crystal engraver Valerio Belli from Vicenza also laid the basis for developing a less locally characterised art and architecture, once stability returned in the course of the 1530s. The new architecture of Bramante and Raphael, founded on the use of the orders and the imitation of ancient models, had developed in Rome under Julius II and Leo X, where it became fully recognised that the ancients followed fixed forms and rules in their buildings. All’ antica architecture had already been favoured in Rome from the time of Pius II and Paul II as the local style appropriate to the city. Under Julius and Leo the use of Roman architecture became a pri- mary means of presenting the Papacy not only as a universal institution, heir to the universality of the Roman emperors, but as an important territo- rial state. Thus the use of the appellation OPTIMUS PRINCEPS by Leo X carried the explicit message that Leo was a new Trajan (the good Emperor), and within the erudite Roman cultural world, the eagles supporting the papal arms on the facade of Palazzo Branconio, derived from those of the base of Trajan’s column, were an equally clear allusion8. The new Roman architecture was both local and universal in character, reflecting the his- toric city but also addressed to the world: in fact it had the comprehensive character of the papal blessing, urbi et orbi9. An acceptance of the norma- tive and universal character of the new architecture of Bramante and Raph- ael did not however exclude inventiveness and local variations, as one sees in the Florentine architecture of Michelangelo or of Vasari and Ammanati in the 1560s, or in Palladio’s fairly flexible attitude towards “variation” and invention10.

doro, “Raffaello Sanzio, Baldassarre Castiglione, Lettera a Leone X”, in Pietro Bem- bo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, a cura di G. Beltramini, D. Gasparotto, A. Tura, Venezia, 2013, pp. 262-263, with bibliography), and the expedition of Raphael, Bem- bo and their friends to Tivoli and the Villa Adriana in 1516. One can also recall the close friendship between Bembo and Valerio Belli, the virtuoso crystal engraver: on this last see H. Burns, M. Collareta, D. Gasparotto (eds.), Valerio Belli Vicentino (1468c-1546), Vicenza, 2000.

8 On the “Trajanic” aspects of Leo and Leonine architecture, see H. Burns and A. Nessel rath, Raffaello e l’antico, in C.F. Frommel, S. Ray, M. Tafuri (eds.), Raffael- lo archi tetto, Milano, 1984.

9 According to L. Gatto (‘Gregorio X’, in Enciclopedia dei papi, II, Roma, 2000, pp. 421ff.), Gregory X announced his election as Pope in 1272, “urbi et orbi”.

10 H. Burns, “Ornamenti and ornamentation in Palladio’s architectural theory and practice”, Pegasus, 10, 2008 (2009), pp. 37-84.

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The Italian political context

Cultural developments and political events were inseparable in the period.

The question of creating a single Italian language can be read not only as a necessity for writers, readers and printers, but as a reaction to the Italian political situation. From the French invasion of 1494 onwards Italian rulers, cities (including Rome and Florence) and their citizens had been repeatedly humiliated or abused by foreign powers or their Italian allies. The outcome of a long period of wars and disasters, culminating with the Sack of Rome (1527) and the siege of Florence (1530) was that more than half of Italy came under direct Spanish rule or the control of states allied with Spain.

Forty years of suffering progressively created a collective need for a new image, impervious to political upheavals, which could give prestige to cities, families or individuals striving to prosper in a changing world.

The situation however had improved by the 1540s. Not only had an Italian identity been better defined as a result of cultural and artistic achievements, but the clear victory of Spain, achieved at the Battle of Pavia (1525) and confirmed by subsequent events, in fact brought a measure of peace and this was not simply the result of Spanish power. A new, more complex balance of power emerged in which Spain needed the goodwill of the Papacy and Venice, the leading Italian powers, and before long that of the third important Italian state, Florence, which from being Spanish pro- tectorate, through the political skill of Cosimo I (duke from 1537 onwards) achieved increasing strength, extension and autonomy.

Spain could not impose its will totally on its Italian allies, or do with- out the naval support of Venice. The Republic itself, though the most pow- erful autonomous Italian state, was always face to face with Ottoman pow- er, and so in need of an accord with Spain and the Empire. Complex and ambiguous situations abounded, with interests and marriage ties pulling in conflicting directions: Caterina de’ Medici, for example, was not only a direct descendant of Lorenzo the Magnificent, but Queen of France and mother of Elisabeth of Valois (d. 1568), wife of Philip II. Such situations made for compromise and diplomacy, rather than open conflict. They in- tensified contacts and mutual surveillance, not only of military and territo- rial intentions, but of artistic and architectural initiatives. The Pax His- panica of the 1540s thus did not lead to cultural dominance or even to a total political imperialism. Instead Italy was saved from further destruc- tions, its future secured through the realism, energy and intelligence of key rulers: Andrea Gritti (Doge, 1523-1538), Cosimo I in Florence (from 1537), and Paul III in Rome (Pope, 1534-1549). Larger and more internally coher-

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ent political states emerged or were confirmed: Venice with its substantial Italian possessions, Rome and the Papal States, the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan, both Spanish possessions, governed at one remove by the Spanish monarch through nominated representatives.

Italy became more unified, or at least more simplified, as a result of the Spanish hegemony. Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, and Milan now repre- sented a single block, closely linked to Charles V’s principal Italian allies:

the Duke of Mantua, the Republic of Genoa and Cosimo I, husband of Eleonora, daughter of Pedro Álvarez de Toledo y Zúñiga, son of the second Duke of Alva and himself a second cousin of Charles V. Don Pedro ruled as Vice-Re di Napoli for two decades, from 1532 until his death in 1553.

The election of two successive Medici Popes, Leo X and Clement VII, served to bring Rome and Florence close together culturally and artistically.

These ties remained in the 1540s, with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger until his death in 1546, then Michelangelo dominating architecture in Rome, through the personal favour of Paul III. In the 1540s the Papal do- minions were consolidated and extended. Bologna and Perugia remained under the close control of Rome. Paul III also established a state for his son Pier Luigi Farnese in Parma and Piacenza, whose continuity was only brief- ly interrupted by the tyrannical new Duke’s assassination in 1547. Paul III in 1548 married his grand-daughter Vittoria Farnese to Guidobaldo II del- la Rovere, duke of Urbino, thereby further strengthening his family’s pres- ence on the Italian scene. Italian cultural unity (or at least peaceful co-ex- istence) linked to Spanish hegemony can be seen simply by recalling some of Titian’s sitters: Federico Gonzaga, Andrea Gritti, Charles V, Pietro Bem- bo, the future Philip II, Paolo III, Pier Luigi Farnese.

The prudent, balanced international policy of Paul III and most of his successors, founded on the coast to coast extent of the Papal States, progres- sively enhanced the power and wealth of the Papacy and with it the promi- nence of the city of Rome and its architecture and architects11. There was never another Sacco di Roma. The presence of Paul III as Pope throughout the 1540s was a major factor in the diffusion of new architectural tastes and norms, with an impact which possibly extended even into the Ottoman world and its most prestigious mosques12. The convocation in 1545 of the

11 For an overall picture of the Papal States and Rome itself in the period, see J. De- lumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, Paris, 2 vols, 1957-1959 (Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 184); J. Delumeau, Rome au XVIe siècle, Paris, 2008.

12 H. Burns, “Building against time: Renaissance strategies to secure large churches against changes to their design”, in L’église dans l’architecture de la Renaissance, ed.

J. Guillaume, Paris, 1995, pp. 124-125.

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Council of Trent by Paul III also notably increased the importance and vis- ibility of the Papacy and Rome itself, celebrated by the Roman pope with a medal showing a view of the city, and inscribed ALMA ROMA (fig. 1)13.

13 For the medal of Paul III with a view of Rome on the reverse, see P. Attwood, Italian medals c. 1530-1600 in British public collections, London, 2002, 1, p. 380, fig. 71: the example in the British Museum (1906-11-3-250). Attwood attributes it to “Alessandro Cesati(?)”, and describes it as “Struck bronze, gilt, 43mm”. A fine struck example in silver was sold recently by the Zurich auction house Nomos (Nomos 5, Lot: 25).

At the same time the presence in Rome of powerful and cultivated cardinals from France and Spain, as well as of other important cultural and political figures gave modern Rome and its ancient antiquities even greater prestige and visibility. The centrality of Rome was further increased by the founda- tion of new orders: the Theatines in 1524, the Barnabites in 1530, and above all the Jesuits, officially approved by Paul III in 1540. The Jesuits themselves projected their architectural culture literally throughout the world. Rome became from the 1540s a major centre not only for the diffusion of Catho- lic religious orthodoxy, but for an architectural orthodoxy, based on the canon of the orders and on the palace and church types developed in the city since the early sixteenth century. Vitruvius and ancient Rome in the archi- tectural field proved more universal than modern Rome did in religion: the spread of the new Roman architecture, though slowed in northern Europe by gothic habits, went unopposed in the Protestant world.

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Fig. 1. Alessandro Cesati(?), medal of Pope Paul III, with a bird’s eye view evoking the appearance of ancient Rome, inscribed ALMA ROMA, 1549(?), struck(?) silver medal, diameter 40 mm., London, British Museum, Coins & Medals M.1190. © Trustees of the British Museum.

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Movements of architects, offered work up and down Italy on the basis of reputations gained in Rome served to unite the architecture of the country, replacing local usages with the orders and all’ antica solutions pioneered above all in modern Rome. Sanmicheli and Sansovino introduced this new architecture to Verona and Venice in the years around 1530, just as Giulio Romano had done after his arrival in Mantua at the end of 1524. The results of Sansovino’s designs first became visible from around 1537, in correspondence with the publication of Sebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di architettura (fig. 2),

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

Fig. 2. Sebastiano Serlio, the five orders, in Regole generali di architetura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici… In Venetia: per Francesco Marcolini da Forli, 1537, p. VI. © author.

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14 On Sansovino’s architecture see: M. Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino, Milano, 2000;

P. Davies, “A project drawing by Jacopo Sansovino for the Loggetta in Venice”, The Burlington Magazine, 136, 1994, pp. 487-497; B. Boucher, The sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, New Haven, 1991; D. Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: architecture and pa- tronage in Renaissance Venice, 2nd ed., New Haven, 1987.

15 See D. Frigo, “Small states and diplomacy: Mantua and Modena”, in Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The Structure of Diplomatic Practice, 1450-1800 (Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture), ed. D. Frigo, tr. A. Belton, Cam- bridge, 2011 pp. 147-175.

16 On Alessi: Galeazzo Alessi e l’architettura del Cinquecento, (testi di Wolfgang Lotz, et al.), Genova, 1975; K. Zeitler, Galeazzo Alessis Villen Giustiniani-Cambiaso und Grimaldi-Sauli: ein Genueser Beitrag zur Villenarchitektur im Cinquecento, München, 1993; D.M. Salzer, Galeazzo Alessi and the villa in Renaissance Genoa, 1994 (Harvard Univ., Diss., 1992); H.W. Rott, Rubens: Palazzi di Genova, architec- tural drawings and engravings, London, 2002 (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Bur- chard, 22,1); C. Altavista, “Peter Paul Rubens’s Palazzi di Genova: built architecture and drawn reality”, in The reception of P.P. Rubens’s Palazzi di Genova during the 17th century in Europe, ed. P. Lombaerde, Turnhout, 2002, pp. 37-50.

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which set out a grammar of the archi tectural orders and its antique sources.

The impression made by Sansovino’s celebrated and costly major works, including the Loggetta, the Zecca, the Libreria, the Scuola Grande della Misericordia and Palazzo Corner on the Canal Grande (fig. 3), would have grown exponentially as they rose slowly from their foundations in the course of the 1540s, transforming the appearance of the city14.

The capitals of artistic and architectural creativity remained Rome and Venice, though in the course of the 1540s Florence began to re- cover its position as the third major centre. Smaller states, Genoa (a naval and financial power rather than a territorial one), Mantua, and Ferrara, skilfully inserted themselves into the power system15. The growth of spheres of poli tical and cultural influence – the two did not always exactly coincide – sometimes led smaller states and subordinate cities to follow the fashions of their larger and more powerful neighbours or allies.

In other important cases secondary states maintained their presence, through diplomacy, networking and marriages, and by invitations to innovative and architects and artists formed principally in Rome and Florence, who lacked prospects as a result of the disasters which over- whelmed these cities in the period between 1526 and 1530. Perino del Vaga (1501-1547) was invited to Genoa where he worked on the palace of Andrea Doria in the early 1530s. Perhaps even more important was the em- ployment in the city from the late 1540s onwards of the architect Galeaz- zo Alessi, a product of the Roman architectural world, who in vented a new type of elegant suburban residence for the Genoese elite (fig. 4)16.

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

Fig. 3. Jacopo Sansovino, detail of the lower level of the façade of Palazzo Corner on the Grand Canal, Venice, constructed from c. 1537. © author.

Fig. 4. Galeazzo Alessi (with initial involvement of Andrea Palladio?), the Vil- la of Luca Giustiniani, now Villa Cambiaso, Genova (Albaro), designed 1548.

© www.cepolina.com / Valentina Sannicolo.

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Federico II Gonzaga who ruled Mantua from 1519 until his death in 1540, followed a deliberate policy of innovatory artistic patronage, made possible by the presence of Giulio Romano from the end of 1524. Mantua like Genoa received visits from Charles V, and in 1548 from his son Philip. Giu lio’s work and above all the Palazzo Te (fig. 8) must have played a significant part in Federico’s promotion to the status of Duke in 153017. His younger brother Ferrante (1507-1557), in the service of Charles V from his teens on- wards, was nominated Vice-Re of Sicily in 1535 and was Governor of Mi- lan from 1546 until replaced by the Duke of Alva in 1555. In Milan he was responsible for important urban improvements, as well as the creation, with Domenico Giunti as architect, of his splendid suburban villa, la Gon zaga18.

Charles V and Philip II, notwithstanding the wealth and power of Spain, favoured an Italian style of architecture and Italian painters, commissioning works from Titian and other Venetian and Italian painters. Direct contacts between rulers (as during Charles V’s and Philip II’s visits to Italy), the movements of noblemen and ambassadors, the translation of key Italian texts into French and Spanish, all made for increasing cultural uniformity, which can be recognised in architecture and painting, and even in the med- als which important personages commissioned, usually from Italian artists.

Relatively harmonious relations in the 1540s between Italian states (a mo- ment of conflict was the assassination of Pier Luigi Farnese and the an- nexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza by Ferrante Gonzaga on be- half of Charles V) and the emergence of a truly Italian power elite, closely linked (often by ties of friendship) with leading intellectuals and artists, went with an increasing literary and artistic unification of the peninsula. It was above all in the 1540s that culture and art, rather than having a pre- dominantly Florentine, Roman or Venetian (or Ferrarese, Milanese Man- tuan, Neapolitan, etc) character, as before, became Italian, a result in line with Pietro Bembo’s literary and linguistic programme. This new identity was more robust and prestigious than that of the individual Italian cities, tied to their local myths, saints, histories and antiquities. It did not cancel old urban identities, nor obscure the vigorous redefinition of the cultural

17 A. Belluzzi (ed.), Palazzo Te a Mantova, Modena, 2 vols, 1998.

18 For a summary of a strenuous life, fighting and governing for Charles V, see G. Brunelli, ‘Gonzaga, Ferrante’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 57, 2002; on Ferrante’s villa, now known as the villa Simonetta, and on Ferrante generally see also N. Soldini, Nec spe nec metu: la Gonzaga: architettura e corte nella Milano di Carlo V, Firenze, 2007; N. Soldini, “Il ‘nuovo Milano’, imprese urbane e assetti istituziona- li nella Milano di Carlo V”, in I grandi cantieri del rinnovamento urbano, a cura di P. Boucheron e M. Folin, Roma, 2011, pp. 119-139.

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and artistic identities of Rome, Florence and Venice. But it did offer a new confidence and coherence to the culture of the peninsula, and a recognised and respected brand name – Italy.

Long shadows and the speed of architectural change

From the first years of the sixteenth century new inventions and approach- es had abounded in all fields – literary, scholarly, artistic and architectural – and followed one another in rapid succession. But their diffusion and implementation often proceeded slowly before the 1540s, above all in lit- erature and architecture.

What changes around 1540? Or to be more precise, in the few years following 1537, an important date marked by the publication in Venice of Serlio’s Regole generali di Architettura and of Tartaglia’s innovatory book on ballistics, La Nova Scientia, by the start of Sansovino’s renewal of the central area of Venice and in politics by the assumption of power in Flor- ence of the eighteen year old Duke, Cosimo I19. Among other important publications of these years are Biringucci’s De la Pirotechnia (1540) and Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica (1543)20. This major contribution to medical science underlined the traditional analogy between the body and a building. It made use of architecture in its title page and ancient sculpture in its anatomical illustrations and generally set a new standard of beauty and lucidity of exposition in book illustration, emulated by Daniele Bar- baro and Palladio in the Vitruvio of 155621.

19 Noua scientia inuenta da Nicolo Tartalea. B[resciano](In Vinegia: per Stephano Da Sabio: ad instantia di Nicolo Tartalea brisciano il qual habita a san Saluador, 1537) 20 De la pirotechnia. Libri X. Doue ampiamente si tratta non solo di ogni sorte & diuer-

sita di miniere, ma anchora quanto si ricerca intorno à la prattica di quelle cose di quel che si appartiene à l’arte de la fusione ouer gitto de metalli come d’ogni altra cosa simile à questa. Composti per il S. Vanoccio Biringuccio Sennese, 1540 (Stampata in Venetia: per Venturino Roffinello: ad instantia di Curtio Nauo & fratelli, 1540);

Andreae Vesalii Bruxellensis, scholae medicorum Patauinae professoris, de Humani cor- poris fabrica Libri septem (Basileae: ex officina Ioannis Oporini, 1543 Mense Iunio).

21 I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruuio tradutti et commentati da monsignor Barbaro eletto patriarca d’Aquileggia […], In Vinegia: per Francesco Marcolini, 1556 (In Venetia: per Francesco Marcolini, 1556). See also the entry by L. Cellauro on the book (with bibliography) at <http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Noti- ce/Barbaro1556.asp?param=en>; M. Tafuri, “Daniele Barbaro e la cultura scientifica veneziana del ’500”, in Cultura, scienze e tecniche nella Venezia delCinquecento, ed.

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To discuss the 1540s is like making a film where the murderer is known right from the start. There are no big surprises: one can only try and under- stand exactly what happened and why it happened. We know who were the figures most responsible for change: they were the creative giants of the previous generation, the real founders of a sixteenth-century culture which was distinct from that of the Quattrocento, as Vasari and other contempo- raries underline. Thus Raphael, Serlio, Vasari and Palladio all see Braman- te as the founder of a new architecture. Some of these founders were dead by 1540, including Bramante, Giorgione, Raphael, Peruzzi, Falconetto, Castiglione, and Ariosto (who died in 1532). Others died in the 1540s, in- cluding Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Giulio Romano (both in 1546), and Pietro Bembo (in 1547). Others remained very much alive: Tit- ian, Michelangelo (who in 1550 still had fourteen years to live and much to achieve) and the architect and sculptor Jacopo Sansovino, who died in 1570. Living or dead, all projected from previous decades the long shadow of their revolutionary works. They remained, whether dead or still active, vital presences in the 1540s. The writers Castiglione (Il Cortegiano ap- peared in 1528), Ariosto (the second edition of Orlando Furioso was pub- lished in 1532) and Bembo remained of central importance, not only be- cause of the innate quality of their works but because they had been slow in consigning them for publication or revising them for a second edition. Pie- tro Bembo’s literary manifesto, the Prose della Volgar Lingua appeared initially in 1525, while the second edition came out in 1532. His final revi- sions only appeared in the third, posthumous edition of 154922. The book was relevant for artists and architects as well as for writers, as Bembo sug- gests in the famous passage at the start of the third book of the Prose23.

A. Manno, Venezia, 1987, pp. 55-81; Vitruvio, I dieci libri dell’architettura, con un saggio di Manfredo Tafuri e uno studio di Manuela Morresi, tradotti e commentati da Daniele Barbaro, Milano, 1987.

22 P. Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua, ed. C. Dionisotti, Milano, 1993; Prose della volgar lingua: l’editio princeps del 1525 riscontrata con l’autografo Vaticano latino 3210, ed. crit. a cura di Claudio Vela, Bologna, 2001.

23 “Questa città, la quale per le sue molte e riverende reliquie, infino a questo dì a noi dalla ingiuria delle nimiche nazioni e del tempo, non leggier nimico, lasciate, più che per li sette colli, sopra i quali ancor siede, sé Roma essere subitamente dimostra a chi la mira, vede tutto il giorno a sé venire molti artefici di vicine e di lontane parti, i quali le belle antiche figure di marmo e talor di rame, che o sparse per tutta lei qua e là giacciono o sono publicamente e privatamente guardate e tenute care, e gli archi e le terme e i teatri e gli altri diversi edificii, che in alcuna loro parte sono in piè, con istu- dio cercando, nel picciolo spazio delle loro carte o cere la forma di quelli rapportano, e poscia, quando a fare essi alcuna nuova opera intendono, mirano in quegli essempi, e di rassomigliarli col loro artificio procacciando, tanto più sé dovere essere della loro HOWARD BURNS

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The case he makes for a common Italian literary language and his emphasis on grammar and vocabulary as the basis of style and literary effect could easily be applied to the visually arts, above all architecture, and indeed once a “grammatical” architecture had been established in theory and practice, architecture itself could provide a paradigm to apply to writing and literature. Bembo himself was on close terms with leading architects including Raphael and Sansovino24.

Painters, through their pupils and assistants, the relative accessibility of many of their works and the development of woodcuts and engravings as a means of reproducing works of art, had a more immediate impact than architects. New architecture took longer to communicate a general under- standing of its principles and procedures. In general the larger and more important a project, the longer it took to build. We tend to assume that buildings were known and influential from the very moment when the foundations were dug; in fact it could take years before a structure grew to a point where it was fully comprehensible. As Christof Thoenes has ob- served, the audacious projects of Bramante, and above all St Peter’s long remained vast ruins, as [were] hard for laymen to conceive in their finished state as it was for the uninstructed visitor to imagine the original appear- ance of the Baths or the Imperial fora25. Michelangelo’s Sacrestia Nuova at San Lorenzo remained until 1546 in the state which we see in contem- porary drawings, with some of the sculptures still lying on the ground26.

fatica lodati si credono, quanto essi più alle antiche cose fanno per somiglianza ravi- cinare le loro nuove; perciò che sanno e veggono che quelle antiche più alla perfezion dell’arte s’accostano, che le fatte da indi innanzi. Questo hanno fatto più che altri, mon- signore messer Giulio, i vostri Michele Agnolo fiorentino e Rafaello da Urbino, l’uno dipintore e scultore e architetto parimente, l’altro e dipintore e architetto altresì; e hannolo sì diligentemente fatto, che amendue sono ora così eccellenti e così chiari, che più agevole è a dire quanto essi agli antichi buoni maestri sieno prossimani, che quale di loro sia dell’altro maggiore e miglior maestro. La quale usanza e studio, se, in queste arti molto minori posto, e come si vede giovevole e profittevole grandemente, quanto si dee dire che egli maggiormente porre si debba nello scrivere, che è opera così leggia- dra e così gentile, che niuna arte può bella e chiara compiutamente essere senza essa.”

24 P. Davies and D. Hemsoll, “Sanmicheli’s architecture and literary theory”, in Archi- tecture and Language. Constructing Identity in European Architecture, c. 1000- c. 1650, ed. G. Clarke and P. Crossley, Cambridge 2000, pp. 102-117; G. Beltramini,

“Pietro Bembo e l’architettura”, in Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione…, 2013, pp. 12-31.

25 C. Thoenes, St. Peter’s as ruins: on some ‘vedute’ by Heemskerck, in Sixteenth-cen- tury Italian art, 1, ed. M.W. Cole, Oxford, 2006, pp. 25-39.

26 R. Rosenberg, “The reproduction and publication of Michelangelo’s Sacristy: draw- ings and prints by Franco, Salviati, Naldini and Cort”, in Reactions to the master:

Michelangelo’s effect on art and artists in the sixteenth century, ed. F. Ames-Lewis and P. Joannides, Aldershot, 2003, pp. 93-113.

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Fig. 5. Sebastiano Serlio, the exedra by Bramante of the upper court of Cortile del Belvedere, in Il terzo libro di Sabastiano Serlio bolognese, nel qual si figurano, e descriuono le antiquita di Roma …, In Venetia: Impresso per Francesco Marcolino da Forli, 1540, p. CXLVII. © author.

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Only insiders knew what form the Cortile del Belvedere (fig. 5), the Palazzi dei Tribunali or the Villa Madama had been meant to take, because they had known the architects – or at least their assistants – and had seen and been able to copy the projects. The same was true even of important designs for new buildings by Sangallo, Sansovino and Peruzzi. Until 1546, when Pietro Lauro’s inadequate Italian translation appeared, Alberti’s wonderful treatise, unillustrated and untranslated, remained a closed book to all but the most cultivated of architects, among whom, on the basis of his surviv- ing copy, one can include Giulio Romano27.

Architectural ideas and publications

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).

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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 artisti alla scoperta dell’antico 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

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30

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.

© CISA Palladio., Vicenza.

HOWARD BURNS

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31

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

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