The City Rehearsed
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The City Rehearsed The City Rehearsed examines architecture and print culture after the Reformation. Centered on the strange Netherlandish painter Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526–1609), it discusses changes in the definition of perspective and ornament under Protestant critiques of the image, and looks at some of the fascinating ways architecture was redefined by the ability of art to circulate globally. The first sustained study of Vredeman in English, Heuer’s book tracks the movement of his works to Spain, Mexico, and beyond, arguing for a new way of writing about European art around 1600. Aside from criteria like beauty and humanism, it turns to categories like collaboration, copying, and failure to map the intellectual horizons (and art-historical afterlife) of a moment after the “Renaissance” had matured. This engaging book will be of interest to any student of architectural history, art history, philosophy, or early modern culture. Christopher P. Heuer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. The Classical Tradition in Architecture Series Editor: Caroline van Eck, Leiden University, Netherlands Classical architecture not only provided a repertoire of forms and building types capable of endless transformation; it was also a cultural actor and provided cultural capital, and was used to create political and religious identities. This series provides a forum for its interdisciplinary study, from antiquity to the present day. It aims to publish first-class and groundbreaking scholarship that re-examines, reinterprets, or revalues the classical tradition in the widest sense. The series will deal with classicism as a cultural phenomenon, a formal language of design, but also with its role in establishing the agenda, method and grammar of inquiry in Western history of art and architecture and recent reconsiderations of these roles. Power & Virtue: Architecture and Intellectual Change in England 1660–1730 Li Shiqiao Landscapes of Taste: The Art of Humphrey Repton’s Red Books André Rogger The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust and Other Irregularities John Macarthur The Florentine Villa: Architecture History Society Grazia Gobbi Sica Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century France Richard Wittman Festival Architecture Edited by Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine Macy The City Rehearsed: Object, Architecture, and Print in the Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries Christopher P. Heuer Architecture, the City, and the Public in Eighteenth Century France: A Reader Edited by Richard Wittman The City Rehearsed Object, architecture, and print in the worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries Christopher P. Heuer First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Christopher P. Heuer Cover design by Mark Rakatansky Studio, Brooklyn This book was made possible by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Heuer, Christopher P. The city rehearsed : object, architecture, and print in the worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries / Christopher P. Heuer. p. cm. – (The classical tradition in architecture) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Vredeman de Vries, Hans, 1527-ca. 1604–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Architecture and society– Netherlands–History–16th century. 3. Architecture–Aesthetics. 4. Architecture– Philosophy. I. Title. NE670.V74H48 2008 769.92–dc22 2008014932 ISBN 0-203-86600-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–43306–1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–43306–8 (hbk) for EAM, who waited Contents Acknowledgments ix List of abbreviations xi Introduction: Iconoclasm’s faces 1 Part One: Performances of order 23 1 Unbuilt architecture in the world of things 25 2 Antwerp: the city rehearsed 57 3 Guidebooks to chaos 99 Part Two: Perspective and exile 137 4 The vanishing self 139 5 Hidden terrors: the Perspective (1604–05) 165 6 Epilogue: Vredeman and the modern 211 Notes 215 Bibliography 265 Index 285 Photographic credits 295 vii Acknowledgments “What’s the verb behind it all?” Dennes Boon’s simple question drove the first incarna- tion of this book, which was submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the Department of History of Art at Berkeley in December 2003. Subsequent reading, thinking, and traveling for the project have been possible only through the generosity and the support of many people and institutions. For funds assisting with photography, permissions, and pro- duction costs, I am grateful to Columbia University, the Spears Fund of Princeton’s Art & Archaeology Department, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts. The last two entities transformed this study from an unwieldy thesis into a grown-up publication. Research and travel was underwritten by the Samuel H. Kress foundation and the Kunsthistorisch Instituut Leiden, and was facilitated by grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst and the Bibliographic Society of Great Britain. Without the assistance of staff at the Stadsarchief Antwerp, the Rijksprenten- kabinet Amsterdam, and the Rare Book Room at the Universiteit Amsterdam, this book would not have been finished. Two fortunate years at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2002–04 permitted time and space to write, and the intellectual hospitality provided by Thomas Crow, Charles Salas, and the scholars around the theme-year “Biography” shaped this book’s arguments in unexpected and helpful ways. I am indebted to Cassie Albinson, Tatiana Senkevitch, Isabelle Tillerot, and, above all, Andrew Perchuk and Sebastian Zeidler as sources of criticism and advice. Elizabeth Honig, a teacher, advisor, and friend, con- tinued to inspire the book through her sustained intellectual unselfishness and her own writing on Netherlandish art. Matthew Jesse Jackson, whom I met on my first day of graduate school, made work possible at Berkeley and the Getty by reminding me what mattered, and what, ultimately, did not. This manuscript was completed in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Columbia University and at the Centre Canadien d’Architecture in Montréal. I am grateful to both institutions, and to Mario Carpo, Jonathan Crary, Vittoria di Palma, and Phyllis Lambert for making the respective stays happen. At Avery Library, particularly, I owe thanks to Gerald Beasley. Elsewhere at Columbia, Graham Bader, Francesco Benelli, Kate Bentz, Nikolas Bakirtzis, David Freedberg, Clemente Marconi, Keith Moxey, Amy Powell, John Rajchman, Tanya Sheehan, and Alicia Walker were important sources of encouragement, and at the CCA, Alexis Sornin an irrepressible host. Final edits were completed during an exhilarating first year at Princeton, where I have benefited ix Acknowledgments enormously from the questions of students, from the patience of Susan Lehre and her staff, and specifically from the erudition and wit of Danny Curcˇic, Rachel DeLue, Brigid Doherty, Thomas da Costa Kaufmann, Thomas Leisten, Esther da Costa Meyer, John Pinto, Jerome Silbergeld, and Nino Zchomelidse. As chairs, Patricia Brown and Hal Foster supported this book at every opportunity. I am particularly grateful to five scholars who withstood late drafts of indi- vidual chapters: Cammy Brothers, Hanneke Grootenboer, Paul Taylor, Christopher S. Wood, and Rebecca Zorach. Their friendly criticisms, corrections, and proddings made this an immeasurably better book—what errors surely remain, however, are mine and mine alone. Caroline Mallinder and Georgina Johnson at Routledge have remained steadfast throughout the entire publication process, as has series editor Caroline van Eyck, who kindly took an early interest in the project. Finally, for conversation and support, for everything from bibliography to bike repair, the project will always be indebted to the following individuals: Holm Bevers, Heiner Borggrefe, Karel Bostoen, Britta Bothe, David Brafman, Taco Dibbits, Nina Dubin, Peter Furhing, Thomas Fusenig, Hartford Gongaware, Glenn Harcourt, Johanna Heinrichs, Barbara, Jared, and Schuyler Heuer, Charles van de Heuvel, Doug Hildebrecht, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Piet Lombaerde, Mark Meadow, Candace and John Monroe, Luke Morgan, Koen Ottenheym, Loren Partridge, Dan Pearson, Mark Rakatansky, Peter Relic, Stephanie Schrader, Eric Jan Sluijter, Claudia Swan, Stephen Tobriner, Nancy Troy, Barbara Uppenkamp, Angela Vanhaelen, Jan de Vries, Anne Wagner, Suzanne Walker, Bronwen Wilson, Wim de Wit, and Sophie Zimmermann. An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared in Hans Vredeman de Vries and the Artes Mechanicae Revisited (Turnhout, 2005), and bits of Chapter 5 as “Perspective as Process in Vermeer,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 38 (Autumn 2000). I am grateful