Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism Author(s): Alina A. Payne Source: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 322-342 Published by: Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990940 Accessed: 15/10/2009 16:45

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http://www.jstor.org Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism

ALINA A. PAYNE University of Toronto

To date Rudolf Wittkower'sArchitectural Principles in the Age of History is not simply the repository of unchanging facts, but a Humanism of 1949 remainsa fundamentalevaluation of Renaissance process, a patternof living and changing attitudesand interpretations. As such it is of our own natures. To turn backwardto a architecturalaesthetics. Although not unique in having achievedsuch deeply part past age is not just to inspect it, to find a patternwhich will be the paradigmaticstatus within its discipline,its simultaneousimpact upon same for all comers. The backwardlook transformsits object; every architectural remains It is that production unprecedented. preciselythefact spectator at every period-at every moment, indeed-inevitably thiswork captured the imagination of two traditionallydistinct groups at a transformsthe past according to his own nature.... History cannot momentin historywhen exchangesbetween the two seemedleast likely to be touched without changing it.1 occurthat constitutesthe startingpointfor this inquiry.Based upon an examinationof Principles against the Renaissanceliterature it so So WROTE SIGFRIED GIEDION in 1941. Though intending to categoricallysupplanted, against its art historicaland broaderintellectual make an apology for the engaged reading of history that character- context,as well as againstcontemporary architectural theory, the argument izes his Space, Time andArchitecture,Giedion nonetheless points to presentedhere proposes a deepercultural continuity between the discourse of a fundamental condition of history writing, namely to the modernistarchitecture in the 1940s and 1950s and thereadings of history relationship between past and present in the manufacture of thatwere conceived at thesame time. In conclusionit is arguedthat beyond historical narrative. The fact that his deliberate stance exceeds affordingspecific insight into the historicityof our constructionsof the only in degree of self-consciousness that of any historian confront- Renaissance,such a patternof exchangebetween history writing and ing the amorphous material that constitutes the past is accepted by criticism/theoryalerts us tothe complex symbiosis that existed between these now as an undisputed truth. The revisionist impetus behind the two reflectiveactivities at thevery heart of modernismitself scholarship of the past two decades testifies to an increasing urgency to distinguish between history as an objective process within which we are located and historicity as a certain way of This article is part of a larger investigation on the exchanges between aware of historical narrativesand architecturaltheory in the formative years of being this fact.2 modernism. A version of this paperwas read at the 1993 CAA meeting in Seattle. I am most grateful to Mrs. Margot Wittkower who graciously agreed to assist me in my work and answered many of my queries regardingevents and issues raised here. I would also like to thankJoseph Sigfried Giedion," Daedalus105 (1976): 189-203. On the same topic, see Connors, who most generously undertook to find answers to my two essaysin SigfriedGiedion 1888-1968. Entwurfeiner modernen Tradition questions relatedto Rudolf Wittkower'slife. Finally, I would like to thank (Zurich, Museum fur Gestaltung, 1 February-9 April 1989): Sokratis Hans-Karl Liicke and Rebekah Smick, whose comments on an earlier Georgiadis, "Sigfried Giedion und die Krise der kritischen Historiogra- draftwere most helpful. phie," 224-31; and Werner Oechslin, "Fragen zu Sigfried Giedions 1. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture(Cambridge, Mass., kunsthistorischen Pramissen," 191-205. For Giedion's intellectual pro- 1941), 5. This is a theme that preoccupied Giedion considerablyand one file, refer to SokratisGeorgiadis, SigfriedGiedion. Eine IntelektuelleBiogra- he had alreadyexpounded on in his doctoral dissertation ("Spatbarocker phie (Zurich, 1989). und romantischerKlassizismus" [Munich, 1922]) for Wolfflin. That his 2. Though by now the literatureon the problem of historicity and its position had not been the norm for art history writing as it constructed impact upon the nature of interpretation is vast and ranges from the itself into an institution was acknowledged by Giedion himself: "Histori- conceptual readings of Hayden White to the systematic cataloguing of ans quite generally distrust absorption into contemporary ways of historiansby Heinrich Dilly or the philosophical investigationsof Gianni thinking and feeling as a menace to their scientific detachment, dignity, Vattimo, the status of the discussion as a still-active debate is highlighted and breadth of outlook.... The historian must be intimately a part of his by a recent (and spirited) exchange published in New LiteraryHistory 17 own period to know what questions concerning the past are significant to (1986): Keith Moxey, "Panofsky's Concept of 'Iconology' and the it.... But it is his unique and nontransferabletask to uncover for his own Problem of Interpretationin the History of Art," 265-74; Arthur Danto, age its vital interrelationshipswith the past.... To plan we must know "Commentary,"275-79; David Summers, "Intentions in the History of what has gone on in the past and feel what is coming in the future. This is Art," 305-21; Steven Z. Levine, "Moxey's Moxie and the Summers of not an invitation to prophecy but a demand for a universal outlook upon '84: Intention and Interpretationin the History of Art-A Commentary," the world." Ibid., 6-7. On Giedion's polemic with established historical 323-31; David Summers, "David Summers Replies," 333-49. For practice, see Spiro Kostof, "Architecture,You and Him: The Mark of examples of the synthetic approachesreferred to above see Hayden White,

322 JSAH 53:322-342, SEPTEMBER 1994 PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 323

In architectural scholarship, modernism (and following from of Renaissance forms and culture on the Continent has been this, the nineteenth century, an area known to have been linked with the debate on renouvellementin France, and, in particularly affected by modernist orthodoxy) has claimed the Germany, with a nationalist political and cultural program and a lion's share of attention in this process of re- and self- drive towards an aesthetizationof science and power.5 examination. Official accounts such as Giedion's and Pevsner's, However, now that the architecturalhistory of modernism is overtly proselytizing and deliberately seeking to participate in the being rewrittenand its dependence on nineteenth-centuryaesthet- then-current theoretical debates called for such a recharting.3 Less ics laid bare, it seems appropriateto recognize that one dimension attention has been paid to histories of the more distant past is missing from this revisionist project, namely the evaluation of effected in the years of high modernism: apparently removed the historicalnarratives modernism produced, or, in other words, from the crucible of modernist discourse due to their (historical) of the exchanges between the present and the past that character- subject matter they seemed insulated from its issues. The fact that ized this moment in history. In architecture where-witness this period coincided with the consolidation of the craft of Giedion-theory and history are uneasy albeit traditionalbedfel- (art/architecture) history writing into an institution with a lows, such an evaluation of their reciprocal relationship should positivist orientation and programmatic separation from theory prove particularly welcome. Not only would it provide an and criticism probably further reinforced such a view. On the opportunity to identify blind spots in our historical corpus but it occasions when creative exchanges and overlaps between architec- would also reveal how the historical and theoretical imaginations tural history and theory/criticism have been noted, it has been overlap and thus offer insight into the broader intellectual mainly with reference to the formative period of the discipline configurationof modernism itself. and of modernist discourse, which (though not coincidentally) A particularlyappropriate case study for such questions consti- coincided.4 For example, the later-nineteenth-century popularity tutes the Wittkower phenomenon. It is probablyironical that his work should not earn such an epithet for his monumental contribution in the area of baroque studies that amounted to a Metahistory(Baltimore and London, 1973); Heinrich Dilly, ed., Altmeister modernerKunstgeschichte (Berlin, 1990); Gianni Vattimo, The End of life-long project, but for the consequences of ArchitecturalPrin- Modernity:Nihilism and Hermeneuticsin Post-ModernCulture (Baltimore, ciples in theAge of Humanism of 1949.6 Howard Hibbard voices the For a of the debate as it to architectural 1988). summary applies consensus when, in his obituaryfor Wittkower of 1972, he states: scholarship, see also Marvin Trachtenberg, "Some Observations on his most it is too well-known and Recent ArchitecturalHistory," Art Bulletin70 (1988): 240-41. The most "Perhaps original single work, recent attempt to review more comprehensively the issue of historicity in too influential to need comment, save to remind art historians architectural is Elizabeth B. TheArchitectural scholarship MacDougall, ed., that it has had some influence on other disciplines, including Historianin America(Washington, D.C., 1990). architecturaldesign."7 Hibbard thus records that it is Wittkower's 3. Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneersof the ModernMovement (London, 1936); and Giedion, Space,Time (see n. 1). For a sample of recent scholarship concerned with a rereadingof modernism and its key figures, see Demetri "On the of Porphyrios, ed., Methodology ArchitecturalHistory," AD 51 Ferreti, Cassirer,Panofsky, Warburg (New Haven and London, 1989);Joan Richard Pommer (1981); and Christian Otto, Weissenhof1927 and the Goldhammer-Hart,"Heinrich Wolfflin, an IntellectualBiography" (Ph.D Modern Movement and (Chicago London, 1991); Giorgiadis, Sigfried diss., University of CaliforniaBerkeley, 1981). Though Erwin Panofskyis Giedion n. Fritz The (see 1); Neumeyer, ArtlessWord: Mies van derRohe on of another generation, the investigation of his work (published to date) the Art Building (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); Francesco Dal Co, Figuresof has also focused on the earlywritings. See especially Michael Ann Holly, Architectureand Thought:German Architecture Culture, 1880-1920 (New Panofskyand the Foundation ofArt History (Ithaca, 1984). York, 1990); Marlite Halbertsma, "Nikolaus Pevsner and the End of a 5. The intellectual context for Renaissance studies is examined in Tradition,"Apollo (February 1993): 107-9. Another aspect of revision is August Buck, ed., Renaissanceund Renaissancismusvon akobBurckhardt bis the current of the traditional canon. See in expansion this context the ThomasMann (Tiibingen, 1990). The French context is discussed by GarlandArchives documentation of the careersof such architectsas Henri Christopher Mead, CharlesGarnier's Paris Opera:Architectural Empathy and and Richard Schindler and the Sauvage current interest in the work of theRenaissance of French Classicism (Cambridge, Mass., 1991). On the use of Otto that led to revisions of Wagner inherited modernist definitions and the Renaissanceby Burckhardtand his contemporariesas a culturalmodel criteria. relevant are Particularly Harry Francis Mallgrave, ed., Otto for fin-de-siecleGermany and the nationalist subtext implicit in this on the Wagner:Reflections Raimentof Modernity(Santa Monica, 1993); and rejection of French decadence aesthetics, see Patricia Bermann, "The Otto trans. Francis Wagner, ModernArchitecture, Harry Mallgrave (Santa Renaissance Paradigm in German Modernist Culture," AbstractsCollege Monica, 1988). Art Association1992 (Chicago, 1992). For a discussion of the Burckhard- 4. On the of to modernist and centrality history thought on the rise of tian Florentine model for the reconciliation of power and beauty and the historical in this see for The disciplines period, example Vattimo, End of contemporary call for a harmonious culture, see Dal Co, Figuresof Modernity(see n. 2), 1-13. For investigations of key turn-of-the-century Architecture(see n. 3), 171-82. art see for the figures (especially historians) example work focused on 6. Rudolf Wittkower, ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Humanism et Henri Warburg,Riegl al., Zerner, "Alois Riegl," Daedalus105 (1976): (London, 1949), hereafter cited as Principles.Unless different from the 177-88; Willibald Sauerlander, "Alois Riegl und die Entstehung der first edition, subsequent referencesin this articleare to the Norton edition autonomen Kunstgeschichte," Fin de Siecle:Zur Literaturund Kunst der (NewYork, 1971). Jahrhundertwende as Structure: (Frankfurt,1977); MargaretIversen, "Style 7. Howard Hibbard, obituary for Rudolf Wittkower,Burlington Maga- Alois Art 2 Riegl's Historiography," History (March 1979); idem, Alois zine 114 (March 1972): 175. This view is reiteratedbyJames S. Ackerman, Art and Riegl: History Theory(Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Michael Podro, who describes Wittkower's book as having "sold more copies than The any CriticalHistorians of Art (New Haven and London, 1982); Silvia uncompromisingly scholarly study written on architecturesince the first 324 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994 engagement with the Renaissance that lays claim to exemplary Yet this formulation assumed the role of paradigm within a originality,an originality that he attributesto Wittkower's having very specific historical configuration that makes it relevant to "radicallychanged our conception of what happened in Italian consider Wittkower not only in relation to Gombrich, Panofsky, architecture from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries."8 or Krautheimer,but especiallyin relation to Giedion and Pevsner, That this should be so is noteworthy in itself Although from the that is againstthe context of a formulation of a modern theory of later twenties onwards new scholarship could be expected to architectureafter several decades of conflict and debate.10Placing produce greater impact in the study of the baroque, a relatively the paradigm in such a historical perspective should therefore new area for serious consideration, it is in scholarship on the reveal the nature (or historicity) of our own (still-current) con- Renaissance, a distinguished and established field for over a ception of the Renaissance. century, that it occurred. However, what the impact noted by It could be argued that Wittkower's interpretationbased on Hibbard measures is change:a new way of looking at architecture solid factual foundations was successful because it responded to had relegated an old one into obsolescence; in short, one the scientific and objective agenda of art history in ascendence at paradigmhad succeeded another. the time.11The second reason this work deserves special atten- It is this categoricalposition it assumed that makesWittkower's tion, however, dismisses such an answer as an oversimplification. text particularlyappropriate for our inquiry. In the first place A decidedly scholarly piece and seminal for the Renaissance Principlesoffers the opportunity to examine a paradigm in its corpus, it also influenced contemporary architecturalcriticism formation, one that is additionallysignificant because it is still at and design. That Wittkower inscribed his work in a conception of work in, and central to, our conception of Renaissancearchitec- historywriting that did not attemptto affectcurrent architecture- ture. Not only is Principlesthe only available(and unchallenged) that in fact was antithetical to Giedion's-and that he was comprehensive study of Renaissancearchitectural aesthetics, but surprisedat this sequel is well known.12Yet, the fact remains and it is still in many instancesthe standardclassroom textbook on the requires explanation.And such an explanationseems particularly subject. The fact that it requires no comment-and Hibbard's words still reflect the consensus twenty years later-reveals its transparencyto current thinking that is due to its continuing "Palladio'sTheory of Proportionand the SecondBook of the 'Quattro Libri presence within our discourse, submerged and unnoticeable dell'Architettura,' "JSAH 59 (1990):279-92; and GeorgeHersey and Richard PossiblePalladian Villas Some because identicalwith it.9 Friedman, (Plus Instructively ImpossibleOnes) (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). For a moregeneral application of Wittkower'sreading, see WilliamJ. Mitchell,The Logic of Architecture (Cambridge,Mass., 1990). For Wittkower'simpact on both the history centurybefore Christ." James S. Ackerman,"Rudolf Wittkower's Influ- and theoryof architecturesee also Decio Gioseffi,"Palladio oggi: dal enceon the Historyof Architecture,"Source 8/9 (1989):87-90. Wittkoweral post-moderno"Annali di architettura1 (1989): 105-21. 8. Hibbard,obituary, 175. Noteworthyfor a challengeto someaspects of Wittkower'slinear thesis is 9. My main concern is with Wittkower'scharacterization of the Manfredo Tafuri, La ricercadel rinascimento (Turin, 1992), 3-32. Renaissance,with the "principles"as such; his almostunprecedented WhenWittkower's thesis has been questioned it hasbeen mainlyas it attemptin architecturalhistory at the time to explicatearchitectural appliesto reconstructionsof specificbuildings. See, for instance,the new productionthrough a readingof theory,his concernwith textual(and interpretationof the centrallyplanned church offered by Paul Davies, documentary)sources, with the relationshipbetween architecture and "The Madonnadelle Carceriin Prato,"Architectural History 36 (1993): society, all of which had fundamentalimplications for architectural 1-18; andthe proposalsfor Alberti's San Sebastiano and Sant' Andrea by historyas a discipline,is not atissue here. For a discussionof theseaspects HowardSaalman, "Alberti's San Sebastianoin Mantua,"in Renaissance of Wittkower'scontribution, see Henry Millon, "RudolfWittkower, Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. Andrew Morrough et al. ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Humanism: Its Influence on the (Florence,1985), 645-52; andHoward Saalman, Livio Volpi Ghirardini, Developmentand Interpretationof ModernArchitecture," JSAH 31 and AnthonyLaw, "Recent Excavations Under the Ombrelloneof Sant' (1972):83-91. Andreain Mantua:Preliminary Report,"JSAH 51 (1992):357-76. On Wittkower'sseminal role for Renaissancescholarship see citations 10. The intellectualformation of the three historianscoincided in in the standardtexts on Renaissancearchitecture such as LudwigH. time. Giedionwrote his doctoraldissertation for Wolfflinat Munichin Heydenreich and Wolfgang Lotz, Architecturein Italy 1400-1600 (Har- 1922,Wittkower completed his doctoralwork for AdolfGoldschmidt at mondsworth,1974): 392 n. 1. In theirrespective overviews of the field Berlin in 1923, and Pevsnerreceived his doctoratein Leipzigfrom bothTrachtenberg and Summers discuss the centralityof Wittkower's(as WilhelmPinder in 1924. yet unrivaled)contribution to Renaissancestudies. Moreover, Summers 11. On the climateat the time andthe receptionof Wolfflinin North setsup his own argumentfor an optical primacy in Renaissanceaesthetics America,see ChristineMcCorkel, " 'Senseand Sensibility' An Epistemo- againstthe traditional(and hence established)view that he tracesto logical Approachto the Philosophy of Art History,"JournalofAesthetics and Wittkower.Trachtenberg, "Observations"(see n. 2), 236. David Sum- Art Criticism34 (1974): 35-50. mers,TheJudgement of Sense (Cambridge, 1987), 28-31. On Wittkower's 12. Wittkower'sreaction to thisreception was most recently referred to seminalimpact on Americanscholarship, see alsoTod Marder,"Renais- by Trachtenberg,"Observations" (see n. 2), 239. Mrs.Margot Wittkower sance and BaroqueArchitectural History in the United States,"in toldme (telephoneconversation 31 March1994) that originally Fritz Saxl MacDougalled., TheArchitectural Historian (see n. 2), 161-76. For an wantedto printthree hundredcopies and that it was at her insistence exampleof the continuouspresence of Wittkower'sparadigm as a starting (basedon herconviction that the architectswould buy the book)that the pointfor scholarlywork (evenwhen it challengeshis empiricalresults), figurewas raisedto five hundred(the originalrun). It seemsthat even see DeborahHoward and Malcolm Longair, "Harmonic Proportion and afterthe first editionsold out Wittkowerthought that Tiranti's subse- Palladio's'Quattro Libri,' "JSAH 51 (1982):116-43; BrankoMitrovic, quentrun of fifteenhundred was too optimistic. PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 325

called for not only because this interaction with architectural draws both on Panofsky's studies in signification and Gold- practice in the early fifties alerts us to the presence of exchanges schmidt's art historical Sachlichkeit,Wittkower posits a conscious between historical scholarship and criticism within modernism intellect-driven will to form aimed at conveying meaning, and itself, but also because it promises insight into the complex hence, aimed at the mind rather than the senses.16 structure of architectural discourse at a moment when uncertainty In order to support this hypothesis, Wittkower focuses the in the tenets of modernism was beginning to give rise to its investigation on four issues that he considers essential: symbol- critique.13 ism, appropriation of forms, development of characteristic build- ing types (the latter two subsumed under the heading of "the Wittkower'sparadigm question of tradition"), and commensuration. In spite of this ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Humanism constitutes an reduction and the concentration on Alberti and Palladio as on Wittkower's explicit attempt part to access the core of representative for the period as a whole, the study nonetheless Renaissance architecture. Although developed from three articles promises a comprehensive survey. Yet, although these issues on Alberti and Palladio respectively, the book aspires to broader appear to be distinct and seem to structure the book into four conclusions.'4 Wittkower's agenda is twofold: not only does he set independent chapters, each chapter offers a further reduction to a out to the of architecture in the identify theory Renaissance, but few recurrent themes that imperceptibly lead to a synthesis. he frames this as a direct attempt response (and rebuttal) to Alongside meaning and creative ("free and subjective") transfor- formalist that strategies customarily present Renaissance architec- mation of models, the central and most compellingly presented ture as a matter of form. His pure footnotes to this statement theme is that of the unity between art and science (mathemat- the aim of the attack: both Ruskin's Stones Venice clarify of and ics).17 Explicitly stated it is the exclusive domain of the last chapter Scott's Architecture Geoffrey The of Humanism, though antithetical on harmonic proportions. Yet, by Wittkower's own admission, it to each other with to an respect appreciation of the Renaissance, runs like a red thread throughout the book and determines the are his foils. Wittkower takes issue with Specifically, that which direction along which the discussion principally unfolds.18 For share: a hedonist of architecture that they interpretation privileges example, in Part I, the discussion of the church plan is singled out the sensuous aesthetic the viewer and it back reception by projects as most significant for an understanding of a Renaissance concep- the architect's upon intention.15 Instead, in a strategic move that tion of meaning in architecture, and offers Wittkower the opportunity to show a relationship between symbolism and 13. On the 1950s as marking the beginning of the critique of geometry. The centralized plan, based on the circle and square, modernism for architecture, see Manfredo Italian Tafuri, History of and developed from the Vitruvian homo ad circulum and ad Architecture,1944-1985 (Cambridge,Mass., 1989), 44-96. quadratum, both as a Renaissance ideal 14. "In order to avoid misunderstandings I should like to stress that emerges and as its this study is neither a history of Renaissance architecture nor does it "symbolic form." As "visible materialization of the intelligible contain monographic treatments of Alberti and Palladio. I am discussing mathematical symbols," it reveals the (Neoplatonic) Renaissance the works of these architects only so far as they are relevant to my main conception of a geometrical intersection between microcosm and topic, the illumination of architectural principles at the time of the Renaissance."Wittkower, introduction to Principles(see n. 6), n.p. The macrocosm.19 In order to contextualize his interpretation, Witt- book is made up of the three articles on Alberti and Palladio that Wittkower had published in the early forties. Rudolf Wittkower, "Alber- ti's Approach to in the and Antiquity Architecture,"Journal of Warburg once and for all of the hedonist or purely aesthetic, theory of Renaissance CourtauldInstitutes 4 (1940-41): 1-18; idem, "Principles of Palladio's architecture,and this defines my intention in a nutshell.' " Introductionto the Architecture,"Journal of Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes 7 (1944), Principles,n.p. For this comment, see Clark, "Humanism and Architec- pt.1:102-22; 8 The differences (1945), pt.2:68-106. between the articles ture,"Architectural Review 107 (February1951): 65-69. and the book are minute. The most is the inclusion of significant change 16. On Goldschmidt's contribution to the discipline, see Marie one, "The church in chapter centrally planned the Renaissance,"which Roosen-Runge-Mollwo, Adolph Goldschmidt1863-1944 Lebenserrinerun- was not of the earlier part Alberti article;the section on Palladio'soptical gen (Berlin, 1989). and discernable in psychological concepts Il Redentore is also new. Mrs. 17. Wittkower,Principles, 89 and 56 (with reference to Palladio and to Wittkower told me that Margot Wittkower had conceived of the book Alberti respectively). from the and that the articleswere records project beginning of his work 18. "The third problem that occupied Renaissancearchitects unceas- in progress. ingly was that of proportion.It turns up on many pages of this book and is 15. Wittkower's selection of from both quotes authors is revealing of discussed systematicallyin PartIV." Wittkower, introduction to his to Principles, attempt situate his own argument. From Ruskin: "Pagan in its n.p. origin, proud and unholy in its revival, in its old ... an paralysed age 19. Wittkower, Principles,29; Wittkower sees this Vitruvian concept architectureinvented as it seems, to make of its plagiarists architects,slaves embedded in a metaphysicalcontext, Principles,15. "We have an of its workmen, and its epitome sybaritesof inhabitants;an architecture in which of what Renaissance church builders endeavoured to achieve: for them intellect is idle, invention impossible, but in which all and luxuryisgratified the centrally planned church was the man-made echo or image of God's all insolence fortified." From Scott: "The Renaissance ... is an style universe and it is this shape which discloses the unity, the infinite essence, architectureof taste, no or seeking logic, consistency, justification beyond the uniformity and the justice of God." On this basis he connects the that of giving pleasure" [my emphasis]. Wittkower, 1. With Principles, design of the perfect church with Platonic cosmology and hence reference to his intentions, Wittkower states:"Sir Kenneth Clarkwrote in Neoplatonism; Wittkower, Principles,23. This issue had already been the ArchitecturalReview that the first result of this book was 'to dispose, raised in Panofsky's essay of 1921, "Die Entwicklung der Proportions- 326 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994 kower points to contemporary philosophy, particularlyto Cu- basis he can affirm that "Italian architects strove for an easily sanus's geometrical definition of God that he adopts from perceptible ratio between length, height and depth of a build- Cassirer.20He can thus conclude: ing."26Palladio's stated theoreticalviews, his planning strategyfor the villas and his church elevations are shown to confirm the view Architecturewas regardedby them [Renaissanceartists] as a math- that ematicalscience which worked with spatialunits. .... Forthe menof the this architecturewith its strict the Renaissance, geometry, Like Barbaro[he] regardedas the particular"virtue" inherent in of its harmonic its formal and above equipoise order, serenity all, architecturethe possibilityof materializingin spacethe "certain with the andthe echoedand at the sametime revealed sphere dome, truth"of mathematics... it maybe arguedthat from Alberti's day the and of God.21 perfection,omnipotence goodness onwardsarchitecture was conceivedin termsof appliedmathemat- ics;but hardly ever before Barbaro was this subject submitted to such For Wittkower, this concern with geometry permeates all aspects closely-knitlogical analysis. Palladio's Quattro Libri, almost entirely of the Renaissance aesthetics of architecture:Alberti, Bramante, concernedwith practicalissues, are similarly marked by acuteness, andclear and rational Leonardo,Palladio, all concurred in a mathematicaldefinition of precision, arrangement.27 beauty manifested as "logic of the plan," "precision, geometrical Such a summing up at the midpoint of the book clearly builds economy," "symphonic quality,"22"lucidity of the geometrical towards the last where, after scheme," "evidence of the structural skeleton,"23a "crystalline up chapter having repeatedlypointed to the of mathematics for Renaissance architecture, vision of architecture" and "devotion to pure geometry."24In importance Wittkower can state his thesis and Wittkower's words, the effect is of a pure, simple, and lucid finally forcefully explicitly: "The conviction that architectureis a science and that each partof architectureof elementary forms. Similarly, in Part III, in which a inside as well as outside, has to be into one Wittkower focuses on Palladio's formulation of new building building, integrated and the same system of mathematicalratios, may be called the types from ancient models, and therefore turns to the Renaissance basic axiom of Renaissance architects."28 With this statement strategy for appropriation, he reaffirms the centrality of the Wittkower a discussion devoted to the issue of mathematicaltheme. In the elevationsand plans that he examines, opens specifically Wittkower finds a fundamental Renaissance order that allows harmonic proportions in architecture that will justify the strength of this assertion and confirm his This disparate ancient forms and quotations to be brought into previous findings. chapter far the constitutes the real center of of the homogenous wholes. Thus he finds a persistent intention to seek (by longest) gravity book, since its main is to demonstrate the central role of a congruity of parts by way of the Vitruvian symmetriaencoded object mathematics for Renaissance a both in Palladio's villa plans and his church faSades.25On this theory by revealing relationship that unites architecture and music (as "mathematicalscience") through an aesthetic of ratios.29In reviewing architecturaltexts lehreals Abbild der Stilentwicklung,"reissued as ErwinPanofsky, "The with reference to the contemporaryliterature on art, music, and of the of as a Reflectionof the of History Theory Proportions History philosophy, Wittkower identifies a will to order in Renaissance in in theVisualArts N.Y., 88-89. Styles," Meaning (GardenCity, 1955), architecture that manifests itself as a recurrent concern with 20. Wittkower,Principles, 27 n. 3. 21. Wittkower,Principles, 29. systems for proportion and composition. In his narrative, a 22. Wittkower,Principles, 26 (withreference to Bramante).Wittkower deliberately sought identity between these systems and musical continues:"The plan is, in fact,the supremeexample of that organic harmony reveals the latter as the authority behind aesthetic geometry,that kind of proportionallyintegrated 'spatial mathematics,' which we haverecognized as a drivingfeature of humanistRenaissance judgements that performs the office of an external, rational, and architecture."Ibid. See also his referenceto Palladio'sarchitecture: "It is orderly,systematic, and entirely logical." Wittkower, Principles, 84. 23. Wittkower,Principles, 20 (withreference to Giulianoda Sangallo). all-importantpostulate ofsymmetria, which is the fixedmathematical ratio 24. Wittkower,Principles, 17 (withreference to Leonardo).On Alberti's of the partsto each other and to the whole."Wittkower, Principles, 96. churcheshe states:"In such centralized plans the geometricalpattern will Albertireceives a similarreading. Even when the problemat handis the appearabsolute, immutable, static and entirelylucid." Wittkower, Prin- evaluationof his attitudeto tradition,the emphasison proportionis stillat ciples,7. the heartof theargument: "All the new elementsintroduced by Alberti in 25. "Oncehe had foundthe basicgeometric pattern for the problem the facade,the columnsand the pediment,the attic,and the scrolls,would 'villa,'he adaptedit as clearlyand as simplyas possibleto the special remain isolated featureswere it not for ihat all-peirvadingharmony which requirementof eachcommission. He reconciledthe taskat handwith the formed the basis and backgroundof his whole theory ... in fact, a single 'certaintruth' of mathematicswhich is final and unchangeable. The geometrical system of proportionpermeates the facade,and the place and size of every keynoteis, subconsciouslyrather than consciously, perceptible to every- single part and detail is fixed and defined by it." Wittkower,Principles, 45. one who visitsPalladio's villas.... Yet this groupingand re-groupingof 26. Wittkower,Principles, 74. the samepattern was not as simplean operationas it mayappear. Palladio 27. Wittkower,Principles, 69. tookthe greatestcare in employingharmonic ratios not only insideeach 28. Wittkower,Principles, 101: singleroom, but also in the relationof the roomsto eachother, and it is 29. "Renaissanceartists did not mean to translatemusic into architec- this demandfor the right ratioswhich is at the centre of Palladio's ture, but took the consonant intervals of the musical scale as the audible conceptionof architecture"[my emphasis].Wittkower, Principles, 72. On proofs for the beauty of the ratios of the small whole numbers 1:2:3:4." Palladio'selevations: "Moreover, his structuresalso obey Vitruvius's Wittkower,Principles, 116. PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 327

scientific guarantor for perfection. With such an approach Witt- testify to a particular emphasis on numerical relationships that kower not only effectively rationalizes artistic will but he also turn out to be harmonic and disclose a sophisticated system for offers a powerful alternative to the then-current argument in their generation. Wittkower can thus conclude: "The reader, we favor of the Golden Section, which he dismisses for leading to hope, will agree that Palladio, like Barbaro, firmly believed that irrational, hence incommensurable numbers, alien to an "organic, proportion contained 'all the secrets of the art.' "33 metrical and rational" Renaissance mind-set.30 While undoubtedly present, the concern with proportion is Further, Wittkower aims to show that the aesthetic centered on given here a categorical preeminence that alerts us to a reductive the harmonic ratios that he proposes is not solely the domain of reading of Palladio's aesthetics. Palladio's definition of architec- theory but finds its resolution in the practice of architecture itself. tural beauty in Book I of the Quattro Libri involves necessitaand In the subsequent demonstration of this thesis Palladio once again forma as critical categories alongside proportion and thus suggests takes on the role of the main protagonist.31 Educated in the circle a more complex theoretical position albeit pithily stated. Simi- of Trissino and Barbaro, a uomo universale, Palladio can be either larly, the reasons for his deployment of ornamental forms, documented or inferred to be familiar with both musical theory running a full spectrum from statuary to rustication, must be seen and a mathematical conception of aesthetics and thus participate as an integral part of his theory of architecture rather than being knowledgeably in a discourse that unites architects, mathemati- attributed to a general manifestation of the mannerist horrorvacui cians, and music theorists: Alberti with Ficino and Pacioli; as Wittkower proposes.34 Palladio with Lomazzo, Gafurio, Zarlino, Belli, and especially However, this reading of Palladio's aesthetics is pivotal for Francesco Giorgi.32 Beyond contextual evidence, key to this Wittkower because it allows him to demonstrate convincingly a interpretation is Barbaro's insistence on proportion in his com- fundamental link between science and architecture in Renais- mentary on Vitruvius's De architectura.Palladio's own description sance theory. Further, the emphasis on ideal numbers also allows of his architecture in the Quattro Libri is then read in this light. him to place architecture, alongside the other arts, inside a The measurements of the individual rooms inscribed on the plans common philosophical Neoplatonic discourse-a theme of some prominence in the then-contemporary readings of Renaissance 30. On Wittkower'spolemic on this score, see Principles,108. The tone culture by Panofsky, Wind, and Gombrich-and acquires an and thrust of his argument shows the impact of Nobbs's rebuttal to intellectual dimension for architecture that earlier interpretations "proportional astrology" and his emphasis on simple ratios and a had not accorded.35 architecture takes a dominant (or characteristic) recurring proportion as the source of Interpreted thus, leading aesthetic appeal (which Wittkower quotes). Percy E. Nobbs, Design:A role amongst the arts in materializing a Weltanschauungrooted in a Treatiseon the Discoveryof Form (Oxford, 1937), 123-51. A similar argument (though less polemical) and one that Wittkower also uses is 33. Wittkower, Principles,140. Barbaro's statement on the role of made Louis "Les by Hautecoeur, proportions mathematiques et number in architecture ("divina & la forza de'numeri tra se ragione Gazettedes l'architecture," BeauxArts18 (December 1937): 263-74. comparati") allows Wittkower to attribute it also to Palladio; Principles, The modern concern with the Golden Section can be tracedback to ca. 138. He justifies such a transferralof Barbaro'svision to Palladio by 1815-44. The principal texts that established the parameters of the pointing to their close relationship: "Palladio's work embodied for discussion were Archivder J. Helmes, Mathematik,vol. 4 of 1844; and A. Barbarohis own ideal of scientific, mathematicalarchitecture, and it may Der Wiegand, allgemeinegoldene Schnitt und sein Zusammenhangmit der be supposed that Palladio himself thought in the categories which his harmonischen of 1849. Theilung Zeising develops the connection between patron had so skilfully expounded." Wittkower, Principles,68. On the the Golden Section and in morphology his Neue Lehrevon den Proportionen relationshipbetween Barbaroand Palladio,see Principles,138-40. desmenschlichen auseinem bisher Kdrpers unerkanntgebliebenen,dieganze Natur 34. On Palladio's mannerist practices, see Wittkower, Principles,86. und Kunst durchdringendenmorphologischen Grundgesetze entwickelt (Leipzig, These characteristicsof mannerism had been partially established by this view is absorbed into 1854); aesthetics by T. Fechner in his Wittkower himself in his articles on Michelangelo of the 1930s. Rudolf of 1871. with ExperimentelleAsthetik Beginning August Thiersch, Handbuch Wittkower, "Zur Peterskuppel Michelangelos," Zeitschriftfur Kunst- der Architektur 4: (Darmstadt, 1883), part one, there is a tradition of geschichte2 (1933): 348-70; and idem, "Michelangelo'sBiblioteca Lauren- associating the Golden Section with classical and hence Renaissance ziana,"Art Bulletin 16 (1934): 123-218. architecture.Burckhardt devotes a to the chapter it; argument is picked up Palladio defines beauty as follows: "La bellezza risultera dallaformae and From then on the amplified by Wolfflin. discussion becomes de dallacorrispondenza del tutto alleparti, delle partifra loro, e di quelle all tutto: Architecture the ItalianRenaissance rigueur.Jakob Burckhardt, of (Chicago, conciosach6 gli edifici abbino da parrereuno intiero e ben finito corpo, 70-76 ed. 1987), [1st Stuttgart,1867]; Heinrich W6lfflin, Renaissanceund nel quale l'un membro all'altroconvenga e tutte le membra siano necessarie Barock 48-51 ed. (Munich, 1907), [1st Munich, 1888]. For further a quello che si vuol fare" [my emphasis]. Andrea Palladio, QuattroLibri on the Golden bibliography Section, seeJay Hambidge, DynamicSymmetry (Milan, 1981), 12. With reference to this passage,Wittkower states: "Like (New Haven, 1920); Wittkower, Principles,162-66; Hermann Graf, most Renaissance artists, Palladio, following Alberti, subscribed to the zum Problemder Paul H. Bibliographie Proportionen(Speyer, 1958); Scholfield, mathematicaldefinition of beauty."Principles, 20. For a different reading The in Architecture Theoryof Proportion (Cambridge, 1958); Werner Hahn, of Palladio's aesthetics, see Alina Payne, "Betweengiudizio and auctoritas: als in Naturund Symmetrie Entwicklungsprinzip Kunst(K6nigstein, 1989). Vitruvius'decor and Its Progeny in Sixteenth Century ItalianArchitectural 31. "It seems to how far the appropriate inquire harmonic ratios of the Theory" (Ph.D. diss, University of Toronto, 1992), Chapter 8. Greek musical scale influenced architectural of proportions the Renais- 35. See, for example, Frankl who under his category "purposive sance in and Alberti and Palladioare our main sources for theory practice. intention" posits a cultural intention but does not go beyond a broadly an accurateestimate of Renaissance on this opinion subject."Wittkower, defined Zeitgeist.Paul Frankl, Principlesof ArchitecturalHistory: The Four 107. Principles, PhasesofArchitectural Style 1420-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 156-61. 32. 102-26. Wittkower,Principles, [1st ed. Die Entwicklungsphasender neueren Baukunst, Stuttgart, 1914]. 328 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994 mathematical conception of the universe: science (cosmogony), debt. Panofsky's"Die Entwicklung der Proportion als Abbild der simultaneouslyabsorbed and transcended,receives visible expres- Stilentwicklung" (The history of the theory of human propor- sion in architecturalform. Even spatial configurations take an tions as a reflection of the history of styles) of 1921, in which he intellectualrather than experientialsignificance in this model: the describes the theory of proportions as an empirical science in the characteristicRenaissance (spherical) domes over (square) cross- Renaissance,provides Wittkowerwith a critical piece of evidence ings become symbols for the universal harmony and geometric in the testimony ofFrancesco Giorgi's commentary on the facade configurationof the cosmos as intimated by science.36 for San Francescodella Vigna presented there for the first time.39 Not only does Wittkower bring architecturein line with the With such appropriationsWittkower draws into the orbit of Panofskian theories of signification by signaling its debt to architecturalscholarship current notions elaboratedin art history Neoplatonic philosophy, but he also participatesin the Cassirer- and philosophy that lend his work the additional appeal of a Panofsky dialogue begun in the former's Erkenntnisproblemof synthesis reflective of the predominantaesthetics and methods of 1906.37 By confirming their conclusion that the "complete inquiry currentat the time. parallel" between the theory of art and the theory of science Beyond this tight relationship between art and science, prob- constitutes the most profound motif of Renaissance culture, he ably the most significant aspect of Wittkower's thesis about the perpetuates their claims.38At the same time, while Wittkower rudiments of Renaissance architectureis his focus on syntax. A deliberatelyinscribes his reading of architecturein a contempo- natural extension of his emphasis on proportion and exchanges rary historical-philosophical dialogue, he also owes it a direct between art and science, syntax ultimately constitutes the key object of his investigation. Unlike his reading of broad composi- tional strategies,when he comes to reading the architecturalform constructed from the availableclassical kit of 36. Wittkower'sseries of articlesconcerned with symboland sign in art (or sentence) parts fromthe 1930sindicates his sustainedinterest in the issue.The firstpart (or vocabulary) he dissects it with respect to its structure rather of that he adds to the three articleson Albertiand Palladio Principles than meaning: the recognition of the significance of placement earlier,and that deals withthe of centrally published precisely symbolism between and the of plannedchurches, shows him translatingthis thinkinginto his workon relationships component parts investigation architecture.It is truethat in one instanceWittkower refers to "intuitive the rules that control those relationshipsis Wittkower'sfocus and perception"when discussingthe viewer'sresponse to Renaissancespatial probably his most original contribution.40In thus approaching and planconfigurations. Principles, 27. Yet by this he does not meanan form, Wittkower looks beyond its immediate physicalpresence to a-perceptiveintuition but an intellectualone: his referenceto Gombrich's readingof the Neoplatonictheory of three-foldknowledge where true a primarystructure and subordinatesall other "principles"to that knowledgeis defined as the consequenceof a processof intellectual of an essential and willed, rather than intuitive, order that rests intuitionof ideasand essencesmakes this clear.Ernst Gombrich, quite upon a scientific matrix. Ultimately, this explicit link between "IconesSymbolicae: Philosophies of Symbolismand Their Bearingon and science via mathematics allows Wittkower to situate Art,"Journalof theWarburg and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1948): 163-92. On syntax these issues, see also Wittkower'sindebtedness to a version of the Renaissance formal practices within the objective and rational then-current Gotz Der in derdeutschen Symbolbegriff. Pochat, Symbolbegrif ratherthan subjectiverealm. Asthetikund Kunstwissenschaft (Cologne, 1983). Relevant to this issuemay Wittkower's on a scientific Renaissance is further alsobe Tod Marder'sobservation of the possiblelinks between Heinrich emphasis von Geymuiller'sArchitektur und Religion of 1911 andWittkower's Prin- heightened by its obverse: the near absence of a discussion of in the ciples.Marder, "Renaissance and Baroque UnitedStates" (see n. 9), ornament, of the actual forms put into the (architectural)sen- 173 n. 30. On the of architectureas in the formative conception symbol tences whose rules he identifies. The semantic yearsof modernism,see alsoPaul Zucker, "The Paradox of Architectural syntactic implica- Theoriesat the Beginningof the ModernMovement,"JSAH 10 (1951): tions of the sentence do not surface:the components themselves 8-14. remain abstract entities, disembodied, characterized only by 37. ErnstCassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissen- number (as dimension) and ratios.41 There is, to be sure, a facet to schaftder neueren Zeit, 2 vols. (Berlin,1906-8). 38. "It is worth dwellingupon this completeparallel between the theoryof artand the theoryof science,for it revealsto us one of the most 39. Panofsky, "The Theory of Proportion" (see n. 19), 91. Wittkower profoundmotifs in the entireintellectual movement of the Renaissance." acknowledgesPanofsky's lead in the discussionof the unity of the ErnstCassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos (Philadelphia, 1963), 159 [ 1st cosmologicaland aesthetic aspect of proportionduring the Renaissancein ed., Individuumund Kosmos in derPhilosophie der Renaissance, Studien der Principles,102 n. 2. BibliothekWarburg 10, (Leipzig,1927)]. Lateron in the text (when 40. That Wittkower thinks in terms of syntactical relationships is respondingto Panofsky'sIdea), Cassirer is even morespecific: "For now confirmed by his explicit reference to syntaxin his 1959 adaptationof this [in the Renaissance],the mathematicalidea, the 'a priori'of proportion argument for Casabella:"Negli edifici rinascimentali migliori, gli el- and of harmony,constitutes the commonprinciple of empiricalreality ementi derivati da differenti tradizioni venivano sottoposti alla disciplina andof artisticbeauty." Cassirer, The Individual, 165 n. 65. For Panofsky's di una 'sintassi'coerente" [my emphasis]. RudolfWittkower,"L'architettura developmentof this issue, see Erwin Panofsky,"Die Perspektiveals del Rinascimento e la tradizione classica,"Casabella 234 (1959): 43-49. 'symbolischeForm,' " Vortrdgeder Bibliothek Warburg 4 (1924-25) (also 41. This position is already present in embryonic, though explicit, Leipzig and Berlin, 1927). Another source for Wittkowerwas the form in Burckhardt'streatment of Renaissancearchitecture. In his chapter symposiumon fifteenth-centuryItalian science (with participants such as on "Treatment of Form" (subsection "Proportion")he states: "Propor- Baron,Kristeller, Cassirer, and Thorndike et al.)published inJournal of the tions in their relationshipto forms, and the latterto the former, remained Historyof Ideas 4 (1943). the subject of the highest and subtlest artisticefforts. The problem lay in a PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 329

Wittkower's argument that concerns forms directly. Primarily in Renaissancearchitecture aesthetics.46 Thereafter, when consid- contained in chapters two and three, the discussion, however, ered at all, ornament for Wittkower is a matter of lines that focuses on the appropriationof plan and elevation configurations, "enhance the lucidity of the geometrical scheme." Even when he especially of such meaning-laden types as the temple front, the brings up Palladio's practice of "introducing figures silhouetted Roman thermae hall, the triumphal arch, the forum, and the against the sky, figures and festoons as decorations of windows, atrium. Again Wittkower's concern is with forms as generic and masks and keystones in the basement [that] gave his entities, in this case as quotations and transformationsof large buildings a richer and more genial appearance,"he does not take typological units, that is with motifs whose component forms- the observationfarther to an inquiry into the reasonsbehind such the columns and architraves,friezes and cornices, acroteriaand presences.47Time and again the discussion returns to (perfect- festoons-are treated as abstract entities ordering the larger because-they-are-square) plan configurations,48column ratios aggregate.The same abstractingtendency is also at work in his and rhythms,overall systems governing elevations,49and "orches- analysis of Alberti's attitude to Antiquity, which he frames as a trations"of ornamentaldevices.50 When, in the section devoted to discussion on his use of the column. In spite of Alberti's Palladio's mannerist years, the discussion does address his ap- definition of the column as "the principal ornament in all proach to the ornament that ultimately makes up his faSadesinto architecture,"which almost amounts to an invitation to consider sculptural forms rather than outlines, it is either shown that his conception of the aesthetic function of ornament, Wittkower "political actualityoverruled considerations of artistic principle" concentrateson a readingof his architectureas a drive towardsthe calling for a narrativeensemble (for example, Loggia del Capi- rationalization of structure.42The discussion aims to reveal tanio) or, in the case of the PalazzoValmarana where "the wall is Alberti's gradual realization of the implications of Roman wall almost eliminated and the surface is crowded with motifs," little architecture,his consequent probing of the relationship between is in fact said other than of Palladio'sparticipation in a "Mannerist column and wall, and finally his demand for a "logical wall- style."51Palladio's move towardsan increasinglysculptural vocabu- structure."43For Wittkowerthe analysisof Alberti'schurches (the lary that encompasses all tectonic and ornamentalcomponents of Palazzo Rucellai with its incised representationof pilasters is not his buildings is thus almost imperceptible in this discussion reveals an discussed) intention to avoid "the compromise of where form is primarily read in terms of [out]line and where the joining column and wall-the compromise of many a ornament is either a syntacticalor an iconographicaldevice.52 Renaissance architect-in favour of a uniform wall architec- Wittkower thus presents a very convincing and tightly knit ture."44In Wittkower's presentationnot only is Alberti gradually argument:the cosmological content and the cultural evidence he moving away from the column as ornamentalmotif in spite of its adduces, the gradualbuild up of essential Renaissanceforms, his usefulness in giving the fagade a "powerful rhythmic accentua- emphasis on geometry, science, on reduction of forms to almost but he is also tion," concerned with the continuity between abstractschemata, all converge towards making commensuratiothe interior and exterior evidence "giving [to] the homogeneity of his key instrumentfor conceptualizingform, the "symbolicform"-to wall structure."45 borrow a Panofskianformula-for Renaissancearchitecture.53 In Notwithstanding this review of Renaissance formal practices the issue of then, ornamentalform asformremains untouched. To 46. Wittkower,Principles, 33. ThatAlberti conceives of ornamentas a justify such a reduction, Wittkower opens this discussion with a principleis attestedto by his use of the termornamentum, otherwise not to quotation of Alberti's definition of ornament as "a kind of be found in Vitruvius,who only refersto ornamenta.Hans-Karl Liicke, AlbertiIndex, vol. 2 (Munich, 1976): 944-49; HermannNohl, Index additional or to and brightness improvement beauty" allows the Vitruvianus(Leipzig, 1876): 89. matterto rest there: apparentlyconceived as a secondaryaesthetic 47. Wittkower,Principles, 78. 48. See, for the of the atrium device by no lesser an authority than the first and possibly the example, application form to palace design. Wittkower,Principles, 79. greatesttreatise writer of the Renaissance,ornament did not seem 49. Wittkower,Principles, 92. to warrant classificationamongst fundamentalprinciples at work 50. Wittkower,Principles, 99. 51. Wittkower,Principles, 84-88. 52. '"Yetin contrastto Michelangelo'sdeeply disturbing Mannerism, Palladio'sis soberand academic: it is hardlyever concerned with detailed forms;capitals, tabernacles and entablaturesretain their classical signifi- in which the real was not in style vitality the designof individualforms cance,shape and ratio.It is the interplayof entire classicalunits that (evenif beautifulin but in their to the themselves), relationship whole." accountsfor the Manneristcharacter of the whole."Wittkower, Principles, Burckhardt,Architecture n. 76. (see 30), 93. For a differentreading of Palladio'slate, sculptural style, see 42. Wittkower Alberti'sdouble James presents readingof the column as Ackerman,Palladio (Harmondsworth, 1977), 112-13. ornamentand residual wall structural (thatis, member)as an "incongru- 53. The concernwith proportion-undoubtedlya criticalissue in ous statement"and credits him with this in favorof a resolving dichotomy Renaissanceaesthetics-also affordsother readings.See, for example, protostructuralrationalism. Wittkower, Principles, 34-35. ChristineSmith's observation that the Renaissance Cicero's 43. 37 interpreted Wittkower,Principles, and47. concinnitasas referring to an effectbetween words and 44. analogoussensory Wittkower,Principles, 47. music(rather than to theircommon intellectual source in and 45. Wittkower, 56 and44. numbers) Principles, that it is this concept of aestheticpleasure that is taken up by Alberti in his 330 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994 short, effecting a synthesis of various methodological orientations (who had recently emigrated to London, as had Wittkower) lists in contemporary scholarship as represented by Goldschmidt, explicitly its range of formal characteristics.For him Modern Wolfflin, Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg,Wittkower ultimately Architectureattempts to access an essentialtruth through architec- defines a Renaissance style, constructs a Renaissance intention, tural form and in doing so develops a languagewhose simplicity, and projects a Renaissanceviewer who recognizes and abstracts clarity, lucidity, spareness, severity, lightness (whiteness), and its essential form from its manifestationin built matter.54 heightened sense of geometry records this higher order.57 However, not only does Wittkower's argument fit into a For Giedion the principal characteristicof historicalperiods is currentart historicaland intellectualcontext as shapedby Cassirer the predominantspace conception manifested in architecture,and and Panofsky,among others, but it presents a familiarfacture: the it is true that this issue, though present, is secondaryto Wittkow- reduction of form to syntacticrelationships, the geometric grids, er's main line of reasoning.58However, the real significance of his the emphasis on structure,on "white" and "cubic"forms, on the argument lies in the fact that in his definition of modernity causal relationship between art and science (mathematics) and Giedion allies this neo-Kantiantendency in contemporarythought away from an understandingof architecturalform as representa- that had been gaining momentum since Schmarsow's formula- tional, the rejection of ornament from the core of "principles," tion of Raumgestaltungwith the modernists' drive towardstechnol- the presentation of an architect actively shaping theoretical ogy and science as paradigmsfor architecture,an alliance that he directions, in short all key aspects of Wittkower's construction of not only stresses but that he places in the domain of the the Renaissance, echo the then-current tenets of victorious inevitable.59For him the modern architecturalformulation of a modernism.55 Indeed, Giedion, Pevsner, and Hitchcock, the begetters of this orthodoxy, presented these same themes in their numbers. He may be a modest man and yet have enteredjust the same. Let seminal validations for modernism that and interpreted, edited, him remain, entranced by so much dazzling light." Le Corbusier, The institutionalized its discourse in the 1930s.56 For example Pevsner Modulor(London, 1951), 51. 57. For example, see the parallel he draws between modern architec- ture and modern painting:"Cezanne despised such a superficialapproach. seminal statement on the analogy between things seen and heard. See The women in his Bathersare without any sensuous appeal.They act not Christine Smith, Architecturein the Cultureof Early Humanism (Oxford, on their own but on behalf of an abstractscheme of constructionwhich is thereal 1992), 94. For a more general argument on the primacy of the senses subjectof thepicture. His aim is to express the lasting qualities of objects; no (especially of optical perception) for Renaissance aesthetics and his transitorybeauty occupies his mind.... By constructing his pictures with observation that Wittkower's Renaissance may be one of many, see cylinder, sphere and cone, Cezannestrove to paraphrasethe eternallaws of Summers, TheJudgementof Sense(see n. 9), 28-31. Nature"[my emphasis]. Pevsner, Pioneers(see n. 3), 70. 54. "In analyzingthe proportionsof a Renaissancebuilding, one has to 58. The introduction of a discussion of a Renaissancespace-conception take the principle of generation into account. It can even be said that, is in fact the most notable addition Wittkower makes to his original without it, it is impossible fully to understand the intentions of a argument as published in his articles of the forties. The characteristicsof Renaissancearchitect. We aretouching here on fundamentalsof the styleas this Renaissance space are for him its mathematical derivation and a whole; for simple shapes,plain walls and homogeneity of articulationare quasi-abstraction:"Architecture was regarded by them as a mathematical necessary presuppositions for that polyphony of proportions which the sciencewhich worked with spatialunits: partsof that universalspace for the Renaissancemind understood and a Renaissanceeye was able to see" [my scientificinterpretation of which they had discovered the key in the laws of emphasis]. Wittkower, Principles,116. In an article of 1953, in which he perspective. Thus they were made to believe that they could recreatethe revisits this argument,Wittkower states it with even greateremphasis: "I universally valid ratios and expose them pure and absolute,as close to think it is not going too far to regardcommensurability of measure as the abstractgeometry as possible. And they were convinced that universal nodal point of Renaissance aesthetics." Rudolf Wittkower, "Systems of harmony could not reveal itself entirely unless it were realized in space Proportion,"Architects' Yearbook 5 (1953): 16. through architectureconceived in the service of religion" [my emphasis]. 55. On this view, witness his description ofS. Mariadelle Carceri:"Its Wittkower,Principles, 29. majestic simplicity, the undisturbed impact of its geometry, thepurity of its 59. Giedion initiates this science-and-technology-oriented strategy whitenessare designed to evoke in the congregation a consciousness of the with Bauen in Frankreich:Eisen, Eisenbetonof 1928. The tradition of presence of God" [my emphasis]. Wittkower,Principles, 21. discussing architecture in terms of space goes back to Schmarsow and 56. Giedion, Space, Time (see n. 1); Pevsner, Pioneers (see n. 3); Ostendorf, but is developed in the 1920s by Herman Soergel, Paul Henry-Russell Hitchcock, ModernArchitecture: Romanticism and Reintegra- Klopfer, Leo Adler, Fritz Schumacher, Paul Fechter, Otto Schubert, and tion(NewYork, 1929); Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The Hermann Hinselmann. On this issue and on the distinction made InternationalStyle: ArchitectureSince 1922 (New York, 1932). For a between volume and space,see Zucker, "The Paradox"(see n. 36), 11-13. contemporary testimony of the critical role played by these issues, and For the aesthetics background to Giedion's space-time conception, see especially by science (mathematics) for architectural practice, see Le Mitchell W. Schwarzer, "The Emergence of ArchitecturalSpace: August Corbusier's almost lyrical passage in his Modulor:"Mathematics is the Schmarsow'sTheory of'Raumgestaltung,' "Assemblage15 (1991): 50-61. majestic structure conceived by man to grant him comprehension of the Of specific importanceto Giedion was Paul Zucker, "Der Begriffder Zeit universe. It holds both the absolute and the infinite, the understandable in derArchitektur,"Repertoriumfiir Kunstwissenschaft 44 (1923-24): 237-45. and the forever elusive. It has walls before which one may pace up and Zucker subsequently applies this approach to his reading of history down without result; sometimes there is a door: one opens it-enters- (specificallyRenaissance architecture) and characterizeshistorical periods one is in another realm, the realm of the gods, the room which holds the by the prevalent conceptualization of space. Hans Willich and Paul key to the great systems. These doors are the doors of the miracles. Zucker, Baukunstder Renaissance in Italien(Wildpark and Potsdam, vol.1, Having gone through one, man is no longer the operativeforce, but rather 1914; vol. 2, 1929). Though Giedion draws from Zucker the emphasis on it is his contact with the universe. In front of him unfolds and spreadsout space-time in architecture,his presentationof modern architectureas part the fabulous fabric of numbers without end. He is in the country of of a historical stream on this basis is more directly anticipatedby Frey. PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 331

space-time continuum is due to a spontaneous synthesis of For Giedion this drive towards Anschaulichkeit,though ideally Denkenand Fiihlen,that is to an expression of a new understand- spontaneous, is ultimately programmatic, for he promotes a ing of the cosmos afforded by physics and mathematics that is militant modernism that also implies a militant architect, self- possible only through the use of modern technology, which, as conscious about the aesthetic profile of the moment wherein he product of the same spirit, alone allows it to take physical form.60 inscribes his work and about his own place in the march towards To this end the (scientificallydetermined and technology based) progress, neither a passive vehicle for a will to art, nor an structural framework of the building and its dialectic with unwitting seismograph of the cultural undertow, in short, an nonstructure (the glass curtain wall) that heightens its presence architect-theoristto whom Wittkower's Renaissancecounterpart necessarily become critical for Giedion: as essential and irreduc- stands as a distant, though related,ancestor. ible part of the building, structural members enter visibly into Not only does Giedion promote a new definition of architec- placement relationshipsthat give form to the reality of space and ture, but the Renaissanceplays an importantrole in this formula- motion as construed by modern science.61Architectural narrative tion. In a move characteristicof modernist discourse that gives or semantics is thus inevitablydisplaced by syntaxfrom the center ontological weight to history, Giedion legitimates modernism by of his attention: the "deep structure" that organizes form and embedding it in history and presents the Renaissanceas an origin corresponds to engineered structure takes precedence in his that validates its aspirations.63Thus Giedion also picks up the narrativebecause it is an instance of Anschaulichkeitoverlapping Cassirer-Panofskyproposal of a modern and scientific Renais- with technology; that is, it re-presents, offers to view, the sance and explicitly makes use of this interpretationto promote simultaneous physical product and insight offered by science.62 the modernity he supports.64The synthesis between art and science that characterizesthe Renaissancefor him and constitutes it into an "espritnouveau" manifests itself both in "the complete Dagobert Frey, Gotik und Renaissanceals Grundlagender modernenWeltan- union of artist and scientist in the same person" and in the schauung(Augsburg, 1929). For an even earlier attempt to use conceptions perspectival conception of space, the incipient pattern of a of space as historical ordering devices, see Arnold Spengler's Untergangdes dialectic between structure and between and Abendlandesof 1918, to whom Zucker also refers. The perceptual infill, interior implicationsin the space-timeconcept (most visibly exploited by Paul exterior space, all of which validatethe impulses within modern- is both Giedion and Frankl) present,though underplayed,by Frey. ism and at the same time reveal it as an epiphany.65 Giorgiadissees Zuckeras instrumentalin Giedionmaking this shift.On Seen in this Wittkower's en- Giedion'sdebt to Zucker,see SokratisGiorgiadis, Sigfried Giedion (see n. company, Renaissance, though 1), 132. riched by the historical apparatushe deploys for its explication, 60. "That there is a remarkableanalogy between recent departuresin reveals its spiritual kinship with modernist architecturalaesthet- philosophy, physics, literature, art and music is a fact which has been frequently commented on. In the light of the particularcase we havejust examined [Maillart], it is worth considering whether the field of "Ina modernwork of artit is the relationshipbetween the elements in the structuralengineering cannot be included as well. New methodsare new compositionthat are decisive in determiningits character.Giedion, Space, toolsforthe creationof new typesof reality"[my emphasis]. Giedion, Space, Time,21. "The humaneye awaketo the spectacleof form, line and Time (see n. 1), 384. This strategyalso gives him the key to a presentation colour-that is, thewhole grammar ofcomposition-reacting to one another of the nineteenth century (and simultaneously an opportunity of rescuing withinan orbitof hoveringplanes" [my emphasis].Giedion, Space, Time, it) as a coherent step in the course of history unfolding towards 382. modernity. Thatthis focuson syntaxconstitutes a key modernistphenomenon is 61. "Now those forms in concrete which ignore former conventions in confirmedby its broaderrelevance to otherareas of artisticproduction. design are likewise the product of a processof resolutioninto elements (for the See, for example, the explicit formulationit receives in the later slabis an irreducibleelement) that uses reconstructionas a means of attaining minimalistwork of the sixties.On MichaelFried's seminal discussion of a more rationalsynthesis" [my emphasis]. Giedion, Space,Time (see n. 1), syntax with referenceto Tony Caro's sculpture,and on Clement 383; "Le Corbusier was able-as no one before him had been to Greenberg'sown formulationof the term"relationality" and the conse- transmute the concrete skeleton developed by the engineer into a means quencesfor definitionsof modernismof boththese views, see Rosalind of architectural expression ... Borromini had been on the verge of Krauss,"Using Language to Do Businessas Usual,"in VisualTheory, ed. achieving the interpenetrationof inner and outer space in some of his late N. Bryson,M. A. Holly,and K. Moxey(NewYork, 1991), 79-100. baroquechurches.... This possibility was latent in the skeleton system of 63. Giedion,Space, Time (see n. 1), 30-67. For the originsof this construction, but the skeleton had to be used as Le Corbusier uses it: in patternin the exchangesbetween Burckhardt and Nietzsche, as well asthe the service of a new conception of space." Giedion, Space, Time, 416. significantimpact of the latter'schampioning of the Renaissance,see Georgiadis points out that in spite of the rationalist undertone these AugustBuck, "Burckhardtund die italienischeRenaissance," in Buck, structural forms are nonetheless construed by Giedion as "symbolic Renaissanceund Renaissancismus (see n. 5), 5-12. Like Giedion and Pevsner, forms." Georgiadis,Sigfried Giedion (see n. 1), 163. thoughless polemical,Hitchcock also seeksa historicalcontinuum for 62. On the formal characteristicsthat display the artist'sformulation of modernity.On thisaspect of hiswork, see HelenSearing, "Henry-Russell scientific insight, the following list is revealing: "Interrelation,hovering, Hitchcock:The ArchitecturalHistorian as Criticand Connoisseur,"in ... fundamental penetration elements of pure colour, of planes, their MacDougall, ed., TheArchitectural Historian (see n. 2), 251-63. and interrelation ... equipoise pure interrelationships."Giedion, Space, 64. "Indeedone rarelysees so completea unityof thinkingand feeling 360. Time, "[Mathematical physicists and cubists gave architects] the as is to be found in the early 15th century.There was not only the means of objective organizing space in ways that gave form to contempo- importantidentity of methodin thesetwo spheres,but a completeunion rary feelings." Giedion, Space, Time, 26. In this context Giedion also of artistand scientist in the sameperson." Giedion, Space, Time, 31. recognizes a concern with syntax to be critical for modernist aesthetics: 65. Giedion,Space, Time, 30 and31. 332 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994

ics. Moreover, it becomes equally clear that his conception of the style, because they liked to be surrounded by forms of a certain kind.68 Renaissance had already been intimated in broad terms and had been processed within the architectural discourse, albeit within the critical literature. In Scott's definition, taste is "the disinterested enthusiasm for architectural form," and stands outside race, politics, societal The contextfor Wittkower's paradigm change, geological facts, and constructional practice.69 By focus- the discussion on Scott aims to reestab- Beyond this general kinship with modernism, the nature of ing taste-that-begets-style, lish the of the aesthetic and a critical Wittkower's paradigm comes into true focus, however, when independence develop framework for its evaluation. his like examined against contemporary Renaissance studies, that is Ultimately argument, is in nature: the Renaissance and against the work of Wolfflin, Frey, Frankl, Scott, Giovannoni, Wittkower's, polemical beyond his intended for classicism, Scott is concerned with the Willich, and Zucker.66 Of foremost importance amongst these is apologia definition of architecture itself. In line with this before he his chosen foil, Geoffrey Scott's Architecture of Humanism of goal, to define the character of Renaissance Scott 1914.67 As such, this text requires a closer reading precisely attempts forms, reviews and finds them because Wittkower singles it out and constructs his own argu- contemporary interpretative strategies flawed. are flawed because transfer ment in opposition to it. For Scott fundamentally They they modern definitions of architecture to an evaluation of the past. It is because these modern definitions are themselves Renaissancearchitecture in Italy pursued its course and assumed its precisely various forms rather from an aesthetic, and so to say, internal flawed-and Scott identifies several fallacies at their root-that impulsion than under the dictates of any external agencies. The the resulting interpretations are unacceptable.70 In a lengthy architectureof the Renaissance is an architectureof pre-eminently review, the literary, scientific, ethical, and biological models for Taste. The men of the Renaissance evolved a certain architectural architecture are dismissed one by one. Instead, for Scott, "archi- tecture is a humanised pattern of the world"; it stirs our physical memory and causes an aesthetic reaction that he defines else- 66. When Wittkower turned to his synthesis in the forties the seminal where as We, the viewer, transcribe ourselves into treatments of the Renaissance that attempted such a reading were still pleasure.71 those formulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. terms of architecture as it comes into sight and invest it with Such works were: Burckhardt,Architecture (see n. 30); Wolfflin, Renaissance human movement and human moods. This is the humanism of und Baroque(see n. 30); C. v. Stegmann and H. v. Geymiiller, Die architecture, he concludes.72 Architekturder Renaissancein Toscana, 11 vols. (Munich, 1885-1908); Frankl,Principles (see n. 35); Willich and Zucker, Baukunstder Renaissance Scott's subsequent reading of Renaissance architecture reflects (see n. 59); Frey, Gotik und Renaissance(see n. 59). Even though these his apperception-based aeshtetics. For example, the traditional syntheses address architecturalaesthetics they are not, strictly speaking, debate over the relationship between wall and column is dis- histories of theory as is Wittkower'sPrinciples. The majorityof these works missed him as confused reflect the current readings of art and architecture as Stilgeschichte, by thinking: Geistesgeschichte,and/or Kulturgeschichte.The works by Geymiiller, and Willich and Zucker, albeit more sachlich,fall more in the readily category In Renaissance architecture, one the wall becomes of than in that of histories of Wittkower'sattention to might say, Baugeschichte theory. articulateand its ideal its decoration.... texts as historical documents and as vehicles to the intellectual horizon of expresses propertiesthrough The classic orders, when for the the period was groundbreaking.From the 1920s, to Wittkower, scholar- applied decoratively, represented Renaissancebuilders an ideal of these stated as ship had increased substantially, yet the period had not known of expression qualities, additional proposals for a comprehensive interpretation. For example, generalities. The fallacy lies with the scientific prejudice which notwithstandingits title, Giovannoni's book does not offer a comprehen- insists on treating them as particularstatements of constructive fact sive picture of Renaissancearchitecture. Gustavo Giovannoni, L'architettura wherever they occur.73 del Rinascimento:Saggi, 2d ed. (Milan, 1935). With the generation coming to maturityin the 1920s-Pevsner, Giedion, Kaufmann,and Wittkower- Unlike Wittkower, who sees structural rationalism at work in the pendulum of attention was swinging from synthetic readings that processed the period as a whole based on its formal unity (the classical Alberti's buildings, Scott argues against a concern with the vocabulary),to readings that privileged the Renaissance'sstructuring and recognized its diversity.For example, see Sigfried Giedion, "LateBaroque 68. Scott,Architecture of Humanism,36. and Romantic Classicism" (Ph.D. diss., Munich, 1922); Nikolaus Pevs- 69. Scott,Architecture of Humanism,28-35. ner, "Gegenreformationund Mannierismus,"Repertoriumfiir Kunstwissen- 70. The romantic literary fallacy and the cult for nature and the schaft46 (1925): 259-85; Emil Kaufmann, "Die Architekturtheorieder picturesque, the mechanical fallacy or the cult for scientific logic in FranzosischenKlassik und des Klassizismus,"Repertoriumifur Kunstwissen- construction, the ethical fallacy or the cult for truth and morality, and schaft44 (1923-24); Rudolf Wittkower, "Zur Peterskuppel Michelange- finally, the biological fallacy,centered on the patternof growth and decay los" (see n. 34); and idem, "Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana" exhibited by organisms, are systematicallydefined, examined, and demol- (1934). ished by Scott one by one. Structured into individual chapters, the 67. On the history of the publication and Scott's criticism activity, see discussion of the fallacies makes up two-thirds of the book. Scott, David Watkin'sintroduction to TheArchitecture of Humanism,by Geoffrey Architectureof Humanism,40-141. Scott (London, 1980), ix-xxix. Subsequent references are from Geoffrey 71. Scott,Architecture of Humanism,178. Scott, TheArchitectureofHumanism (Gloucester, Mass., 1965), based on the 72. Scott,Architecture of Humanism,159. 2d edition of 1924. 73. Scott,Architecture ofHumanism, 92. PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 333

coincidence of constructional appearance and fact, and praises the mathematics. But it was not realised that the word has a different appeal to psychology rather than to abstract logic in the use of the bearing in the two cases. Our aesthetic taste is partly physical; and, while mathematical "proportion" belongs to the abstractintellect, orders. For him the scientific view fails adequately to distinguish aesthetic "proportion"is a preference in bodily sensation.77 between fact and appearance, between feeling and knowing: "The art of architecture studies not structure in itself, but the effects of Thus Scott associates numerical order with states of being and structure upon the human spirit."74 Once Scott vindicates fictive with making nature intelligible as an organic system through an or virtual structure, all the components of the columnar orders- act of apperception. For him architecture and science do not that is the capitals, bases, plinths, and cornices-can be rescued interact; architecture does not embody scientific truth, but, from the incidental and given an essential role in the reception of privileging vision in the act of comprehension, presents a deeply the building by the viewer: resonant metaphor for order.78 Whereas for Wittkower aesthetic judgment devolves from an explicit intellectual intention, for Thus, for example, the curves of the volutes are recognized as bold or Scott it is ultimately dependent on an intuitive, physically driven weak, tense or lax, powerful, flowing, and so forth. But we must will to form. recognise them as having these qualities by unconscious analogywith our own movements, since it is only in our own bodies that we know Wittkower's humanism is therefore not Scott's, and his choice the relation of the line-or movement-to the feeling it denotes.... of title when read in light of his polemical stance must be seen to The cornices and the other devices tie elements to force a together point deliberately to this difference. For Wittkower, humanism is single impression of mass upon the eye; the orders, the use of an intellectual configuration based on an appropriation of ancient rusticatedbases and batteredplinths speakto our sense of powerfully that of Platonic adjustedweight.75 thought, is, philosophy, Pythagorean mathemat- ics, and Euclidian geometry, at the hands of humanists, that is absorbed an act of cultural osmosis into architectural Such a conception of ornament as form is radically opposed to by theory. For Scott, on the other hand, humanism describes the Wittkower's, for whom ornament does not take on a determining body- consciousness Renaissance role either in the conception or the reception of architecture. of artistic production, the preemi- nence of the moment over the rational/ Instead, for Scott, it constitutes an essential psychological bridge physical/perceptual intellectual one.79 In the context between object and subject. of their concern with humanism, Once Scott takes aim at the fallacy that links science and art 77. Scott,ArchitectureofHumanism, 155. with his body-centered conception of architecture, his reading of 78. "Thus in making the masses, spaces and lines of architecture other traditional in discussions of Renais- proportion-the topos respond to our ideal stability, a measure of symmetry and balance are sance architecture-must necessarily follow. As writer and dilet- constantly entailed.... Nature, it is true, is for science an intelligible system. But the which the at one discovers in tante architect himself, he is particularly sensitive to the architec- groups eye, any glance, Nature are not intelligible.... Thus Order in Nature bears no relation to tural object as the end product of an artistic process.76 As such our act of vision. It is not humanised. It exists, but it continually eludes us. Scott recognizes the choices that have to be made in the course of This Order, which in Nature is hidden and implicit, architecturemakes to the It the that process and identifies the origin of these choices as the key patent eye. supplies perfect correspondencebetween the act of vision and the act of comprehension." Scott, Architectureof Humanism, problem. For him the issue is not the presence of a proportional 175-76. Compare with Le Corbusier, who in his Modulorstates: "I agree, coherence, which he as essential for architecture because accepts he replied to the Professor [mathematicianand historianAndreas Speiser, it is essential for nature, but the aesthetic basis for the choice. participant at the 1951 Congress on Proportion] nature is ruled by mathematics,and the masterpiecesof art are in consonance with nature; Thus he turns the discussion to that which lies beyond the use of they express the laws of nature and themselves proceed from these laws. proportions and in so sets himself from doing again poles apart Consequently they too are governed by mathematics, and the scholar's Wittkower: implacable reasoning and unerring formulae may be applied to art." Le Corbusier, Modulor(see n. 56), 29-30. In fact Le Corbusier brought his scale to Einstein at Princeton for verification, and paraphrases his The intervalsof a vulgar tune are not less mathematicalthan those of response: "The scientist tells us: 'This weapon shoots straight: in the nobler music.... It was realised that is a form of "proportion" matter of dimensioning, i.e. of proportions, it makesyour task more certain" [my emphasis]. Le Corbusier,Modulor, 58. 74. Scott, ArchitectureofHumanism, 96. 79. Even if Scott describes forms in terms of their most abstractrather 75. Scott, Architecture 165. That this of Humanism, conception of than mimetic components, his reading is apperception-orientedand he ornament is a critical of aspect Scott's discussion is confirmed by Rhys sees form arising from body consciousness ratherthan from an intellec- Carpenter,who the idea and the columnar orders as the develops presents tual effort to graspfundamental and universallaws. This recognition of an imitation "of familiar realities of world . . . an artificial sense, language overlap between abstraction of form and psychological/physiological which communicates architecturalemotion." Rhys Carpenter, The Aes- reception in architecture goes back to Schmarsow and Wolfflin, and is theticBasis of GreekArt (London, 118-19. 1921), conceded even by Worringer in acknowledging their work, though he 76. Scott worked with Cecil Pinsent on renovationsfor the Villa I Tatti otherwise attemptsto identify the two impulses-towards abstractionand for Bernard in The Berenson; fact, Architectureof Humanismis dedicated to towards empathy-as polar opposites (in which he follows a Wolfflinian Pinsent. On Scott's with see Ernest relationship Berenson, Samuels, model). Heinrich Wolfflin, "Prologomena," in Kleine Schrifien,ed. BernardBerenson: The a J. Makingof Legend(Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 103 Gantner (Basel, 1946), 13-47; August Schmarsow, UnserVerhaltnis zu den and 126. bildendenKiinsten (Leipzig, 1903); Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktionund 334 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994

both recognize the human analogy as significant for Renaissance his debt both to Theodor Lipps and Bernard Berenson.85Yet, theory, and both draw Michelangelo's "Letter to an Unknown more than to either, his reading of architectural aesthetics is Prelate" into their argument as a critical piece of evidence. Yet indebted to Wolfflin's Renaissanceund Barockand to the earlier their handling of the text revealstheir fundamentaldivergence: "Prologomena." In the latter, his doctoral dissertation of 1886, Wolfflin takes on the materialistapproach to the interpretationof Architecture,to communicatethe vital values of the spirit,must architectureand attemptsto demonstratethe validityof a psychol- appearorganic like the body.And a greatercritic than Vasari, Michel ogy-based architecturalaesthetics. His focus is the subject-object himself,touched on a truthmore it be, Angelo[sic] profound, may relationship, not the making of the object as such. For him the thanhe realised,when he wroteof architecture:"He thathath not corporeality(Korperlichkeit) of architectural(or tectonic) forms, is mastered,or doth not masterthe humanfigure, and in especialits the real vehicle of their that elicits an aesthetic anatomy, may never comprehend it" (Scott).80 expressive power response from the viewer, which he defines as "a state of organic Michelangelo,in a letter of about 1560, wrote that "thereis no well being" (organischesWohlbefinden).86 This is so because archi- questionbut that architectural members reflect the membersof Man tectural forms draw on and thatthose who do not know the humanbody cannot be good the Korpergefiihl,that is, the perceptual architects"(Wittkower).81 sympathy that exists between two body masses, the viewer's and the building's. Taking issue with Schopenhauer's definition of Wittkower clearly avoids the reference to anatomy in the closing architectureas a dialectic between Starrheitand Schwere,Wolfflin of the sentence that suggests Michelangelo's concern to go defines it in more dynamic terms as the representation of the beyond placement of members (and hence syntax) and to opposition between a force to form (Formkraft),an immanent will recognize the physicalityof bodies as fundamentalto architecture. within matter, and matter itself that longs (sehntsich) to become Thus reduced the passagecan then be used as evidence to support form.87For him, to cause a significant aesthetic impact, architec- a critical aspect of his thesis for a mathematicalbasis to Renais- sance architectureaesthetics.82 kosmos:Ideen zur Naturgeschichteund Geschichteder Menschheit(Leipzig, its historical Scott's is Beyond garb, argument ultimately 1856-65); Robert Vischer, Uber das optischeFormgefiihl (Leipzig, 1872); structuralin nature, since in reviewing Renaissancearchitecture Johann Volkelt, Der Symbolbegriffin der neuerenAsthetik (Jena, 1876); n. Adolf he attempts to extract principles of general validity referrableto Wolfflin, "Prologomena" (see 79); Giller, Zur Asthetikder Architektur(Stuttgart, 1887); idem, Die Entstehungder architektonischen form making and form and more to the reception generally Stilformen(Stuttgart, 1888); Theodor Lipps, Raumasthetik(Leipzig, 1897); nature of being. As he defines it, the aesthetic response elicited by idem, Asthetik:Psychologie des Schdnen und der Kunst, 2 vols. (Hamburg and architectureinvolves "a process of mental self-identificationwith Leipzig, 1903-6); idem, Zur Einfiihlung (Leipzig, 1912); Paul Stern, Einfuhlungund Associationin der neuerenAesthetik (Hamburg and Leipzig, the apparentphysical state of the object and a sympatheticactivity 1898). August Schmarsow, "VierterVortrag," in Unser Verhiltnis(see n. of the physical memory."83With these words Scott explicitly 79), 78-107; Worringer, Abstraktionund Einfuhlung(see n. 79); Rudolf places himself within the empathy (Einfiihlung)discourse current Metzger, Die dynamischeEmpfindung in deraufgewandten Kunst (Jena, 1917). For a selection and of relevanttexts related to this see at the time on the Continent.84Indeed, he openly acknowledges commentary issue, Henry Francis Mallgrave's recently released Empathy,Form and Space: Problemsin GermanAesthetics 1873-1893 (SantaMonica, 1994). This work was not availableto me at the time of writing this article. Einfiihlung:Ein Beitragzur Stilpsychologie(Munich, 1919 [1st ed. 1908]), 30 85. Scott, Architectureof Humanism (see n. 67), 159. His debt to and85. On the oppositionbetween Wolfflin's emphasis on bodymasses Berenson for whom he acted as both secretaryand architectin Florence is and Schmarsow'son space as perceptuallyprocessed, see Schwarzer, referrable to the latter's concept of "tactile forms" developed in The "ArchitecturalSpace" (see n. 59), 50. On the impactof the empathy- FlorentinePainters of 1896. Scott also acknowledges the one isolated theory on the rise of abstraction,see David Morgan,"The Idea of English attempt at importing these notions; Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), Abstractionin GermanTheories of the Ornamentfrom Kant to Kandin- The Beautiful,An Introductionto PsychologicalAesthetics (Cambridge, 1913). sky," The ournalofAesthetics and Art Criticism50 (Summer 1992): 231-42. 86. Wolfflin, "Prologomena"(see n. 79), 21. 80. Scott,Architecture ofHumanism, 164-65. 87. "Der Gegensatz von Stoff und Formkraft, der die gesamte or- 81. Wittkower,Principles, 101. The finaltwo sentencesof Michelange- ganische Welt bewegt, ist das Grundthema der Architektur. Die asthe- lo's letterto which both authorsrefer runs as follows:"Because it is a tische Anschauung ubertragt diese intimste Erfahrung unseres Korpers certainthing, that the membersof architecturederive from the members auch auf die leblose Natur. Injedem Ding nehmen wir einen Willen an, of man.Who has not been or is not a goodmaster of the humanbody, and der zur Form sich durchzwingen versucht und den Widerstand eines mostof allof anatomy,cannot understand anything of it."As translatedin formlosen Stoffes zu iiberwinden hat.... Nach all dem Gesagten kann David Summers, Michelangeloand the Languageof Art (Princeton, 1981), kein Zweifel sein, dass Form nicht als etwas Ausserliches dem Stoff 418 and573 n.l. uberworfen wird, sondern aus dem Stoff herauswirkt als immanenter 82. "As man is the imageof God andthe proportionsof his bodyare Wille.... Der Stoff sehnt sich gewissermassen der Form entgegen." producedby divine will, so the proportionsin architecturehave to Wolfflin, "Prologomena" (see n. 79), 22-23. Scott also takes over from embraceand the cosmic express order."Wittkower, Principles, 101. Wolfflin the concept of Formgeschmack(Scott's taste) and Formgefiihl 83. Scott,Architectureof Humanism(see n. 67), 196. (elsewhere, Formphantasie)that he opposes to the materialist view, 84. Someof the criticaltexts for the development of thistheory and the traditionally ascribed to Semper (starting with Riegl) of the origin of debatesurrounding it were:Friedrich Th. Vischer,Asthetik oder Wissen- architecturalform in the technical reality of building: "Eine technische schaftdes Schonen, 4 vols. (Reutlingenand Leipzig,1856-58); Hermann Entstehung einzelner Formen zu leugnen, liegt mir natiirlich durchaus Lotze, Geschichteder Asthetik in Deutschland(Munich, 1868); idem, Mikro- fern. Die Natur des Materials,die Art seiner Bearbeitung,die Konstruk- PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 335 ture must draw on the "deeply human experience of the forming classicusfor the period as it constitutes one of the debates that of unformed matter" that underlies the operation of nature characterizethe early modernist phase.91Almost three decades itself.88 In this model ornament plays an essential role as after Wolfflin's formulation, what had started as conceptual rhetorical device precisely because it is superfluous: resulting options within the field of aesthetics had heated up into a from an excess of energy (Formkraft),it manifestsvisibly this force full-fledged confrontationand warranteda partisanstance such as at work. Proportion, symmetry, harmony, and the Golden Scott's. It is a measure of the prominence of these issues to Section, that is, all number-based categories are treated in a currentarchitectural discourse that Scott's polemicalArchitecture of similar way. Though he recognizes them as essential criteria for Humanismshould come out in 1914, the same year that saw the organizing form, for him they do not testify to a mathematical destabilization of the Deutscher Werkbund as the result of the conception of the universe, but to a sensual conception of clash between the two factions.92 mathematics: proportions reflect breathing rhythms, and the Unlike Scott's, the other available syntheses of Renaissance Golden Section triggers a deep consciousness of physical condi- architecturalthought took less partisan positions, though these tion.89It is an architecturalvocabulary that enhances the essence of the opposition between Formkraftand inert matterand makes it and "Die des Stoffes psychologicallyresonant to a viewer, that is it elicits empathy, that Renaissanceim modernenKunstgewerbe; idem, Belebung als der Sch6nheit,"in at the of the attractsWolfflin's interest and attention and is Prinzip Essays[1910]) beginning ultimately explic- twentiethcentury. Endell may have derivedhis views from attending itly addressedby him in his Renaissanceund Barock of 1888. From TheodorLipps's lectures in Munichand from Wolfflin. This is relatedby the general and abstract"Prologomena," that in itself draws on Fritz Schmalenbach,Jugendstil: Ein Beitragzu Theorieund Geschichteder Fldchenkunst(Wiirzburg, 1953) as cited in "The Idea of Abstrac- and synthesizesthe availableliterature on empathy,the psychology- Morgan, tion" (see n. 79), 241 n. 68, who also discusses the debates within the based and architecturalaesthetics he is body-centered promotes ranksof promoters of Einfiihlungtheorie.On the impactof empathy-theory thus appropriatedwithin the mainstreamof architecturalhistory on expressionist aesthetics, see, for example, Ian Boyd White, introduc- tion to The ChainLetters: Architectural Fantasies BrunoTaut and His by Wolfflin himself. Crystal by Circle,ed. Ian B. White (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). For an even earlier Seen from this then, Scott's of the Renais- perspective reading overlap between empathy aesthetics and architecturalproduction in the sance as an example of good architecturein general indicates that nineteenth century, see also Mead, CharlesGarnier's Paris Opera (see n. 5), he offers an argument that stands at a midway point between 253-59. For a very useful insider's evaluationof the relationshipbetween Germanaesthetics and architecture,see Zucker,"The Paradox" n. Wolfflin's historical account and his broader reflection on archi- (see 36), 8-14. tecture initiated in the "Prologomena."Where he exceeds Wolff- The intellectual context surroundingthe formulation of the Einfihlung lin, however, is in his more polemical position towards contem- theory and its intersections with architectural theory and design is and charted to date. See porary practices,which clearly grounds his argument in current particularlycomplex only partially particularly Harry F. Mallgrave's,introduction to Wagner,Modern Architecture (see n. criticism. Scott's first and is to make a object, foremost, strong 3); Mallgrave, "Adolf Loos and the Ornament of Sentiment," Midgard1 case for Einfiihlungwhile couching it in an argument about (1987): 85; idem, review of Francesco Dal Co, Figuresof Architectureand 51 Form and Renaissance architecture.Indeed the Einfiihlungdiscourse, with Thought,JSAH (1992): 336-38; Mallgrave, ed., Empathy, Space(see n. 84). For other discussions of these issues and their roots in roots in nineteenth-century formalist aesthetics and the budding nineteenth-century aesthetics, see most recently Mitchell Schwarzer, new science of perceptualpsychology substantiallyaffected archi- "Ontology and Representationin Karl Botticher's Theory of Tectonics," tecturalcriticism and production and fed the argumentin favorof JSAH 52 (1993): 267-80; and Dal Co, Figuresof Architecture(see n. 3), 182-97. Relevant to this discussion are also the questions proposed most will-to-art and against standardization,mass production, and the recentlyby BarryBergdoll for the session, "Theories of Visual Perception, rationlizationof the artisticprocess.90 This confrontation is a locus the Body, and Architecturein the Age of Historicism, 1750-1920," at the forty-seventh annual meeting of the Society of ArchitecturalHistorians, Philadelphia,Penn., April 1994. tion werden nie ohne Einflusssein. Was ich aber aufrechterhalten 91. See the 1914 Werkbundexhibition debate between Muthesius mochte-namentlichgegeniiber einigen neuen Bestrebungen-istdas, (upholding Typisierungand rationalization)and van de Velde (upholding dassdie Technikniemals einen Stil schafft,sondern wo manvon Kunst expression and hence the will-to-art) as a manifestationof the schism. For spricht,ein bestimmtesFormgefiihl immer das Primare ist. Die technisch the statements made by the two opponents, see Tim and Charlotte erzeugtenFormen diirfen diesem Formgefuhl nicht widersprechen; sie Benton, with Sharp, Dennis, eds., Formand Function: A SourceBookfor the konnen nur da Bestand haben, wo sie sich dem Formgeschmack, der Historyof Architectureand Design: 1890-1939 (London, 1975). The diver- schon da ist, fiigen." W6lfflin, Renaissanceund Barock (see n. 30), 57. This gence in approach was commonplace enough to be referred to by passage is also picked up as significant by Worringer, Abstraktionund DagobertFrey in his readingof Renaissanceart and architecture.Frey, Einfihlung(see n. 79), 11-12. Gotik und Renaissance(see n. 59), 292. For the frequently blurred 88. Wolfflin, "Prologomena,"24. boundariesbetween the two camps see, for example, Peter Behrens's shift 89. W6offlin,"Prologomena," 32. from a functionally expressive and organismic conception of form to an 90. For the absorption of perceptualistconcepts (associatedto tecton- emphasis on stereotomical assemblies in the context of his involvement ics, experience of space, organic analogies for form, and abstraction) with the industrial world of the AEG. Stanford Anderson, "Modern developed in the field of aesthetics into architectural discourse, see Architecture and Industry: Peter Behrens, the AEG, and Industrial particularlythe expressionist position and the tradition going back to Design," Oppositions21 (1980): 79-97. August Endell (especially his series of articlesfor DekorativeKunst of 1897 92. For a synopsis of the implications of this clash for the Werkbund and 1898) and Van de Velde (especiallyKunstgewerbliche Laienpredigten, Die (and for modernism), see Pommer and Otto, Weissenhof(seen. 3), 5-15. 336 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994

too absorbed current architectural issues and responded to increasinglydivergent conceptions of art making.Thus conceived contemporarytrends in aesthetics.93For example, in his Entwick- and coming as it does at a moment when this cleavage is lungsphasender neueren Baukunst of 1914 Franklattempts to bridge heightened, his argument is neither strong enough to be the Burckhardt'scultural history with Wolfflin's autonomous object purveyor of a new Renaissanceparadigm nor useful as a foil for in an effort to reconcile form with content, artistic will, and Wittkower,who inherits a definition of architecturedeveloped in intellectual inquiry. The four categories with which he proposes the subsequent decades and that reflects a changed aesthetic to analyze architecturalform, that is spatialform, corporealform, horizon.97 visual form, and purposive intention, testify to this attempt at Like Frankl's Entwicklungsphasen,Dagobert Frey's Gotik und synthesis. Under spatialformFrankl identifies syntactic relation- Renaissanceof 1929, a relatively forgotten text today, presents ships between individualvolumetric cells that result in the overall points of contactwith Wittkower'sPrinciples. It is Frey who makes spatial experience. Since for him space is experienced through a strong case for a kinship between music and architecture-with movement, and movement occurs in plan, his syntacticallaws are specific referenceto harmony and space conception-on the basis illustratedas plan relationships.With his second category,corporeal of a common approachto proportion; it is Frey who brings up form, Franklposits a narrativeabout the dialectic between load and Gafurio and Zarlino in this context as well as Alberti's "musical support enacted by the walls and columns, which, as the tactile proportion"; and it is still Frey who, like Wittkower himself, fabric of the building, define space and act as anthropomorphic avoids ornament and reduces forms to elemental geometrical devices; he stops just short of describing them as empathy configurations (cube, prism, cylinder, sphere) testifying to a bridges.94Finally, with visualformhe addresses the reception of current tendency towards abstractionevident in this heightening form by the viewer as a seeing subject who synthesizes (and of geometry.98Though broadly conceived, Frey's primary issues interprets)an optical form (or mental image) from the variety of are, like Wittkower's, mathematical space, perspective, and the information provided.95 While his first three categories are harmonic tonal system. Also like Wittkower, he turns to Cassirer, perception-related-spatial, tactile, and visual-and draw from from whom he borrows the main premise for his argument. the then-current physiological aesthetics of both Wolfflin and Unlike Wittkower, however, his emphasis is not on the overlap Schmarsow,the last category,purposive intention, addresses content between art and science but on Cassirer'sneo-Kantian reading of as intended meaning and places it in a cultural context.96Yet this Renaissanceconceptualizations of space (and hence of the self in argument for signification that points to a kinship with Wittkow- the universe) and on Panofsky'sseminal presentationof perspec- er's Principles,as did his syntactic reading of plans, is neutralized tive construction as their tangible manifestation in art.99Frey's by a perceptual one: the agent through whom Frankl effects his emphasis on space conception as a taxonomic device for his syntactical analysis is the moving viewer; the mental image history is substantially different from Wolfflin's (and from synthesized by this viewer reveals a form of impressionism, and Scott's) who focuses on the tectonic-tactileaspect of building and the tectonic fabric is apprehended through empathetic response. its empathy-generatingcapacity, on form in its physicality (Kor- Equally divided between the rationaland the perceptual,Frankl's is one of reconciliation of had become strategy what, by 1914, 97. AlthoughFrankl's emphasis on spaceconceptions affected Giedion, he used (andtransformed) the argumentto his own to differentends. On 93. See particularlythe worksby Burckhardt,Geymiiller, Willich and Frankland Giedion, refer to Georgiadis,Sigfried Giedion (see n. 1), Zucker,Frey (see n. 66), andFrankl (see n. 35). 131-32;and Kostof, "The Mark of SigfriedGiedion" (see n. 1), 195. 94. "Thetectonic shell, which formsa continuousboundary for the 98. Frey,Gotik und Renaissance (see n. 59), 76. Not onlydoes he alertus enclosedspatial form, a skinso to speak,is so thoroughlymodeled that it to the issueof musicalproportions, but he statesunequivocally that "all is possibleto sense tactuallyeverywhere beneath the skin the solid Renaissanceaesthetics is based on proportion,on the relationshipbetween skeletonwith all itsjoints. Continuing the metaphor,I mustadd that it is the spatial dimensions to each other" (thus stating with greater force a not the skeletonitself that is present-not the preparedbones-but the position already encountered in Burckhardtand Wolfflin), and thereby firmarticulated structure, including the musclesthat are connected to the anticipatesWittkower's emphasis on proportionas theissue of Renaissance bonesand thatmake the membersactively movable. We cannotsee the theory. Frey, Gotik und Renaissance,79. For another precedent, see also thinbones themselves; we canonly sense them beneath the musculature." Hautecoeur's argument that focuses on this issue (though not on music) Frankl,Principles (see n. 35), 112. in an article highly praisedby Wittkower. Hautecoeur, "Les proportions" 95. "Not only the frontalityof all individualviews, but also the (see n. 30). characterof theirsynthesis-what I call the architecturalimage-ensues 99. Although in general terms Frey's Geistesgeschichtereading of the from this. The architecturalimage [or mentalimage] is not conceived Renaissanceis indebted to Max Dvorak-a fact Frey pointedly acknowl- fromfixed viewpoints but remains the uniquethree-dimensional concep- edges-his specific frame of reference is Cassirer'sDas Erkenntnisproblem tion of the whole." Frankl,Principles, 146. James Ackerman notes the (see n. 37), and Individuumund Kosmos. By his own admission, his connectionbetween Frankl's mental image and the contemporarydevel- interpretationis also influenced by Schopenhauer'sDie Weltals Willeund opmentof Gestaltpsychology. James Ackerman, introduction to Frankl, Vorstellung,especially by his concept ofAnschaulichkeit,offorma substantialis Principles(see n. 35), viii. as ultimate knowledge (Erkenntnis);Frey, Gotikund Renaissance (see n. 59), 96. "The formalelements are changedby internalcauses, then, and 266. Frey also draws on Paul Zucker (whose work he cites), who had been this changeis sealedby externalcauses, by the new intention."Frankl, working with the neo-Kantian concepts of space and time since the early Principles,190. See also Schwarzer,"Architectural Space" (see n. 59), on twenties and applied them to Renaissancearchitecture in a contemporary Frankl'srelationship to Schmarsowianaesthetics. work to Frey's.Zucker, "Der Begriffder Zeit" (see n. 59). PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 337 perlichkeit),in short on the Formgefiihl,rather than on abstract role but his emphasis on Alberti and Palladio as paradigmsshows configurations and relationships that engender a Raumgefiihl.00 a conception of Renaissance architecture that is "white" (or at Although like Wittkower, Frey rejects perceptual readings of least mainly monochromatic), of "tooled," precise, and few stone form, his main argument is not one thatWittkower supportssince contours.102The colorful, exuberant,multi-material architecture his own emphasis is not on experience (of space) but on intellect. of Bologna, Milan, Venice (with the exception of Palladio), and Even though he subsequently works out the Cassirer-Panofsky- Naples then, is constructed by implication into the heterogenous, Frey proposalfor architectureas a manifestationof"being-in-the- the "other,"that falls outside the definition of the Renaissance. cosmos" in his article on Brunelleschi and perspectivepublished Though alongside Wolfflin both Frankl and Frey bring some- in 1953, his concern is ultimately with intellectual instruments, thing that Wittkower also uses, be it syntax, proportion, musical not with architecture-as-event.'?0 theory, or signification/intentionality,their argumentsare neither Read against his foils, Wittkower's construction achieves a singled out by him nor do they survive as part of the reference crisper contour. Firstly, while Wittkower responds to Frankl's corpus for Renaissancestudies. In selecting Scott-whose direct syntacticalanalysis, he elects to leave the perceptual concerns to and polemical acknowledgement of allegiance to the Einfiihlung one side, as he did with Scott's, and pursues a rationalistcourse. tradition places his argument squarelywithin that debate-as his For him syntax is not a matterof experience (through movement) foil, Wittkower then sets himself apart from a specific and but of rationalawareness: his viewer responds to form intellectu- significant line of thinking that affected both architecturalhistory ally rather than perceptually, abstracting its essential or deep and theory in the earlyyears of modernism. Wittkower'sdebate is structure. Shifting the center of gravity of the discussion of neither with Wolfflin and his concept of style nor with Frankland Renaissance aesthetics away from the physiological and percep- Frey, though his reading supplants theirs as categorically as it tual towards proportion, Wittkower thus offers a link between supplants Scott's. Wittkower's debate is with the perceptual humanism and abstraction.Secondly, this form (and structure) is readings of architecturebecause he works with a "will to truth" two-dimensional and is manifested either as plan or elevation: that originates in a conception constructed in antithesis to that neither space (hence movement) nor the sculptural presence of representedby Scott. And though Wittkower keeps his historical the wall (hence the tactile or haptic) is at issue. In fact, for distance from contemporary debates and does not see them Wittkower, the masonry shell as sculpturaland rhetorical instru- impinging upon his interpretationand hence upon his historical ment dissolves into a site for the expression of actual structure. objectivity, the polemical frame within which he places it Thirdly, Wittkower makes proportion almost his single issue and nonetheless declareshis bias. Thus Wittkower'srhetorical opposi- in doing so ties art and science into a single epistemological tion to and victory over Scott's hedonism ultimately indicatesthat undertaking. Borrowing selectively from Cassirer (and possibly the succession of constructions for Renaissance architecture Frey) he achieves a subtle redirectionof emphasis from character- follow the patternof succession of paradigmsfor modernism, for istic space conceptions to the underlying scientific matrices that the rational triumphs over the subjective, Typisierungover Ein- inform them. Fourthly, unlike his predecessors, Wittkower fiihlung and other organicist positions, and, for all intents and concentrates on the intention of the architect, on deliberate and purposes, the latter options are erased from the official accounts purposeful artistic action, not on a passive (and hence anony- of modernism.103 mous) subject through whom, as if through a conduit, the will to 102. the use of ornament Renaissance architects- art manifests itself. Finally, with his approach he endorses an Though by especially the orders-has emerged as a recurrent concern in the attitude toward ornament that determine the of later helped path scholarshipof the past fifteen years,a synthetic chartingof the theory of its scholarship: not only does he relegate ornament to a secondary deployment has not been attempted. For exemplaryground work on the orders by a community of scholars, see Jean Guillaume, ed., L'Emploides 100. An exampleof Frey'sapproach is the followingevaluation of ordresa la Renaissance(Paris, 1992). To date there exists no work that modernarchitecture with which he brings his text to a close: "Der reexaminescomprehensively the aestheticsof ItalianRenaissance architec- kiinstlerischgestaltete Raum, gleich viel ob Korperoder Hohlraum, zeigt ture. One notable exception-though focused more on the social sich als Durchdringungund Verschneidungideeler prismatischer Ge- implicationsof art than aesthetics-is John Onians, Bearersof Meaning: The bilde, die gleichsamdie Realisationder dem Raumean sich eigener ClassicalOrders in Antiquity,the Middle Ages and the Renaissance(Princeton, kristallinischerStruktur darstellen." Frey, Gotik und Renaissance (see n. 1988). For a recent reading of Renaissance aesthetics with a focus on 288. 59), ornament, see Payne, "Betweengiudizioand auctoritas"(see n. 35). 101. Rudolf Wittkower,"Brunelleschi and 'Proportionin Perspec- 103. Scott's rejection of the predominant modernist emphasis on tive,' "Journal of the Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes 16 (1953): 275-91. actualstructure as expressive languagein favour of the virtual structureof Wittkower on an expands argumentformulated, albeit in more general the classical vocabularywas immediately noted by the profession. J. L. Giulio terms,by CarloArgan, "The Architecture of Brunelleschiand the Ball, review of Scott, The Architectureof Humanism(see n. 67), in RIBA of in the Origins PerspectiveTheory FifteenthCentury," Journal of Journal(November 1914-October 1915): 3-6. It is indeed this empathy- Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes 8 (1946): 96-121. Apart from the oriented aspect of his thesis that met with the most resistance:in 1915 the characterizationof Renaissancearchitecture, in which Wittkowerulti- reviewer for The Builderfinds it hard to understand;in 1925 the reviewer differsfrom Mrs.Wittkower recalls mately Frey, thatat a methodological for ArchitecturalReview states that in the intervening years questioning of levelhe the latter's rejected philosophicalapproach for an interpretation of this thesis has been confirmed and that the dispute is still active. art. Anonymous, review of Scott, TheArchitecture of Humanism,in The Builder 338 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994

In 1929 Frey recognized two opposed camps in the modern criticism by no lesser a figure than Sigfried Giedion, the absence production of architecture: on the one hand, those concerned of a context for science in these discussions, the most significant with the geometrical rationalization of space (he lists Le Cor- concept galvanizing modernist thought, necessarily placed these busier, Oud, and Mallet-Stevens as examples) and those con- readings outside the main arena upon which architecture received cerned with the treatment of space as cellular structure, as body, a (new) definition.105 The fact that it required Wittkower's more on the other (exemplified by Scharoun, Haring, and De Klerk). single-minded position to gain the status of a paradigm indicates Though antithetical, he puts them down to a manifestation of the paradoxically that it confirmed, stated explicitly and crisply same Grundanschauung of space-time.104 In his 1938-39 Norton something that was already there, ready to receive it. And this has lectures (later published as Space, Time andArchitecture),seeking to to do with the historical and theoretical project within which demonstrate a well-defined rather than dialectical modernity, Principles and its reception is inscribed. This reception proves its Giedion does not take this approach and privileges the anorganic rootedness in the contemporary situation of a final rejection of the over the organic stream as he presents abstract configurations Einfiihlung and other body-grounded approaches over the entered into by structural elements that manifest the deeper Typisierung lines of thinking of victorious modernism. As such, structure of space itself as the only language of modernism. Wittkower's is a post-Giedion argument; it absorbs Frey and Although within architectural criticism and production the anti- Frankl into a position that is part of the prevalent definition of thesis between rationalist and subjectivist definitions of architec- architecture, of the current paradigm.106 ture had therefore worked itself out by the late forties in favor of a n. unilateral ideology for modernism-the latter having been dis- 105. On Giedion, Zucker, and Frey, see 59. 106. Mrs. Wittkower told me that while Wittkower did not approveof carded-this had not yet happened within a historical synthesis. Giedion's-and often neither of Pevsner's-methodological orientation, and and Wittkower no Between Scott (and Wolfflin, Frankl, Frey) he had read their books and was well acquainted with the issues of new synthesis had been offered. It is this gap that he fills and that emerging modernism. Wittkower had always been deeply interested in architecture,both modern and historical. he had intended to raises his argument to the status of paradigm. Originally study architecture, but, disappointed by the curriculum at Berlin, had In alternatives or a reconciliation, and offering attempting transferredto Heidelberg to study psychology, and, since it was too late to hence not explicitly placing themselves in either one camp or the register, he moved to Wiirzburg for a semester of archeology and finally settled on art a short while at Munich with with other, Frankl and Frey stand outside this ideological dialectic that history (for Wolfflin, whose teaching he was dissatisfied,and then at Berlin with Goldschmidt). ultimately shaped the agenda of mature modernism and within Even if his early writings do not display this interest, Mrs. Wittkower which there is a necessary place for the Renaissance. Though Frey (who herself was trained as an interior decoratorand had intended to go offers a neo-Kantian reading of architecture by focusing on and study at the Bauhaus in the 1920s) told me that it came through in all his letters and comments, and that they were both familiarwith modernist conceptualizations of space-time, as does Frankl (albeit to a lesser publicationsand debates, Le Corbusier's et al., ("we read it all"), and had and these are into degree), although applications appropriated even gone to see the WeissenhofSiedlung in 1927 ("the only art historiansto do so"). This interest in modern art and criticism is also evident in Wittkower'searly work. See, for example, Rudolf Wittkower, "Die dritte 108 (1915): 25-26; Lionel Budden, review of Scott's, The Architectureof r6mische Biennale," Kunstchronikund Kunstmarkt59, n.f. 35 (1925): Humanism,in ArchitecturalReview 58 (1952): 207-8. 138-39; and idem, "Die StadtebaulicheZukunft Roms im 20. Jahrhun- On the modernist orthodoxy with respect to expressionism and other dert," Kunstchronikund Kunstmarkt59, n.f. 35 (1926): 673-77. Although alternativestributary to the empathyand organicistdiscourse, see Giedion, this interest did not lead him to enter the arenaof modernist debates as it Space, Time, who does not include Scharoun, Mendelsohn, Gropius's did Pevsner, he continued a dialogue with the profession to which his early work, and Bruno Taut (who is given only a brief mention). Though later (and famous) lectures at the Liverpool School of Architecture, his rejection characterizes Giedion's position from the twenties into the awareness of contemporary concerns with the fourth dimension and forties, the later editions of Space,Time (especially the 1956 edition) show non-Euclidian geometry (evident in his paper delivered at the Congress a gradualacceptance of the expressionist contribution. On this pattern in on Proportion of 1951) and his (few) book reviews for ArchitecturalReview Giedion's readingof expressionism, see Giorgiadis,Sigfried Giedion (see n. (which show familiaritywith current architecturalcurricula) bear witness. 1), 14. Though Pevsner includes the work of Poelzig his evaluationof the Rudolf Wittkower, "Safety in Numbers," review of R. W. Gardner,A expressionistcontribution is negative:"The real solid achievement had its Primerof Proportionin theArts of Formand Music, in ArchitecturalReview 100 source not in Sant'Elia,not in Poelzig and Mendelsohn, but in Behrens (1946): 53; for a synopsis of Wittkower's paper, "Su alcuni aspetti della and his great pupil Walter Gropius." Pevsner, Pioneers(see n. 3), 211. proporzione nel medioevo e nel Rinascimento,"given at the congress, see Hitchcock is less polemical yet his selection is ultimately no less partisan, "II primo convengo internazionale sulle proporzioni nelle arti," Atti e since his modern pantheon is also focused on Le Corbusier, Oud, rassegnatecnica della societa degli ingegneri e degliarchitetti in Torino6 (1952): Gropius, Mies, and Rietveld, and he presents the expressionistposition as 119-35; Wittkower, "SubjectivelySpeaking," review of Miloutine Boris- lateralto the formation of a "New Pioneer Manner." Hitchcock, Modern savli6vitch, Les theoriesde l'architecture,in ArchitecturalReview 111 (1952): Architecture(see n. 56), 158-62. Unlike these laterwriters, and although he 265. However, Wittkower apparentlydid not meet Le Corbusier when he too supports a sachlichand ingenieurgemdssarchitecture, Gustav Adolf Platz lectured on the Modulor on 18 December 1947 at the Architectural allows a much broader representation of modern idioms. He includes Association in London (on the occasion of the AA Centenary). It is also many more countries and architects that do not appear in the reduced significant that the observation-which amounts to a public accolade- palette of the forties: Theodor Fischer, Taut, Poelzig, H6ger, Mendel- that Principlesand the Modulorwere the most discussed books at MIT and sohn, Tessenow, Schumacher, and others receive significant coverage. Zurich in 1950 (reportedby the Smithsons and noted by Millon) should GustavAdolfPlatz, Die Baukunstder neuesten Zeit, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1930). come from none other than Giedion himself. Alison and Peter Smithson, 104. Frey, Gotikund Renaissance (see n. 59), 288. letter to the editor, RIBAJournal59 (1952): 140. PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 339

The receptionof Wittkower'sprinciples more positively a common intellectual ground within which such That Wittkower appliesa modernist matrixto his readingof the exchanges could occur. Further, since like Rowe's early essays Renaissanceis made additionally evident by its reception. How- Casabella played an important role in the subsequent development ever, in this instance it is not the reception within the institution of a critique of modernist tenets, the fact of this absorption into of art history, though in itself overwhelming, that calls for precisely these two contexts and at precisely this time raises the comment, but the reception within the contemporary critical question of Wittkower's role at this juncture and offers the literature.107The absorptionofArchitectural Principles into architec- potential of insight into a complex period in the history of modernism. tural criticism took essentially two forms: on the one hand, Wittkower'sargument was appropriatedby others in the develop- In his "Mathematics of the Ideal Villa," Rowe seizes the most ment of new critical perspectives and on the other it was salient aspect of Wittkower's thesis, his identification of a popularized as such through architecturaljournals and symposia. syntax-based discourse in the Renaissance, and uses it to arrive at a Thus it surfaced in ArchitecturalReview as part of Colin Rowe's new reading of Le Corbusier's architecture. Struck by the "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa"; it also became availableto presence of similar syntactical devices in the work of (Wittkow- the profession at large in Wittkower's own contributions to the er's) Palladio and Le Corbusier, Rowe draws together the Villa interdisciplinary Congress on Proportion in the Arts of 1951 Malcontenta with the Villa Stein and evaluates their respective (sequel of the 1951 Milan Triennale), for the Architects'Yearbook in compositional strategies. This concentration on syntax allows him 1953, for Casabellain 1959, and for Deadalusin 1960.108 Thus not only to bring Palladio within the orbit of modern criticism, Wittkower took his place in the forefront of criticism alongside but, more generally, to offer implicitly a strategy for appropriating designers such as Ove Arup, Joseph Samona, Patrick Heron, historical exemplars into modernist design without openly ques- Giancarlo de Carlo, Alison and Peter Smithson (ArchitectsYear- tioning its programmatic rejection of such borrowing.110 Even if book),in journals edited by Pevsner (ArchitecturalReview under J. he follows Wittkower's lead and attributes differences in the two M. Richards'sgeneral editorship), and Ernesto Rogers (Casabella), designs to culturally specific causes, the very fact of his joining in direct dialogue with Giedion, Corbusier, Bruno Zevi, Max them into one discussion suggests a community of problems that Bill, and Gino Severini (1951 Congress).109Beyond suggesting transcends historical periods and that makes the past relevant for that Wittkower's issues were in the air, this reception indicates the present. In explicitly presenting syntax as that common concern and denominator he offers a viable formal strategy for 107. On the receptionof Wittkower'sPrinciples within art history, see communication between a contemporary abstraction-based aes- n. 9. The most important exhaustive on the study(with bibliography) thetic and the historical tradition. Once this is accepted as a viable impactof Wittkower'sthesis on the architecturalprofession is Millon, the of Rowe's testifies to this "RudolfWittkower" (see n. 9). Not mentionedby Millon,but relatedto premise-and reception reading me byMrs. Margot Wittkower, is the extraordinarypopularity of thebook effect-the past becomes indeed Giedion's "eternal present" and in thefifties and its withinmass culture: was absorption Principles required can be reprocessed as such. Both the subsequent relevance of readingfor the adulteducation course on architecturalhistory offered by Palladio (in particular) and of classicism (in to the the BBC for two yearsrunning. Alongside the enthusiasticreception by general) the younggeneration of architects(to whom Wittkowerhad lecturedat formulation of a postmodern vocabulary and the syntactic reinter- suchas Liverpool), the Smithsonsand Voelcker, whom Millon records, it pretations of the Corbusian vocabulary of the sixties that eventu- is a testamentto the relevanceof the book that even a less-than- ally lead to a linguistic formulation of architecture-as in the sympatheticreviewer such as A. S. G. Butlersaw Principles as a potentially salutaryand hence relevant contribution to contemporarydesign. In fact, work of Peter Eisenman-find their origins here."' his recommendationfor a simplifiedversion for architecturaljournals (andhence for the practitioners)is exactlythe paththat the receptionof Wittkowertook. A. S. G. Butler, review of Wittkower,Architectural more like a glamorous film opening with Wittkower and Le Corbusier in Principlesin theAge of Humanism,inJournal of the RoyalInstitute of British the role of the two stars. Architects59 59-60. (1951): 110. Following the direction he identified here, Rowe himself 108. "The pursued ColinRowe, Mathematicsof the IdealVilla," The Mathemat- his investigationson the reciprocalillumination that modernist architec- ics of the Ideal Villa and Other 1-28 Essays(Cambridge, Mass., 1976): [1st ture and historicalforms cast upon each other in a subsequent essaywhere ArchitecturalReview publ. (1947)]; RudolfWittkower, "InternationalCon- he explores the problem of signification (and takes on Colin on in Giedion). gress Proportion the Arts,"Burlington Magazine 94 (1952):52-53; Rowe, "Mannerism and Modern Architecture,"Architectural Review 107 idem, "Systemsof Proportion"(see n. 54); idem, "L'architetturadel (1950): 289-99. Rinascimento" (see n. 40); idem, "The ChangingConcept of Propor- 111. See especially the work of the so-called New York Five: Eisen- tion,"Daedalus (Winter 199-215; "LeCorbusier's 1960): idem, Modulor," man, Hejduk, Meier, Gwathmey, and Graves. For an example of the in Four GreatMakers ModernArchitecture of (New York, 1963), 196-204. linguistic probings by Eisenman, see Peter Eisenman, House X Fora listof Wittkower's (New nearlycomplete publicationsup toJune1966, see York, 1982). On the relationship between Eisenman and Rowe and on "The of in in the Writings RudolfWittkower," Essays HistoryofArchitecture syntax as the departure point for Eisenman's postmodern Presentedto ed. D. linguistic RudolfWittkower, Fraser,H. Hibbard, and M. J. Lewine explorations, see Rosalind Krauss, "The Death of a Hermeneutic Phan- (London,1969), 377-81. For an see DonaldM. updatedlist, Reynolds, tom: Materialization of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman," ed., The Wittkower:A Writingsof Rudolf Bibliography(New York, 1989). Architectureand Urbanism(January 1980): 189-219. In his article of 1972 109. On 25 March1994 Ackermantold me that James the congress,at Millon argues that Wittkower and Rowe galvanized the which he also receivedso much subsequent participated, attentionthat it seemed (short-lived) Palladian(and classical) interest and studies. Though this is 340 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994

What makes the apparentparadox of a reabsorptionof history Although he deploys the scholarly apparatusof art history and within modernism possible, and what allowed Rowe to make use inscribes his argument within its institutional boundaries,Witt- of Wittkower's Renaissance in the first place, is due to the kower thereforeprocesses history-specifically the Renaissance- ontological premise that informs both their arguments and that from within the same horizon as Giedion's. His essential prin- constitutes a familiar modernist matrix. In his reformulations of ciples of Renaissance theory and mutatis mutandisproduction Principlesfor architecturaljournals,Wittkower makes this ontologi- confirm Giedion's metahistoricallinks that place modernism in a cal aspect of his thinking explicit when he states: "Nobody will continuous stream and give it an ontological validation. In this deny that our psycho-physical make-up requires the concept of way, Giedion's privileging of classicist architectureover Gothic order, and, in particular, of mathematical order.... Modern (which he doesn't even mention), particularlyof the Renaissance psychology supports the contention that the quest for a basic as espritnouveau because it is rational,because it is scientific, and order and harmony lies deep in human nature."112With this because it provides a discipline that brings order, receives the opening statement that introduces his book to an audience of imprimaturfrom historical scholarship. In thus offering the architects, Wittkower asserts a will to order and openly posits possibility of a homogenous architecturaldiscourse by implicitly permanently valid and hence metahistoricalconditions that lead bestowing the authority claimed by his craft upon such readings to form making. Such practice and such emphasis was common as Giedion's, Wittkower ultimately rescues the Renaissance and to, and in fact characterized,modernist discourse. It is on this hence classical architecture as a viable thinking ground for the basis that in Space,Time and Architecture Giedion achieved his own further development of contemporarydiscourse. seminal synthesis of philosophy, art history, and science, and However, it seems legitimate to ask at this point why this historicized modernity.113 imbrication with mainstream modernism should be at work primarilyin Wittkower'streatment of the Renaissanceand not of the baroque. Though the question of the construction of the whatis for this discussionis the fact certainlytrue, significant (implicit) baroque deserves attention in its own right, it is useful to note that the distant became relevant to architectural past, history, again here that the Renaissance that Wittkower inherits is discoursethrough their mediation.The fact that this relevancewould paradigm markmore deeplythe trajectoryof the slowly developingpostmodern already permeated by a modernist sensibility. Wittkower was vocabularycould not havebeen noted from the vantagepoint of 1972. working within an aesthetic horizon that had turned to the Millon,"RudolfWittkower" (see n. 9), 89-90; foran early assessement of Renaissance-central to historical inquiry at least since Burck- Wittkower'simpact on the formalpractices of the New Brutalistsand their interestin the architectureof the Mediterraneanbasin (albeit hardt,and to architecturaldiscourse from Semper and Schinkel to focusedon the vernacular),refer to ReynerBanham, The New Brutalism Behrens and Le Corbusier-to work out modern issues and (NewYork,1966), 15, 19,and 41-46. forms for well over a hundred years.114As such, the Renaissance 112. Wittkower,Architects' Yearbook (see n. 54), 9. On Wittkower's structuralreading, see also his contemporaryarticle on Brunelleschiand perspectivewhere he reassertsthe psychologicaldimension of architec- ture:"Thus the architectureof the period,if viewed like buildingsin categories, see Giorgiadis, "Sigfried Giedion und die Krise" (see n. 1), Renaissancepictures, produces a psychologicalsituation in whichpropor- 231. On Giedion's uses of historicalexemplars, see also Oechslin, tionand perspective are felt as compatible,or evenidentical realizations of "Fragen"(see n. 1). a metricaland harmonic concept of space."Rudolf Wittkower, "Brunelle- 114. On the Renaissance in nineteenth-century architectural dis- schi and 'Proportionin Perspective'"(see n. 101),291. Wittkowerhad course, see Robin Middleton "The RationalistInterpretations of Classi- alreadymade passingmention of these issues in Principleswhen he cism of Leonce Reynaud and Viollet-Le-Duc," AA Files 11 (Spring 1986): describedthe experienceof Palladio'sarchitecture as an "instinctive 29-48; Eva Borsch-Soupan, "Der Renaissance Begriff der Berliner reactionto geometry,"though, as notedabove (see notes36 and58), for Schule im Vergleich zu Semper," in GottfriedSemper und die Mittedes 19. him this responseis elicitedby geometry,not tectonicform, and it does Jahrhunderts(Basel, 1976), 153-74; Mead, CharlesGarnier's Paris Opera not originatewith bodyconsciousness as arguedby Wolfflin and Scott. In (see n. 5), 221-52; Wolfgang Herrmann, ed., In What Style Should We this context, see also Marder,who notes Wittkower'sreferences to Build?The GermanDebate on ArchitecturalStyle (Santa Monica, 1992). For "feelingfor proportion,"and Mitrovic,who points to his ambiguous an acknowledgement of the relevance of classicism to the objectivist positionon subjectivity.Marder, "Renaissance and Baroque in the United agenda of modernism, see Adolf Behne, the apologist of expressionism: States" (see n. 9), 173 n. 30; and Branko Mitrovic, "Objectively "Technizismusund Klassizismus sind einander keine Feinde, im Gegent- Speaking,"JSAH52 (1993):59-67. Nonetheless,Wittkower's position eil, sie sind zusammengeh6rig. Der Technizismus ist die geistige Verfas- on this issuemay have shifted over time; on 13 April1994 Mrs. Margot sung,der Klassizismusist sein kinstlerischerAusdruck. Sie hat uns das Wittkowerrecalled that he hadbeen opposed to psychologicalreadings of Vorbildaller modernen Reissbrettarchitektur beschert und uns verleitet, art. alle Architekturals glatt unmoglich zu verdachtigen,die kreuz und quer, 113. Giedion'srejection of style as a taxonomiccategory in favorof quellend, bunt, dithyrambischist." Adolf Behne, Die Wiederkehrder Kunst Strukturanalyseis a corollaryof this orientation."In the artsperiods are (Berlin, 1919; repr. 1973), 73-74. For a contemporarytestimony on the differentiatedby the 'styles'which become fixed and definite in eachstage initial resistance to the Renaissance and its subsequent relevance to of development.And the studyof the historyof styleswas the special work contemporaryinterest, see Cornelius Gurlitt, Geschichtedes Barockstiles in of nineteenth-centuryhistorians, a work most skilfullycarried through. Italien(Stuttgart, 1887), vii-viii. Gurlitt was in a position to comment since But it may be that the links and associationsbetween periods-the his own activity involved him in criticism and hence afforded him constituentfacts-are more importantto us than self-enclosedentities knowledge of the current issues. For example, see his review of Adolf suchas styles."Giedion, Space, Time (see n. 1), 21. Fora commentaryof Goller's Die Entstehungder architektonischen Stilformen, discussed in Harry the tensionbetween Giedion's attempt at a metahistoryand his ahistorical Francis Mallgrave, "From Realism to Sachlichkeit:The Polemics of PAYNE: WITTKOWER AND MODERNISM 341

he inherited was too laden with motives embedded in a dense Wittkower'sdid in its field, and that it playeda partin the eventual fabric of scholarship and theory for Wittkower, notwithstanding rejection of modernist antihistoricism, constitutes more than a his detachment, to be unaffected by this tradition. Working historical footnote. Similarly, the presence of Wittkower's con- within the contemporaryorthodoxy, this implicitly meant distan- cept of appropriationas a recurrent cultural strategywithin the cing subjectivism from its center and retaining its rationalism, early criticism of modernism fostered by Casabella,indicates both precision, and commitment to abstraction.A more recent arrival that ArchitecturalPrinciples appears at a moment of warp in the on the scene of historical inquiry and hence less involved with the self-construction of modernism and that it makes this warp slow of maturation of a modernist process aesthetic and theory, evident.116Historically, Wittkower's Principles is poised on the one the could more absorb this discussion baroque readily without hand between the Einfiihlung debate that was essentially resolved internal tension. That the should rise to notice at baroque the by the later thirties, when modernism formulates its agenda close of the nineteenth is a measure of century certainly the explicitly, and the problems current in the late forties and early simultaneous rise of the and its Einfiihlungtheory corollaries,and fifties on the other. Whereas the enthusiastically promoted hence that its formulation is also tied into the suggests contempo- InternationalCongress on Proportion of 1951 ultimately has a context. The own makes rary patternofWolfflin's scholarship this short-lived sequel (as does Le Corbusier's Modulor),because it connection quite clear. However, as far as the modernist debate comes virtually at the end of a period privileging control, went, it is classicism the Renaissance as a (with significant regulating lines, essentialism, and abstraction,Wittkower's Prin- mediator) and the Gothic, traditional in the sparring partners ciples,equally tributaryto this spirit, feeds the emerging discourse debate pitting objectivism that were cast as against subjectivism, that turns to history with a new perspective."17This is so because principal protagonists, leaving the baroque on the of periphery his argument is historical in nature and thus allows something to this sensitive areafor contemporarytheoretical discourse.115 surface from within modernism itself, namely its unresolved That Rowe's essay became as seminal to subsequent practiceas position and ambivalence toward history, toward the memory of forms, accretion,and recollection. Compatible with the discourse of modern architecture,his historical applicationof its definition Architectural in the 1890s,"in Otto Modernity Mallgrave,ed., Wagner(see allows architects access to a no and discon- n. 3): 292-93. past longer foreign 115. In his veryperceptive reading and periodizationof the baroque, nected, but familiar and recognizable, and therefore useable. As CorneliusGurlitt recognizes the roleof the presentin the contemporary such, the reception of Wittkower within architecturalpractice rise of interestin this historicalperiod. Cornelius Gurlitt, Geschichte des reveals history to be the Albertianfig tree that, paradoxicallybuilt Barockstilesin Italien(see n. 114), viii. Though not itself a protagonist,the baroquewas often drawn alongside the Gothic(on bothaesthetics and/or into the wall of modernist discourse by Giedion himself so as to political/nationalistgrounds) into the debate againstthe classical.See, for buttress it firmly, finally breaksup the edifice. example, Karl Scheffler, who in his Geist der Gotik not only draws the baroque and rococo into his definition of the Gothic spirit, but brings the argument into the present by concluding with images of the same grain elevators in the Werkbund that published Almanach (and were the basis for 116. On the editorialpolicies of VittorioGregotti and Ernesto Rogers Le Corbusier's later and more celebrated images for his own Towardsa and the role of Casabellain the critique of modernism in the fifties and its New and with of Van de Velde's Architecture) images and Poelzig's work. spearheadingof"neo-liberty," see Tafuri, Historyof ItalianArchitecture Karl (see Scheffler,Der Geistder Gotik (Leipzig, 1919). Scheffler'scontribution n. 13),54-55. Stirringsto thiseffect are also discernible in theArchitecture to the debate on in an earlier article on ornament for Dekorative empathy Review:alongside the historical articles by Pevsner (as F. R. Donner) Kunst of 1901 testifies to the between overlap the pro-Gothic (and under the rubric "TreasureHunt," J. M. Richards'seditorial "The Next and discourses. A similar baroque) empathy-theory parallelism may be Step?"shows both the dissatisfactionwith the functionalistdogma and inferred from the interest in the shown Schmarsow baroque by August the general uncertainty in the 1950s. J. M. Richards, "The Next Step?" who in his Barockund Rokokoof 1897 responds to Wolfflin's "painterly" ArchitecturalReview 107 (1950). with his own also the category "plasticity."Worringer brought Gothic, 117. Le Corbusier'sModulor (focused on an applicationof the Golden which he promotes on nationalist into particularly grounds, the fore- Sectionand a keywork for the congress),published in 1948after years of ground within this debate. Wilhelm der Worringer, Formprobleme Gotik research,belongs effectivelyto the world of Borissavlievitch,Ghyka, (Munich 1910). For a similar nationalist reading of the baroque as a Hambidge,Ozenfant, and the SectionD'Or, that is to a discoursecurrent German contribution the significant (unlike Renaissance)and its absorp- in the earlierpart of the century.Of particularimportance is the tion into mass see Paul culture, Zucker, DeutscheBarockstddte, Quelle & concentration of activity on the Golden Section in the first half of the Meyer Wissenschaft und Series 3-5. For a Bildung (Leipzig, n.d.), twentieth century. Eugene Grasset, Methodede compositionornamentale reading of the Renaissanceas negatively German see influencing culture, (Paris, 1905); Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture(Paris, 1923); Jay Richard Benz, Die Renaissance,das der deutschenCultur Verhangnis (Jena, Hambidge, TheParthenon and OtherGreek Temples. Their Dynamic Symme- 1915). For a history of baroque see Hans-Harald readings, Miiller, try (New Haven, 1924); Matila C. Ghyka, Esthetiquedes proportions dans la Barockforschung:Ideologie und Methode.Ein deutscher Kapitel Wissenschftsge- natureet dans les arts (Paris, 1927); idem, Le nombred'or. Rites et rythmes schichte1870-1930 (Darmstadt,1973); and Werner "Barock:zu Oechslin, pythagoriciens(Paris, 1931); Amedee Ozenfant, La peinturemoderne (Paris, de negativen Kriterien der in klassizistischer und Begriffsbestimmung 1925). Miloutine Borissavlievitch,Prolegomenes a une esthetique scientifique de spater Zeit," in Europaische ed. Klaus Garber Barock-Rezepzion, (Wies- l'architecture(Paris, 1923). Part of the heightened activity this baden, 1225-54. For an surrounding 1991), analysis of political motives at work in issueis alsothe formationof the importantcubist LaSection German attitudes to the group, D'Or, Gothic, see Michael J. Lewis, The Politicsof the in 1912. On the receding discourseon modularconstruction and GermanGothic Revival (New York and Cambridge, Mass., 1993). proportion in the 1950s see also Millon, "RudlofWittkower"(see n. 9). 342 JSAH 53:3, SEPTEMBER 1994

Coda obvious consequence of such illumination is shadow, such a model draws attention to the of "The innermost structuresof the past only revealthemselves to fragmentaryaspect any explica- tion. Yet at the same time it draws attention to the fact that any present in the light produced by the white heat of their unique into the structureof the can be achieved from the relevance now."118Walter Benjamin's issue here is the critic, as insight past only of the it is Wittkower's merit to Giedion defines himself, and the production of meaning achieved vantagepoint present. Thus, great have raisedto an issue not evident either to historians through critique: for him the reciprocal illumination between prominence past and present is provoked by the critic who focuses not on the from other generations nor to the Renaissance architects them- Ding an sich,but on the object as permeatedby "error."Since the selves, albeit latent in their practice. Interactingwith contempo- rarydiscourse, his historicalconstruction, insight, blind spots and 118. Walter Gesammelte as in Peter Benjamin, Schrifien,3:97, quoted all, ultimately testifies to the active role of history writing in the "Walter Critique':Some Preliminary Burger, Benjamin's'Redemptive construction of modernism and more to Reflectionson the Projectof a CriticalHermeneutics," in TheDecline of (and demise) generally Modernism(University Park, Penn., 1992), 19-31. the place of historical reflection in the definition of any present.