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Myth, Archeology and Architectural Design in the High Renaissance Concept of Rustication

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Myth, Archeology and Architectural Design in the High Renaissance Concept of Rustication Renaissance Studies Vol. 25 No. 2 DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2010.00675.x ‘La zecca vecchia’: myth, archeology and architectural design in the high Renaissance concept of rustication Lola Kantor-Kazovsky Rustication, or intentionally unhewn quadrangular masonry, whether executed in live stone or imitated in cement, is an architectural motif of classical origins that was used variously and systematically in Italy from the thirteenth century, and that features in some of the most conspicuous Renais- sance buildings. However, there was no classical or modern theoretical dis- cussion of it until Sebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di’architettura (1537) and this treatise presents researchers of Renaissance rustication with a peculiar difficulty. Serlio’s publication divides the history of the use of this feature into two unequal parts. The semantics of rustication after Serlio is easy enough to trace, because in most of the cases it clearly has its source in his treatise. Rustication in Renaissance Italy before Serlio is more complicated, because, contrary to expectations, his concepts prove not to be really applicable there. Most contemporary researchers who inquire into the actual form, meaning and patronage of rusticated structures, whether private palaces or civic build- ings, approach early modern rustication as an all’antica architectural style whose intention was to express the Roman identity of a commune or the princely status of the owner.1 Serlio’s discourse on rustication seems to The first version of this paper was given as a lecture at the College Art Association Annual Conference in 2005. I want to thank Luba Freedman for reading the article before publication and for her deep and useful comments on it, and Frédérique Lemerle for presenting me with her publications on the French translation of Diego de Sagredo’s architectural treatise. 1 The history of the question deserves a separate study; here only some important contributions are listed. Howard Burns, ‘Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique: Some Problems’, in Classical Influences on European Culture, conference proceedings, ed. Robert Ralph Bolgar, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 1: 273–4; Staale Sinding Larsen, ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Florentine and Roman Visual Context for Fifteenth-Century Palaces’, Acta ad Archeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 6 (1975), 163–212, esp. 190–92; Andreas Tönnes- man, ‘ “Palatium Nervae.” Ein antikes Vorbild für Florentiner Rustikafassaden’, Romisches Jahrbuh für Kunstge- schichte 21 (1984), 61–70; Margaret Daly Davis, ‘ “Opus isodomum” at the Palazzo della Cancelleria: Vitruvian Studies and Archeological and Antiquarian Interests at the Court of Raffaele Riario’, in Silvia Danesi Squarzina (ed.), Roma, centro ideale della cultura dell’antico nei secoli VX e XVI. Da Martino V al Sacco di Roma 1417–1527 (Milan: Electa, 1989), 442–57; Brenda Preyer, ‘L’architettura del palazzo Mediceo’, in Il Palazzo Medici Riccardi di Firenze (Florence: Giunti, 1990), 62; Marvin Trachtenberg, ‘Scénographie urbaine et identité civique: réflexion sur la Florence du Trecento’, Revue de l’art 99 (1993), 16; Amedeo Belluzzi, The Palazzo Tè in Mantua (Modena: Panini, 1998), 1: 89–90; Georgia Clarke, Roman House – Renaissance Palaces (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003), © 2010 The Author Journal compilation © 2010 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd The high Renaissance concept of rustication 249 obscure rather than to explain this meaning. Other ideas are usually emphasized by scholars when Serlio’s approach to rustication is discussed. Thus Ernst Gombrich highlighted Serlio’s discussion of Giulio Romano, where he states that rustication used in conjunction with regular orders shows a pleasant comparison between ‘the work of nature’ and ‘the work of human skill’.2 James S. Ackerman showed that in Serlio’s theory of the orders, rusti- cation is a secondary ornamental feature pertaining specifically to the Tuscan, the first and most robust of the five regular orders of architecture he estab- lished.3 However, the projections of these ideas onto the previous history of rustication, in particular, the application of the ‘naturalist’ interpretation of rustic work, based on Giulio Romano, to pre-Serlian architecture, has not reached satisfying results.4 I propose that Serlio deliberately shifted the emphasis from the traditional meaning of rustication to new approaches, which later became especially popular due to his influence. However, I shall also show that we have lost part of his meaning and that his discourse still contains elements of a traditional understanding of rustication as bearing an association with venerable Roman models and history. To achieve this I would like to take a different approach towards the text. Instead of using it to clarify architectural practice, I suggest that the text be read in light and in the context of architectural developments of his time. Using Sansovino’s adoption of rustication on the Piazzetta, I will show that the architect closest to Serlio at the time of writing the treatise, and in the opinion of many influenced by Serlio, was referring to a renowned Roman model not very differently from the way the architects of rusticated civic buildings before him had followed. What makes Sansovino’s case espe- 187–94; Rikke Lyngsø Christensen, ‘Live Stones : On the Phenomenon of Rustication and Its Relations to the all’antica Practice in Italian Architecture of the 16th century’, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, 31(2005), 77–104. 2 Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Books I–V of ‘Tutte l’ opere d’architettura et prospettiva’ by Sebastiano Serlio, translated from the Italian with an Introduction and Commentary by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 1: 270. All subsequent references are to this edition of Serlio’s book. Gombrich first advanced this idea in 1933 in his dissertation on Giulio Romano. For the latest revised version of his interpretation see his ‘Architecture and Rhetoric in Giulio Romano’s Palazzo del Tè’, in idem, New Light on Old Masters: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance IV (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986), 161–70. Gombrich’s approach was developed by Manfredo Tafuri among others: ‘Il mito naturalistico nell’ architettura del’500’, L’Arte 1 (1968), 6–36. See also Marcello Fagiolo (ed), Natura e artificio: l’ordine rustico, le fontane, gli automi nella cultura del Manierismo europeo (Rome: Officina, 1979). 3 James S. Ackerman, ‘The Tuscan/Rustic Order: A Study in the Metaphorical Language of Architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42 (1983), 15–34. 4 It either brings scholars to an anachronistic view of rustication as a precociously mannerist feature, or prompts them to search for its intellectual background in the contemporary philosophy of nature. For a ‘mannerist’ interpretation of Bramante’s rustication, see Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante Architetto (Bari: Laterza. 1969), 958–9, 1045. For approaches to rusticated architecture preceding Giulio and Serlio in light of the philosophy of nature, see Gianluca Belli, ‘Forma e naturalità nel bugnato fiorentino del Quattrocento’, Quaderni del palazzo Tè, n.s. 4 (1996), 8–38; Charles Burroughs, The Italian Renaissance Palace Façade: Structures of Authority, Surfaces of Sense (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 144–50. Whatever ideas of nature can be found in contemporary philosophy, it has not been proved that the idea of imitating nature motivated an architect’s choice of rustic decoration before Giulio. 250 Lola Kantor-Kazovsky Fig. 1 Jacopo Sansovino, the Mint, Venice, begun 1536 (Alinari: with the permission of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali) cially relevant for the discussion of Serlio’s meaning is that the very same structure that Sansovino used as a model, the most ancient part of the Basilica of SS Cosmas and Damian on the Roman Forum, dominates Serlio’s discourse on rustication in the Regole. He discusses this building twice in his text as a monument of great antiquity and of technical perfection, and refers to it in five illustrations. The historical, political and cultural connotations of this model, which led to Sansovino’s interest in it, find a strong echo in Serlio’s text. This is not surprising since, as I will show, these two projects, the building and the treatise, were simultaneously developed and mutually interrelated enterprises that had their common roots in the culture of the High Renais- sance. The attempt to discover these roots and their lost meaning is the purpose of my paper. *** Sansovino’s Zecca, or Mint, begun in 1536 on the Piazzetta in Venice (Fig. 1),5 became the starting point for the rebuilding of the urban centre of the city as a part of renovatio urbis. In the course of construction Sansovino made the Zecca’s presence on the site more and more prominent. In 1539 he incorpo- rated the shops between the building and the lagoon into the building and 5 This is the date of approval of Sansovino’s model for the building by the Council of Ten. See Vincenzo Lazari, Scrittura di Jacopo Sansovino e parti del Consiglio de’ Dieci reguardanti la rifabbrica della Zecca di Venezia (Venice, 1851), 8–9. The high Renaissance concept of rustication 251 thus brought its variously rusticated façade to the fore, making it fully visible from the water, and in 1554–56 he added the rustic portal facing the Palazzo Ducale.6 Later on, the emphasis on rustic style thus achieved was doubled by building of the Prigioni (the prisons, begun in 1589) on the other side of the Palazzo.7 Seen from the lagoon (which was the main route for visitors to Venice), the rusticated Zecca and Prigioni became an important element of the official façade of the Venetian Republic. Sansovino’s work on the Zecca has already been reconstructed in detail.8 The question that interests me is why the Piazzetta’s renovatio was conceived from the start in terms of a stylistic opposition between the rustic ruggedness of the Mint and the smooth elegance of the Libreria and Loggetta.
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