Review: Variety, Archaeology, and Ornament: Renaissance Architectural Prints from Column to Cornice

Review: Variety, Archaeology, and Ornament: Renaissance Architectural Prints from Column to Cornice Variety, Archaeology, and Ornament: Renaissance Architectural Prints from Column to Cornice Review by: Calder Loth Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 71, No. 3, Special Issue on Architectural Representations 1 (September 2012), pp. 404-405 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jsah.2012.71.3.404 . Accessed: 28/09/2014 23:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.143.23.241 on Sun, 28 Sep 2014 23:46:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Exhibitions Variety, Archaeology, and Ornament: and variety of the wealth of ancient archi- bearing little resemblance to the standard Renaissance Architectural Prints tectural details scattered about. versions of the orders. Vitruvius, of course, from Column to Cornice Using Master G.A. prints as a founda- described the basic elements of the Doric, University of Virginia Art Museum tion, the exhibition develops four main Ionic, and Corinthian (and alluded to a 26 August–18 December 2011 themes: Antiquity, Variety, Order, and Tuscan style), and laid out formulas for Afterlife. The Renaissance’s interest in proportioning the various parts of these This genesis of this compelling exhibi- antiquity, of course, was spurred by the orders. However, Vitruvius’s references tion is a collection of twenty-three mid- rediscovery of the text of Vitruvius’s Ten pertained mainly to works of Greece and sixteenth-century architectural prints Books, the only surviving ancient treatise the Roman republic. The ruins and frag- acquired by the University of Virginia on architecture. Because the text survived ments found and studied by early Renais- some thirty years ago. The prints are of without illustrations, various architects, sance architects largely dated from the late various capitals and bases, some quite including Palladio, provided editions of imperial era, when sculpted enrichment of elaborate but matching none of the the Ten Books with their own interpretative nearly every element was the norm. canonical orders with which we are most images of Vitruvius’s descriptions. This The plethora of highly ornamented familiar. While several can be linked to effort led to searches among the ruins for architectural fragments and the numerous known ancient monuments, others are forms and details that could relate to images they inspired led various architects from sources unknown, and some appear Vitruvius’s text, resulting in a multiplicity to attempt to seek some sense of order in to be inventions. Their engraver is identi- of early sketches and drawings. These ancient design and to develop sets of fied only by the initials G.A., with a tiny drawings represent some of the first theories behind it. The fruit of this effort image of a caltrop (a small spiked weapon attempts at both orthogonal and perspec- was the production of guides or textbooks spread on the ground to inhibit the tival depictions of architectural elements, on classical architecture intended mainly advance of mounted troops). Master G.A. particularly capitals and entablatures. for use in contemporary design. While may be Giovanni Agucchi, a mid- sixteenth- Many of these drawings became the basis Vitruvius’s treatise unlocked many mys- century Italian engraver, but the attribu- for the single-leaf prints such as those by teries of classical architecture, his text was tion remains conjectural. The prints are a Master G.A. difficult to understand and often raised as reminder of how single-leaf architectural The early images, seen in the exhibi- many questions as it answered. Hence, the prints accelerated the spread of information’s late fifteenth- and early sixteenth- treatises by architects such as Serlio, Pal- tion on classical architecture during the century sketches, drawings, prints, and ladio, and Vignola precisely defined and formative years of the Italian Renaissance. published books, revealed astonishing illustrated standardized versions of the The printed image was just then coming variations in the ancient classical orders. orders, and provided rules for each ele- into its own and made knowledge of Many of the capitals, bases, and cornices ment. Moreover, in addition to Vitruvius’s Roman antiquity widely accessible to an recorded by early masters such as Il Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, they elevated eager audience as never before. Moreover, Cronaca, Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, the Tuscan and the Composite to the offi- the prints are evidence of how this parti- and Francesco di Giorgio had the indi- cial roster of the orders. Both Serlio and cular master, along with numerous others, viduality and sculptural touches normally Palladio included in their treatises resto- quickly absorbed and shared the richness associated with the Gothic style. In addi- ration depictions of ancient ruins as well tion, despite a certain consistency seen as illustrations of their own designs, show- mainly in the treatment of cornices, the ing how new works could be expressed Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71, no. 3 ancients were not always constrained by a with the classical language. Their defini- (September 2012), 404–411. ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2012 by the Society of Architectural rigid set of rules related to the treatment tions of the orders, both narrative and Historians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests of details and other decorations. Among graphic, thus became the canons for the for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content the exhibition’s offerings, we see capitals five classical orders, and have affected through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/ decorated with mythological figures, ani- the appearance of thousands of buildings reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2012.71.3.404. mals, fruits, and many types of foliage, all ever since. Indeed, Palladio’s and Vignola’s 404 This content downloaded from 128.143.23.241 on Sun, 28 Sep 2014 23:46:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions treatises served as textbooks for architects Adapting the Eye: An Archive of the themes of networking, collecting, viewing well into the twentieth century. However, British in India, 1770–1830 and the picturesque, antiquities, social the process of regularizing the orders led Yale Center for British Art, New Haven documentation, anthropology, and flora to their simplification, the result being 11 October–31 December 2011 and fauna. These categories were derived that many of our later classical-style build- from the antiquarian practices of the British. ings lack the inventiveness and individuality The chronologies and categories of the Grounded in an Enlightenment pre occu- seen in the ancient fragments recorded by architectural history of South Asia were pation to order the world, they were an individuals such as Master G.A. crystallized in the mid-nineteenth century. extension of simultaneous investigations The exhibition’s final section, “After- British and Indian historians and anti- into Mediterranean and Egyptian sites and life,” traces the diffusion of the ideas shown quarians built upon a corpus of knowledge antiquities. The exhibition however, pushed in the exhibition’s drawings, prints, and accumulated since the late eighteenth cen- back at many established notions. For treatises to countries beyond Italy. This led tury that included picturesque depictions, ins tance, Forbes, who was introduced to to the creation of additional treatises on the exploratory essays, and the piecemeal docu- the Maratha court by Malet on the Peshwa’s five orders with examples of how to apply mentation of sites. Many of these were request, changed his style to suit his royal them. Among the early products of this dis- published in Asiatick Researches, the journal patron, indicating that it was more than the semination were treatises by the Spaniard of an association established in 1784 and native eye that was adapting to newer tastes Diego Sagredo, Philibert de l’Orme of initially comprised of British orientalists, and techniques. France, and Walther Hermann Ryff of antiquarians, and dilettantes, called the The pivotal figure in the exhibition was Germany. These treatises extended the Asiatick Society. These early years of schol- Gangaram Tambat, a sculptor who learned application of the classical vocabulary to arship on India were critical to British to draw and who produced an array of innumerable buildings throughout Europe, imperial expansion, yet information regard- sketches of varied subjects and in multiple thus making the architecture of the Italian ing agents, techniques and processes is still

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