Jacopo Sansovino, Giacomo Torelli, and the Theatricality of the Piazzetta in Venice Author(S): Eugene J
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Jacopo Sansovino, Giacomo Torelli, and the Theatricality of the Piazzetta in Venice Author(s): Eugene J. Johnson Source: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Dec., 2000), pp. 436-453 Published by: Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/991620 Accessed: 21/01/2010 12:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sah. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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]. Society of Architectural Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org Jacopo Sansovino, Giacomo Torelli, and the Theatricality of the Piazzetta in Venice EUGENE J. JOHNSON Williams College Modern students of Venetian architecture have Piazzettacould act both as a setting for noble deeds of the noted a relationship between the Piazzetta in Venetian patriciate and for "comic" acts of ordinary life. Venice,viewed from the water,and Renaissance The space certainlydid function in both those ways.4 scene designs,1pointing to the correspondencebetween the GiacomoTorelli, one of the majorItalian scene design- Renaissanceconcept of one-point perspectiveand the per- ers of the seventeenth century,seems to have had a similar spectivaldiminution of the buildingsthat flankthe Piazzetta understandingof the relationshipbetween the Piazzettaand towardthe vanishingpoint of the Torredell'Orologio (Fig- scene design.5He used a perspectivalview of the Piazzetta ure 1). ManfredoTafuri, following earlierwriters, pointed seen from the water in a set for the opera Bellerofonte,pro- out that SebastianoSerlio made a drawing(Uffizi 5282A) duced in Venice in 1642 (Figure 2).6 Indeed, Torelli, to the for a stage set that was clearlybased on the Piazzettaas seen astonishment of his audience, caused a perspectival from the bacino.2 Piazzettato rise from the sea during the opera'sprologue.7 John Onianshas arguedfor a close connectionbetween This understandingof the Piazzetta as a stage set is the designs ofJacopo Sansovino'sbuildings in and around altogether reasonable,but the Piazzetta also functioned as the Piazzetta and Sebastiano Serlio's concept of architec- an auditorium-as a place to accommodatean audience.To turalorders.3 Onians makesthe excellent point that Sanso- see the space in this second way requiresshifting our point vino's use of the orders on the Zecca (rusticated),Libreria of view 180 degrees-to look from the Piazzetta south di SanMarco (Doric and Ionic), and Loggetta (Composite) towardthe water,so that the southernedge of the Piazzetta closely parallelsSerlio's display of severalancient orders in works as a stage with a proscenium of two freestanding his design for a Tragic Scene, against which the deeds of columns that frame a waterylandscape set (Figure 3).8 noble folk would be played out. Thus, for Onians the The Piazzetta received the final element of its archi- Piazzetta became, according to the Serlian theory of the tecturalboundaries in the sixteenthcentury from the hands orders,a stage for the acting out of noble deeds by the rul- ofJacopo Sansovino,architect of the Libreriadi SanMarco, ing class of Venice. Accordingto Serlio, the Gothic was to which was begun under Doge Andrea Gritti in 1537 and be used only for comic scenes, where the acts of ordinary finally completed in 1591 (Figure 4).9 Sansovino'sLibrary people would be portrayed. One might expand Onians's replaced a group of diverse structuresthat stood opposite perception by noting that the Gothic Palazzo Ducale the Doge's Palacewith a single buildingthat has two stories remainedstanding alongside Sansovino's classical buildings of twenty-one round-archedopenings framedby engaged in the Piazzetta. According to Serlio's theory, then, the Doric and Ionic orders.10Sansovino had come to Venice Figure 1 Piazzetta,Venice, from the bacino . from Rome, whence he imported the exterior architectural L"*In'*- ll,-, -Iw ... 's* forms used for the Library, derived from the Theater of Marcellus (Figure 5).11Many scholars have noted this point, but they have not tended to discuss Sansovino's facade any further in terms of the architectural typology of theaters. Rather, Wolfgang Lotz and, more recently, Thomas Hirthe focused on Sansovino's revival, through his Library, of an ancient forum through his design of the Library's fagade.12 Neither Lotz nor Hirthe had the benefit of the recent stud- ies of the medieval Piazza San Marco by Michela Agazzi and Juergen Schulz.13 Schulz argues convincingly that the medieval Piazza San Marco was conceived as the evocation of a forum in Constantinople. As he points out, Constan- tinople was the only city in the Mediterranean that had pre- served functioning ancient fora, a type that medieval Venetians reintroduced into western Europe.14 Sansovino, in turn, did indeed create his own, later version of a Roman forum in Venice, but his design had at least one additional layer of reference.15 That the articulation Sansovino chose for the Library was considered proper for theatrical situations in early- sixteenth-century Venice and its environs is made clear by an illustration from an edition of the comedies of Plautus published in Venice in 1518 (Figure 6).16 There actors stand in front of a screen of piers and round arches to which an Figure 2 Giacomo Torelli,set for the prologue of Bellerofonte (detail), order has been engaged, and through the arches a summar- 1642 ily treated landscape is visible. Theatrical performances also THE THEATRICALITY OF THE PIAZZETTA IN VENICE 437 Figure 3 Piazzetta,Venice, view toward the bacino Figure 4 Jacopo Sansovino, Libreriadi San Marco,Venice, begun 1537 438 JSAH / 59:4, DECEMBER 2000 O. ., Thle third Booke. The fourdtChlapter, PolU. Q VARTVS AcrVS 5ARA MS Vifd .Adrftretum fole CE.nVS pins tolm5asuam furgicst n tuLsi:qu pr,tr rubaudtu iuris tuir itblotctnmaxmclictnthornoDxtn foe gibu,alwn:usrtkps o E n.Po fubaudi'Qul.y*t,, Psuc:Sd. ooMoStranit phtcaMnutlclam*. Elbrint.ir Slamqu. itafuc.ct: au W;] SMarinfsncitacuffii, [cntfdis faxum + gibtla.Vdadligatmd didt quodbabstriumawtbuz4Nutfris gibulAt.Dfst.ftir,tuEx Protdckt;cX.u urffsrit.FSuSat&as.1rav lfhidappenotfalduoto fu*1taa. 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