Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention?

Transcription

1 Art in Translation ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? Christof Thoenes & Lucinda Byatt To cite this article: Christof Thoenes & Lucinda Byatt (2017) Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention?, Art in Translation, 9:3, , DOI: / To link to this article: Published online: 06 Oct Submit your article to this journal Article views: 51 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at Download by: [ ] Date: 26 November 2017, At: 09:07

2 Art in Translation, 2017 Volume 9, Issue 3, pp , Christof Thoenes. All Rights Reserved. Christof Thoenes Translated by Lucinda Byatt First published in Italian as Christof Thoenes Gli ordini architettonici, rinascita o invenzione?, in Marcello Fagiolo (ed.), Roma e l Antico nell arte e nella cultura del Cinquecento (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1985), ; republished in Christof Thoenes, Opus Incertum: Italienische Studien aus drei Jahrzehnten (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002), Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? Abstract In this article, first published in 1985, Christof Thoenes argues that the notion of a progressive evolution of the architectural Orders from the Tuscan to the Roman Composite was an invention of Italian Renaissance scholarship, with no historical basis in antiquity. Indeed, even the word Order (ordine) was an invention of the early modern period. It was not used in the modern sense by Vitruvius in De architectura, but emerged with the system of tectonics first created by Brunelleschi. From Brunelleschi, the linguistic and semantic evolution of the term Order is traced by Thoenes through the writings and treatises of Alberti, Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio, Pacioli, Cesariano, Serlio, Raphael, and Vignola.

3 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 297 KEYWORDS: column, capital, entablature, architectural Orders, Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, Vitruvius, Italian Renaissance architecture, Alberti, Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio, Pacioli, Cesariano, Serlio, Raphael, Vignola Introduction by Tod A. Marder (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University) In 1985 this article by Christof Thoenes contributed to debunking the widely-held belief that the entity we refer to as the Orders of architecture, such as Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, enjoyed a distinct identity in ancient architectural thought and practice. More importantly, Thoenes demonstrated that the notion of orders of architecture as we define them had not been successfully transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance through the twin agencies of the ancient literary text of Vitruvius and the ancient Roman buildings themselves, but rather was an invention of the Renaissance. Thoenes explains how the term order was itself a creation of the early modern era. Apart from the plural term genera, denoting severity or delicacy, or something between them, Vitruvius had no word to describe effects produced by the now iconic combination of decorative forms that together compose, say, an Ionic column base, shaft, capital, and entablature. In the early Renaissance, Alberti discussed the decorative aspects of these components in groups, first the capitals, then the shafts, then the bases, and finally the entablatures. Only in his letter to Leo X of 1514 did Raphael reuse the term genera, now to describe the Orders as we know them; that is, as precise combinations of specified forms. Out of the ambience of the Roman High Renaissance, the formulation of five orders of architecture was presented first by Sebastiano Serlio in 1528 and 1537, and then concretized by Vignola, Palladio, and others later in the sixteenth century. In addition to the developing scholarship on Vitruvius and Renaissance architecture, a knowledge of the classical Orders themselves advanced with the demise of modernist aesthetics and the new popularity of postmodern architecture, which often embraced the twin legacy of ancient and Renaissance practice. The popularity of this architectural discourse in the 1970s and 1980s led many historians into the same territory that Thoenes had already begun to cultivate so productively. Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? Christof Thoenes When Vincenzo Scamozzi published his Idea dell architettura universale in 1615, he viewed the five Orders as a stable, millenary system, unchanged since classical times and unchanging in the future. He writes:

4 298 Christof Thoenes Nature herself has continued to maintain the same order that was instituted during the creation and the propagation of things. With regard to proportions (as Vitruvius mentions and I will expand upon), in the first age after the Flood, Italy was content with only one order, the Tuscan. Then, as Vitruvius points out, the Greeks settled with the Doric order for some time before progressing to the Ionic, and from there to the Corinthian, where the only difference was the capital. Finally the Romans, whose valour and might conquered the whole world, added the fifth order, which they never superseded. 1 Clearly, these are polemical, apologetic words, intended to defend a traditional system against new, subversive trends. Yet they broadly express the attitude that historians and architectural critics still today express toward this question, with a few rare exceptions. The five Orders as a law of nature, a sort of genetic code of classical architecture, devised in antiquity, forgotten in medieval times, rediscovered by the humanists and applied by the architects of the Renaissance: this appears to be the more or less explicit conviction held by most scholars. Here we want to make a number of observations that may perhaps show this story in a rather different light. I use the word story because what is alleged to be a moment of rediscovery is seen, on closer examination, to be series of attempts, hard fought and long-lasting, to reconstruct a system that as we will try to show never existed as such; therefore, in essence, this was a modern construction, ex novo, although built upon ancient concepts. The process takes place in two stages. The first occurred in the fifteenth century, and its protagonists are Alberti, Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio and a few others; and for reasons that will become clear, I would like to add also Raphael (as the author of the so-called letter to Leo X ) and also Cesariano, with his Vitruvius of The second stage starts, as we see it, with Serlio s Fourth Book, therefore in 1537, or rather in 1528 when Serlio published the well-known series of bases and capitals 2 : it was here not earlier that the five Orders appear, which were then taken up by Vignola, Palladio, Scamozzi and many others. However, we question whether the real innovator, or to be clear the inventor of this canon, rather than Serlio, should not be sought in the circle of great architects operating in Rome in the first decades of the sixteenth century Bramante, Peruzzi, Sangallo, and others for whom no printed texts exist but rather a mass of drawings and notes, whether individual or assembled in codices and notebooks, some more fragmentary than others. It is from the study of this autograph material that we can hope to glean the desired clarification regarding the true origin of the five Orders in the Cinquecento, a study that has been underway for several years, carried out with particular care under the auspices of the Bibliotheca Hertziana, from which we will draw some examples as evidence.

5 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 299 I will start with a brief overview of the general situation in the Quattrocento in the form of an introduction necessary in order to understand the developments of the following century. The first problem to be tackled concerns the interpretation of Vitruvius in Renaissance theory. As all readers will know, the architectural Orders have always been one of the magical terms used by Vitruvians. No author writes about the Orders without mentioning the august theoretician. Yet, an examination of the original text namely, without the chapter headings added by editors will not reveal a single instance of the term itself, or even a paraphrase of the concept of an Order as we understand it. 3 In the passages from Books III and IV, which are usually cited in this respect, 4 the author talks about the construction of different types of temples, called, according to their historical ethnographic origins, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and in a separate passage 5 Etruscan. These rules of construction always refer to the entire edifice; the columns, capitals, architrave, and so on, appear as elements of entire, fully functional structures, rather than an Order, understood as a particular formal configuration of tectonic members, applicable to structures that are materially different. On the other hand, it is precisely this purely decorative use of columns and entablatures on the façades of theaters and other buildings that was the great achievement of Roman architecture in Vitruvius lifetime, 6 as is widely documented in the ruins of Rome. Therefore, we come face to face with the rather surprising fact that, in terms of the concept of order in antiquity, (Vitruvian) theory reveals a degree of awareness that lags behind contemporary practice. The consequences are obvious, although, as far as I can see, they have not been sufficiently acknowledged in this context: the practice, namely the direct imitation of monuments by [Renaissance] architects, must have preceded their reading of the relevant passages in Vitruvius. We need not discuss here the question of Florentine Romanesque buildings, which widely (but not completely) replaced Roman buildings in the early Tuscan Renaissance; 7 what counts is the new attitude shown by the architects when faced with a classical exemplar: instead of copying the building as it was, they extracted the rules on which Renaissance architecture was based. 8 But it was Brunelleschi who was the first to create, through an analysis of Romanesque and Roman structures, a tectonic system that can be adequately described using the word Order. 9 Here, as in other respects, Alberti s De re aedificatoria appears to be nothing more than the theoretical expression of what Brunelleschi had anticipated in his architectural practice. 10 The locus classicus namely the description that sparked the whole of modern thought regarding the Orders can be found in Book VII, chapter 6: The parts of the order are as follows: The pedestal and, on top of that, the base; on the base, the column, followed by the capital, then the beam, and on top of the beam, the rafters, their cut-off ends

6 300 Christof Thoenes either terminated or concealed by the frieze; finally, at the very top comes the cornice. 11 This is precisely the definition that is missing in Vitruvius, and it is found where a reader of Vitruvius would seek it: in the book on sacred buildings or, as Alberti also calls them, temples. Yet it comes under a completely different marker. Unlike Vitruvius ten books, Alberti s are divided into two parts, the first of which (Books I V) deals exclusively with problems concerning the material construction of the building, while the second covers the ornaments, namely the forms in the aesthetic sense of the word. This is not the place to dwell on the reasons for this two-part division, although it, too, is ultimately rooted in Vitruvius, and especially in his categories of the firmitas of utilitas and, on the other hand, of venustas; 12 but while these remain purely theoretical notions, with no impact on the discussion of the materials themselves, in Alberti a radical division appears, one that is constituent to his entire thought. 13 At all events, we need to know that the passage cited above comes from Book VII, De ornamento, in order to understand its significance: it implies the separation of the Order as a formal system of the building structure. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to question whether Alberti, as a theoretician, was fully aware of what he was proposing in practice. At this point it is necessary to make a short terminological digression, prompted by the Italian translation (Cosimo Bartoli, 1565, in Giovanni Orlandi, 1966) of the earlier passage, which starts with the phrase: Le parti dell ordine sono [ ] ( The parts of the order are [ ] ). Order, as we know, was not a Vitruvian term, but neither was it one used by Alberti. In the Latin text the word is columnatio, colonnato according to the oldest [Italian] translations: a word that, in close analogy with Vitruvian language, 14 indicates an actual structure, one from which the concept of Order can be derived, but I emphasize that is not what it is. Once again, the practical adoption of the concept 15 precedes the linguistic expression. And so it will remain throughout the Renaissance. 16 In sixteenth-century treatises, the word ordine appears quite frequently and with the most varied meanings, all except the one that we chiefly understand today (I cite the definition given by the Enciclopedia Italiana): Organism that is structurally reconnected to the trilithic system. 17 Serlio uses it, among other ways, to indicate the entire membrature of a building, for example the columns, the architrave and façade of a temple 18 ; a colonnade with a rustic arcade instead of the entablature 19 ; but also a masonry structure without any form of colonnade 20 ; a horizontal band of decorative members, in general, especially on a façade of several stories ( first, second, third order ), with and also without columns or pilasters. 21 But even a spatial structure can be described in this way, as when Vignola defines San Petronio in Bologna as a building with three orders: the first are the chapels, the second the small naves, the third and last the central nave. 22 For Barbaro, an ordine of columns means a row, or a colonnade: the

7 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 301 Pseudodypteros has the false appearance of two orders, a base rose from the order of columns. 23 Then, there is the more abstract, generic meaning of the word, which broadly corresponds to the ordinatio of Vitruvian aesthetics. 24 When Benvenuto Cellini praises Alberti as the first to write about the orders of Architecture, he did not mean the five orders of architecture in Vignola s sense of the term, but rather the fundamental principles of the art, given by the marvellous and scholarly Vitruvius. 25 Earlier Manetti spoke of the first elevations and orders that were seen in the temple at Ephesus, whereas before there were great disorders, because the orders were not yet in use ; in the context this refers both to the first columns with bases and capitals, and to the origins of regulated building in general. 26 A certain order of members and bones particularly of a structural law was recognized by Brunelleschi in ancient buildings. 27 The order of a building refers to something like the essence of its formal organization: in the aforesaid text, 28 Vignola criticizes a drawing because it is not appropriate to the façade and order of St Petronio (which in turn has three orders, as was seen earlier); a very similar meaning is given to the order of the building and the order of the pier [piedritto/dricto] of the buttresses, in Bramante s opinion on the tiburio (lantern) of Milan Cathedral. 29 From all this it is clear that order is used as a classificatory term, in the sense of Vignola s Regola delli cinque ordini mentioned earlier. Here it is a synonym for what Vitruvius calls the genera of architecture: 30 Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and so forth. The first to talk of the five orders used by the ancients, and likewise the five classes into which columns can be divided according to their forms and measurements seems to have been Raphael. 31 It may be that he was thinking of the generic, Vitruvian sense of the word: Ordinare una colonna for him 32 meant establishing the proportional rules (in the Temple of Diana, the ancients [ ] changed form, arranging the columns according to female measurements ). Fifteenth-century authors use other words, with the exception of Filarete, who once spoke of these three modes and orders. 33 Alberti has opus, figura, partitio as well as the Vitruvian vocabulary of genus and ratio ; Filarete uses quality, manner, mode, measurement, form, as well as generation and proportion ; Manetti has quality and species ; Francesco di Giorgio uses type and custom in addition to the words already listed; Pacioli, species and sort ; Raphael, as well as order, also uses work and manner. Serlio approves of Raphael s expressions, adding generation from Cesariano; Alberti s translator, Cosimo Bartoli, and also Vasari use work. The corresponding French words, all used by Jean Martin, are façon, expèce ordre, ouvrage, mode, manière 34 ; the German words, used by Rivius (Walter Ryff), Art, Geschlecht, Manier, Gestalt. 35 It was Vignola who established the use of order as an exclusive term: he was followed by Palladio, Cellini, Rusconi, and all the later authors.

8 302 Christof Thoenes This brings me to the next point in my survey: the variety of the Orders and their correct denomination. Alberti s pioneering role has always been recognized: 36 not only was he the first as far as we know to identify the Vitruvian types in the patrimony of ancient monuments, but he alone, throughout the entire Quattrocento, managed to avoid making mistakes in this particularly intricate matter. The reason appears to be that he, more than any other, adopted the Vitruvian method, while at the same time emancipating himself from that text: instead of writing a commentary on it, he describes without the help of illustrative drawings the things that he himself saw in monuments. 37 This resulted in a difference, a very indicative one in my opinion, in the arrangement of the material. While Vitruvius speaks of the kinds of temples, discussing them one after the other as autonomous, vertical units, Alberti proceeds in the opposite sense: following the short passage on the colonnato in general, which I have cited, he goes on to describe, first, the various capitals, then the column shafts, bases, and then again, in greater detail, the capitals, and lastly the entablatures. Clearly, he is expressing the concept of Order as a classificatory scheme for the various forms found during the study of the monuments. This leads to another question: that of the canon of Orders, namely their number and sequence. Vitruvius did not impose it, or rather he did not give a univocal answer. In Book IV, there are just two genuinely different kinds, the Doric and the Ionic, derived from the male and female body: later, more or less by chance, came the invention of the Corinthian capital, placed on the shaft of the Corinthian column, which, as it was more slender, assumed a virginal character, a variant of the female form. 38 To this the Etruscan temple was added, although it is discussed separately and without reference to the Greek temples, except that from the description we learn that it is close to the Doric. 39 Therefore, while in Book IV we have a dualistic system, with two sexes, there is a passage in Book I where the three Greek styles appear in the more familiar form of the triad, Doric Ionic Corinthian: this is the short but important chapter on the appropriateness of the kinds in relation to the divinities to whom the temples are dedicated, an argument that was then taken up so zealously by Serlio and his followers, 40 and to which we will return. Alberti s approach to the question of the canon reflects the contrast between the systematic thinker and the man who made empirical studies of ruins. As such he found more examples than were mentioned in Vitruvius: for example, the composite capital, which he ingeniously identifies as a constant type among the multitude of mixed forms, and named Italic, indicating its ethnic and geographical origin, as Vitruvius had done for the Greek kinds. 41 On the other hand, in Vitruvius he read about forms that he could not find in the monuments: like the Tuscan, or rather Etruscan base, with a round abacus. 42 So, for both the catalog of capitals and that of bases, he gives four kinds, five in all, whereas only the three Greek styles appear in all the categories as the fixed nucleus of the system (if we can talk about a system). 43

9 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 303 The picture offered by the other authors of the time is equally imprecise. Without going into details, I would like to list briefly the most important positions. Filarete only knows the three Greek kinds, which he classifies in an unusual way. 44 By bringing together all the relevant passages from Vitruvius, he arrived at a system of four Orders, or to be precise four sorts of columns because it is the column that attracted interest at the time; no fifteenth-century text treats column and entablature as a unit, as Serlio would later do. Therefore, a four-part canon, composed of the three Greek columns and the Etruscan Tuscan or Tuscan column, whose distinction from the Doric immediately proved one of the thorniest problems of the entire doctrine. If I am not wrong, it made its first appearance in Bramante s spiral staircase in the Vatican Belvedere, which can almost be seen as the first sixteenth-century treatise on the subject, not written but built another case in which a theoretical device was anticipated by contemporary practice. 45 Alberti s Italic capital, namely the composite one that was so frequently used by architects of the time, is no longer mentioned in theory, except by Luca Pacioli who, in a curious polemic with Alberti, scolds him for not having called it Tuscan. 46 In its place, other texts mention an Attic Order, probably of Plinian origin, as it is named by Manetti, Raphael and Cesariano, for example. 47 As a result, these texts come to a five-part system, but one that has nothing to do with Serlio s version; even the sequence of these five columns varies from one author to another. 48 In Cesariano, the number rises still further, to six, given that the Doric appears in two variants, male and female the latter derived from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, which Vitruvius describes as an example of Ionic style, but without using this term, so Cesariano mistakes it for Doric. 49 Yet, even if all this seems a rather chaotic panorama, perhaps it does help us to understand a little more clearly the almost complete absence of a system of Orders in buildings realized at the time. Clearly, interest in the wealth and variety of details predominates over interest in the system that unites them. Furthermore, we must realize that, at the time, the question of Orders also in the treatises occupied a relatively marginal place, as a topic for specialists, and not one that was mandatory for practising architects. Anyone who was not interested in the subject could manage without it. A clear example seems to be Leonardo da Vinci, who never mentions the question of Orders in his architectural writings, 50 and only a handful of his drawings deal with capitals, bases and entablatures. What interested him about an architrave was not its profile and measurements, but the mechanics of its construction; 51 for superimposed columns it was not the sequence of the Orders that interested him, but rather the formation of projections of the intermediate entablature. 52 On one occasion he drew a composite capital and an Ionic one, noting in the margin only the proportions of the capital, in the singular rather than the plural. 53 Perhaps this is the attitude of the scientist mathematician, as opposed to the historian antiquary who is interested, above all, in the variety of classical forms. In addition

10 304 Christof Thoenes to Luca Pacioli, this also recurs in Albrecht Dürer, who always discusses the measurements of the column, the cornice, etc. all singular. 54 For Pacioli, who gives a lively and provocative description of the three Greek columns 55 in the sequence Ionic, Doric, Corinthian this is, all things considered, a negligible, ridiculous question, all the more so because, as he states, now there s a notebook [cibaldone] about everything. 56 It may be that toward the end of the century, there were some patrons who, on the strength of a humanist education, were more interested in this than their architects; this might account for the advice Pacioli gives about choosing an Order that suits the purpose of the building: Obey the man with the purse, and let no more be [said]. 57 Of course, this was not a state of affairs that could satisfy the architects, all the more so because the reasons for dealing with the canon of the Orders did not end there. Leaving aside for now the problem of their possible symbolic meanings whether historical, religious or social 58 I will limit myself to a few comments on a strictly architectural, professional issue: that of proportions. While Alberti defines the column as the principal ornament in all architecture, 59 he is judging it from the viewpoint of a mathematical and rational aesthetic, based on numbers and measurements. In Vitruvius, its proportions are said to derive from the human body, hence from the image of God, the paradigm of perfect beauty. This is linked to the passage from Book I on the styles of the temples in relation to the pagan divinities, where the triad of Greek types which in Book IV are presented as a more or less chance product of history assumes a precise aesthetic significance. Indeed, Vitruvius links them to the three genera dicendi, or the three kinds of style used in classic poetry: the Doric is linked to severity, the Corinthian to delicacy, the Ionic to the ratio mediocritas 60 ; moreover, this is the same scheme as the three musical styles referred to in Book V. 61 It comes as no surprise that this idea, too, was taken up by Alberti, a Ciceronian aesthete. We refer to his Book IX, with its long and complicated digression on the nature of beauty, which is primarily manifested in the three variants of the large, the small and the medium. 62 By way of example, he cites the three architectural styles, tris figuras aedis exornandae, and it is here that he discusses that canon of regular, continuous proportions, which, as we will see, is absent from Book VII: the lengths of the three columns Doric, Ionic and Corinthian must correspond to 7, 8 and 9 diameters. 63 Where do these figures come from? Alberti gives a long mathematical explanation, without expressing any opinions on possible classical sources. Clearly, he could not have identified them from the monuments, but Vitruvius also offered very little certain information, for three reasons. The first is that the passage in Book IV on the origins of styles also includes the measurement of the time: therefore, the Doric column was initially attributed a height of six feet, and later seven; the Ionic column was first eight feet, then nine. 64 The second is that it is not clear where these values also include the capital ( columna cum capitulo, as

11 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 305 the Doric column is expressly described in Book IV.1.6), and where they only refer to the shaft (as can be inferred from the proportional calculations for the Corinthian column in the first paragraph of the same chapter). The third reason is that this system intersects with another, which is discussed in Book III, where the temples are distinguished not by style but according to the measurements of their intercolumniation: in the so-called Aerostylos columns are required that are proportioned 1:8, in the Diastylos 1:8½, in the Systylos and Eustylos 1:9½, in the Pyknostylos 1: Moreover, even within a certain genus, the proportions of the column may change depending on their structural function; in columns used for theatres, for example, the heights increase by half a diameter. 66 Alberti did not know how to solve the problem. Indeed, in Book VII, where he gives the rules for the construction of columns, the Doric is proportioned 1:7; the Ionic 1:9; and instead the Corinthian 1:8 67 by which he still means the shaft alone ( from top to bottom ); in this way, for whole columns, with capital and base, this gives values of 1:8, 1:10, and 1:9½. 68 Not wishing to lose my way in the calculations of other fifteenth-century Vitruvian theorists, 69 it is sufficient to add, finally, that it was Alberti s tripartite scheme of Book IX, arbitrary but clear, that found favor. Its most important disciple was Francesco di Giorgio, in whose analysis of the Orders a central role is played by the proportional canon imposed rather forcibly on the Vitruvian text, on which the author intends to comment. 70 Perhaps it is from here that Alberti s numbers 1:7; 1:9; 1:8 reached Serlio, who accepted them as the basis for his system, extending it at both ends with 1:6 for the Tuscan column, and 1:10 for the composite, 71 elevated here for the first time to the rank of an autonomous, if not entirely complete Order. 72 I should go on to discuss the modifications introduced by Vignola, with whom the canon of Orders would at last, in the latter part of the century, reach its definitive form. 73 But even at this stage it is clear that the history of the Orders in the Renaissance was not, and could not be, the history of a return to the classics. Certainly, this was an idea that was inspired by classical, Roman architecture. But the more familiar the sources grew, both literary and monumental, the more it must have been understood that they did not contain what was sought and what was needed: a rational method for the application of the classical language to the architecture of the day. Indeed, in the dialog with the classical era that Renaissance architecture was developing, the Orders play the role of intermediary between the study of Roman buildings and contemporary, current practice. We have followed some of the research of the Quattrocento, mainly of a technical nature, with few effects on the built architecture of the time. In the Cinquecento, the emphasis shifts onto its application. With Serlio s Fourth Book, which aimed to lay down General Rules for the Five Orders of Buildings, the theory of the Orders appears for the first time in the guise of an independent handbook, separated from the treatise on antiquity, contained in the Third Book. 74 This appears to be the usual dualism

12 306 Christof Thoenes between Vitruvius and the monuments. But behind it lies a new and much more radical quest: to seek the rules in the classical era, or create them independently, in line with one s own rational calculation. Serlio did not yet want to decide: in the event of controversy all he did was to give a general rule, always leaving many things to the liberty of the prudent architect. 75 But this was not enough for the architects of the next generation, let alone those working in northern countries, far from Rome and its monuments. So Vignola, while retaining in his text the entire humanist Renaissance topic on the classical derivation of the doctrine, basically reduced it to a mere game of proportional numbers, whose calculation for the first time came out as a round number. There were no classical numbers, and he knew it: in some cases, he openly admits to having corrected the measurements taken from the ruins, adjusting them, as he writes, to my rule. 76 But by doing so he had succeeded in giving to this part of Architecture (otherwise so difficult) that any [one of] mean understanding, if he have but only some taste of the Art, may comprehend the whole at one view; and easily use the same. 77 After all, it was the utility, not the historical truth, that justified the theory. Notes 1. V. Scamozzi, L idea della architettura universale (Venice, 1615), Part II, 15 ff; translation from Vincenzo Scamozzi, The Idea of a Universal Architecture, ed. Patti Garvin, Koen Ottenheym, and Wolbert Vroom, trans. Patti Garvin (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 2008), D. Howard, Sebastiano Serlio s Venetian Copyrights, The Burlington Magazine CXV (1973): ; and H. Gunther, Studien zum venezianischen Aufenthalt des Sebastiano Serlio, Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst XXXII (1981): The passage from Book I on commensus aedificorum et ordines et genera singula symmetriarum, sometimes cited in this context, does not describe Orders of columns, but uses the word in a more generic sense (see later). Vitruvius, Vitruvii De Architectura Libri Decem, Book I, chapter 7, 2; cited from edition by C. Fensterbusch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), Ibid., Book III, chapter 5 and Book IV, chapters 1 3; cited Fensterbusch, Ibid., Book IV, chapter 7; cited Fensterbusch, 194 ff. 6. See A. Horn-Oncken, Über das Schickliche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 60, 104 and passim. 7. See the recent stance taken by J. Onians, Brunelleschi: Humanist or Nationalist?, Art History V (1982): , which is interesting but exaggerated because it denies any contact between Brunelleschi and Roman art, which seems to us to be essential to explain his

13 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 307 classicizing purification of the Romanesque-Tuscan language. For the half pilaster as an element of the order derived directly from a classical model (the antheon), see Ch. Thoenes, Zu Brunelleschis Architektursystem, Architectura (1973): 87ff; for the numerous indications of Roman buildings that Brunelleschi must have known, see M. Horster, Brunelleschi und Alberti in ihrer Stellung zur römischen Antike, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz XVII (1973): Regarding Brunelleschi s probable knowledge of Vitruvius, see H. Klotz, Die Frühwerke Brunelleschis und die mittelalterische Tradition (Berlin, 1970), 25 ff., note Ch. Thoenes, Spezie e Ordine di colonne nell architettura del Brunelleschi, in Filippo Brunelleschi, la sua opera e il suo tempo, 2 vols (Florence, 1980), vol. II, 466 ff. 9. See the fundamental work by R. Feuer-Tóth, The Apertionum ornamenta of Alberti and the Architecture of Brunelleschi, Acta Historiae Artium Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae XXIV (1978): Michelozzo s role still needs to be examined, as highlighted by J. Onians in a lecture given in Tours in 1981 (I am grateful to Mr Onians for allowing me to read his unpublished paper). 10. See E. Battisti, Il metodo progettuale secondo il De re aedificatoria di Leon Battista Alberti, in Il S. Andrea di Mantova e Leon Battista Alberti (Mantua, 1974), L.B. Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Book VII, chapter 6; cited from edition by G. Orlandi and P. Portughesi (Milan: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1966), 563 ff. [This English translation is based on Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1988), 200.] 12. Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book I, chapter 3, 2; cited Fensterbusch, Cf. R. Krautheimer, Alberti and Vitruvius, in Studies in Western Art, Acts of the 20th International Congress of the History of Art, 4 vols (Princeton, 1963), vol. II, The Renaissance and Mannerism, 42 52; and Feuer-Tóth, Apertionum ornamenta. On the question of ornamenta in Vitruvius, see Horn-Oncken, Über das Schickliche, Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book IV, chapter 8, 1; cited Fensterbusch, 196: columnata. 15. Ch.L. Frommel has examined the use of the Orders in Alberti s architecture: Il Complesso di S.Maria presso S. Satiro e l ordine architettonico del Bramante lombardo, in Atti del I convegno La scultura decorativa del primo Rinascimento (Pavia, 1983), See Ch. Thoenes, Vignola s Regola delli cinque ordini, in Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte XX (1983): Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, 35 vols (Roma, ), vol. XXV, 1935, 467. This definition is preceded by another more generic definition that complies with the sixteenth-century use of the word: A series of similar horizontally aligned elements. This was removed from more recent editions in favor of the modern

14 308 Christof Thoenes definition: Organism both structural and formal consisting of a series of columns with a superimposed entablature and, sometimes, underlying pedestal or plinth. Dizionario Enciclopedico Italiano, 12 vols (Roma, ), vol. VIII, 1958, 609; and Lessico Universale Italiano, 25 vols (Roma, ), vol. XV, 1975, S. Serlio, Regole generali di architettura sopra li cinque ordini de gli edifici (Venezia, 1537), fol. XXX v. 19. Ibid., fol. XV v. 20. Ibid., fol. XVI v. 21. Cf. Ibid., fol. XXXII, XXXIV and LVII. 22. Relazione alla Fabbricceria di S. Petronio di Bologna dal 17 dicembre 1543, in La vita e le opere di Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (Vignola, 1974), 165 ff. 23. Daniele Barbaro (ed.), I dieci libri dell architettura di M. Vitruvio (Venezia, 1556), 67 and 88 ff. 24. Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book I, chapter 2, 2; cited Fensterbusch, B. Cellini, Della architettura, in B. Cellini, Opere, ed. B. Maier (Milano, 1968), 865 s. 26. A. Manetti, Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi, ed. D. de Robertis and G. Tanturli (Milano, 1976), 645 f., 74; cf. Thoenes, Spezie e ordine, 464 ff. In addition to the passage from Alberti (Book IV, chapter 3) cited in Tanturli s comment, Manetti s thought may have been directly inspired by Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book II, chapter I, 7; cited Fensterbusch, 82 f.: Tum autem (gentes) [ ] e vagantibus indiciis et incertis ad certas symmetriarum perduxerunt rationes. 27. Manetti, Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi, 64 f. 28. La vita e le opere di Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (Vignola, 1974), 165 ff. 29. A. Bruschi et al. (eds), Scritti rinascimentali di architettura (Milano, 1978), 371. See Bruschi s comment where he defines order as the geometric and structural law that governs the building, but also hints at the significance of style. 30. Sometimes also ratio, mos. 31. Lettera a Leone X (edited by R. Bonelli) in ibid., 483. The chapter on Orders is only found in an addition to Munich Ms B, whose Raphaelesque origin I will attempt to demonstrate in a special study of the various editions of the letter currently in preparation. For his position in the history of the doctrine of the Orders, see later note 74. The letter of 15 August 1514, in which Raphael promises to make the façade in the Doric order using the translation of Vitruvius by Fabio Calvo, is false. 32. Lettera a Leone X in Bruschi et al. (eds), Scritti rinascimentali. Cf. G. Rusconi, Della Architettura (Venezia, 1590), 69: And according to this they ordered the Corinthian. The same can be understood from the phrase used by Ph. de L Orme, Architecture (Rouen, 1648), 134: L Ordre de la colonne Thuscane. The classifying meaning can also coincide with that of a horizontal storey, as frequently occurs

15 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? 309 in Serlio, as, for example, in a phrase by Leonardo (in Bruschi et al. (eds), Scritti rinascimentali, 311): Make also the others [i.e. the sides of a courtyard] with the same order of columns, in other words with columns of the same size and type, continuing the row. Cf. also F. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia (in Bruschi et al. (eds), Scritti rinascimentali, 240): Above the order of Corinthians, namely above the storey with the Corinthian columns. 33. Antonio Averlino detto il Filarete, Trattato di architettura, A.M. Finoli and L. Grassi, 2 vols (Milano, 1972), vol. I, 39. But also see ibid., 16: We will take this order, namely the pattern of the three sizes, large and small, and medium ; and ibid., 17: We will follow the order given by him [i.e. Vitruvius], in other words the sequence in which Vitruvius dealt with these sizes, calling them Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. 34. J. Martin, Architecture ou Art de bien bastir, de Marc Vitruve Pollion (Paris, 1547). 35. W. Ryff, Vitruvius Teutsch (Nürnberg, 1548). 36. For the tradition that attributes this role to Brunelleschi (Manetti, Vasari, Milizia), see Thoenes, Spezie e ordine, Examples of ancient temples and theaters have survived that may teach us as much as any professor. Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Book VI, i; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, 440 [English trans. Alberti, On the Art of Building, 154]. This explains the non-vitruvian elements in Alberti s orders, like the Doric architrave with three bands. 38. Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book IV, chapter i, i; cited Fensterbusch, Ibid., Book IV, chapter 7; cited Fensterbusch, 194 f. 40. Ibid., Book I, chapter 2, 5; cited Fensterbusch, 38 f. 41. Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Book VII, chapter 6, 8; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, 565 and 585. Here too J. Onians (see earlier note 9) underlines the importance of Michelozzo, completely denying the interference of Roman prototypes (triumphal arches). 42. Ibid., Book VII, chapter 7; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, At the start of his discourse (ibid., Book VII, chapter 7; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, 565), Alberti expressly declares that there are three capitals adopted by the experts [quae peritorum usus reciperet], of which the first, the Doric, was also used by the Etruscans. Then the Composite one was added, which combines the gaiety of the Corinthian with the delight of the Ionic, and can be compared to the three classic forms; but his preferment, as was typical in the fifteenth century, is clear for mixed works that seek innovative solutions [qui rebus novis inveniendis studuerint]. 44. See J. Onians, Filarete and the qualità, Arte Lombarda 38 9 (1973): Ch. Thoenes, Bramante und die Säulenordnangen, in Kunstchronik 30 (1977): 62 f. Francesco di Giorgio had already written about the Tuscan column, but without including it in his proportional canon (see later note 70).

16 310 Christof Thoenes 46. L. Pacioli, De divina proportione, in Bruschi et al. (eds), Scritti Rinascimentali, 122 f. Indeed Bartoli accepted this proposal in his translation! Cosimo Bartoli, L Architettura di Leonbattista Alberti (Firenze, 1550), 213 and See Thoenes, Spezie e ordine, Pliny (Naturalis historia, XXXIV, LVI, 178 f.): Doric Ionic Tuscan Corinthian Attic; Manetti: Ionic Doric Tuscan Corinthian Attic; Raphael: Doric Ionic Corinthian Tuscan Attic; and Cesariano: Doric Ionic Corinthian Attic Tuscan. 49. Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book IV, chapter i, 7; cited Fensterbusch, 170 f. The word Ionic only appears in the following paragraph; Vitruvius, De Architectura, translato commentato et affigurato da Cesare Cesariano, Como 1521, fol. LXI v., LXIII (recte LXII) r. Cf. C.H. Krinsky, Cesare Cesariano and the Como Vitruvius Edition of 1521, doctoral thesis (New York University), L.H. Heydenreich, Leonardo architetto (2a lettura vinciana) (Firenze, 1963), L. Firpo, Leonardo architetto e urbanista (Torino, 1962), Ibid., 9 and Ibid., A. Dürer, Schriftlicher Nachlass, ed. H. Rupprich, 3 vols (Berlin, ), vol.ii, 1966, and See Pacioli ( De divina proportione, 118) for his famous characterization of the Ionic capital that represents a melancholic and feeble, widowly thing. 56. Ibid., Ibid., See Onians, Filarete ; and Ch. Thoenes, Sostegno e adornamento, Kunstchronik 25 (1972): 343 f. 59. Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Book VII, chapter 137; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book I, chapter 2, 5; cited Fensterbusch, 40. Cf. Horn-Oncken, Über das Schickliche, 102 f. Manetti (Vita di Filippo Brunelleschi, 73) interprets the multiplication of both architectural modes and literary styles in Greece as the product of their unique politics. 61. Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book V, chapter 4, 3; cited Fensterbusch, Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Book IX, chapter 5; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, 817. It is characteristic that emphasis shifts toward the question of size; the problem of appropriateness, the main argument of Vitruvius passage, is discussed elsewhere (ibid., Book VII, chapter 3; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, 548) without reference to the Orders. 63. Ibid., Book IX, chapter 7; cited Orlandi and Portughesi 835 f. [English trans. Alberti, On the Art of Building, 309]. 64. Vitruvius, Vitruvii, Book IV, chapter I, 6 8; cited Fensterbusch, 170 f. 65. Ibid., Book III, chapter 3; cited Fensterbusch,

17 Architectural Orders: Rebirth or Invention? Ibid., Book V, chapter 9, 3; cited Fensterbusch, Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Book VII, chapter 6; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, But see the passage (ibid., Book IX, chapter 4; cited Orlandi and Portughesi, 807) on an ancient Corinthian Order measuring 1: Cf. Onians, Filarete ; and Thoenes, Spezie e ordine, F. di Giorgio Martini, Trattati di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare, ed. C. Maltese, 2 vols (Milano, 1967), vol. II, 367; but see ibid. vol. II, 372 and vol. I, where contrasting data from Vitruvius are compiled. 71. In spite of his constant assurances, Serlio s general proportions are not taken from Vitruvius, but follow his own systematic intention. Paradoxically, it would be Vignola who would restore Vitruvian proportion to the Tuscan Order, of 1:7 (Regola delli cinque ordini di architettura [Roma, 1562], Tav. IV): I have taken the authority from Vitruvius in the seventh chapter of the fourth book, where he says that the height of the Tuscan column must be equal to seven times its width. But his Doric, at 1:8, was already a diameter larger than that of Vitruvius. 72. This would become the most widespread canon before Vignola; cf. the well-known treatises by Jean Martin, Hans Blum, Giorgio Vasari, etc. 73. See Thoenes, Vignola s Regola. 74. This separation is, to some degree, prefigured in Raphael s letter where the chapter on the Orders appears at the end of the text, almost an appendix to the description of the monuments of Rome announced in the previous chapters. [The English title of Serlio s Fourth Book from Robert Peake s translation of 1611 is Rules for Masonry, or Building with Stone or Bricke, made after the five manners or orders of Building. ] 75. Serlio, Regole generali, fol. XXXIX v. 76. Vignola, Regola delli cinque, Tav. III. Ai lettori. 77. Vignola, Regola delli cinque, Tav. III. Ai lettori. [English translation from Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Canon of the Five Orders of Architecture, trans. John Leeke (Minola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2011), vii.]