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Site, History, Type, and Allegory: The Poetics and Rhetoric of the Classical Tradition in Rome HISTORY: the stories and events that have been associated with a particular patron, founder, institution, building type, place, etc. TYPE: those general associations and characteristics of a particular building form allied to function that transcend specific patrons and places ALLEGORY: those metaphorical allusions to transcendent meaning that became associated especially with the mythological and Christian traditions in the Renaissance; please note that it is the nature of allegory to be multivalent, literate, and somewhat obscure. Again, it should not be assumed that only one of these themes obtain in the places we will visit to illustrate them—indeed, it is the particular pleasure of Rome that virtually every place is complex and layered in its meanings—bur rather that I would like you to consider how these themes might have furnished the primary intent of the rhetoric of the place. At the same time, I expect your analyses of these places to investigate the ways in which these themes become intertwined, noting that, for example, a site’s embedded characteristics include the historical or mythological, history cannot be divorced from place, etc. What is essential in every case is that you not see the forms as ends in themselves, but rather rhetorical means toward creating a more articulate urban and rural environment. [If] a work of art does not instruct overtly through morals, maxims, or demonstrations of poetic justice, it should be harmoniously well proportioned, reflecting in its own order and harmony the harmony God created in the universe. In this way, a work of art, the microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm, expresses and appeals to the most rational part of the mind, as well as to the highest emotions, and in its total effect induces in the whole soul and body that balance, harmony, and proportion the soul ideally should possess in itself, should impose on and share with the body, and should take pleasure in perceiving and receiving. — H. James Jensen, The Muses’ Concord: Literature, Music, and the Visual Arts in the Baroque Age, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976, p. 3 CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW It must be kept in mind that the usual intent of High Renaissance architects was not to copy specific Roman buildings but to arrive at their own general canons based on a composite of Roman examples, canons which were generally [only with regards to the orders] more rigid than those of Vitruvius himself, and much more rigid than those illustrated by actual Roman buildings. Since French academic architects tended to adhere to the principles laid down in the writings of these Renaissance authorities even more closely than did most Italian architects themselves, the French academic canons of “classic” design in turn tended to become even more rigidly fixed than those of Renaissance Italy. —Donald Drew Egbert, The Beaux-Arts Tradition in French Architecture, Princeton, 1980, p. 106 The broad current of Renaissance architecture in Italy, which started to flow slowly in early quattrocento Florence and disappeared after a brilliant coda in Piedmont midway through the eighteenth century, was always anchored on the Idea and experience of Rome. Indeed, what was produced in Rome from its heyday during the Empire through the eighteenth century arguably has had more of an impact on the trajectory of Western architectural traditions than any place on earth. As you are here to specifically study the “classical” tradition, and as the merits of that tradition as it is manifested in Rome are that it is decidedly whole, integrated, and meaningful, we cannot simply focus on issues of classical “language” without understanding context (physical, intellectual, cultural), nor can we study “composition” if we do not know the rhetorical ends to which these compositions were directed. Thus, the urban realm, the history of the city and the Church, the culture of Renaissance humanism, the allied arts, etc. are all essential sub-components of what is ostensibly a seminar dedicated to grasping the formal principles of classical architecture as it is manifested here.
Site, History, Type, and Allegory: The Poetics and Rhetoric of the Classical Tradition in Rome The Renaissance as it is here defined, spanning roughly 350 years from Brunelleschi to Vittone, is the ideal point of departure for understanding the whole spectrum of the classical tradition from antiquity to neo-Classicism, since it offers the greatest variety of approaches to engaging with the past, and the most thoughtful examples of dealing with that most challenging problem of classicism, the relationship of column and wall. Moreover, the Renaissance’s ability to arrive at new forms and types out of the raw material of the past offers us an important model for developing our own approaches to our inheritance. It was in part the understanding of all art as rhetorical, and therefore driven by its message, that yielded the fertile variety of approaches to the classical tradition in Rome. To grasp the Renaissance’s approach to classicism we must therefore resort to the somewhat problematic idea of “language.” Now, while no visual media can replicate the structure and meanings of words, the analogies between language and built form in the classical tradition are close enough to help us unlock the mind of Renaissance architects. Indeed, they were not merely satisfied to dispose their work with competent grammar and syntax, they were aiming at a meaningful architecture that was rhetorical and poetic, i.e. that could explain, convince, exhort, and metaphorically re-present ideas from beyond architecture itself. It was precisely the aspiration to raise the visual arts to the intellectual standing of the liberal arts that directed Renaissance artists to adopt the aims and methods of rhetoricians and poets. Arguably, the fundamental formal challenge of working with the classical language lies not in the refinement of the Orders themselves, but in the complex ways in which columns and walls interact. From the moment ancient Roman architects adopted the post and lintel system of the Greeks and wed it to their development of a wall-based architecture, the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of that marriage challenged and inspired architects to resolve the potential conflicts into an ever richer whole. Palladio’s “fugal system of proportions” (in Wittkower’s words) and Borromini’s contrapuntal compositions were only possible because of their embrace of the challenges of composing with pilasters, half-columns, and colossal orders (and, because they could consider the bounds of the canon of the Orders fairly fixed). Moreover, the license exhibited by the greatest architects of the classical tradition was almost exclusively rhetorical in impetus: in classical rhetorical theory, one is allowed—even expected—to depart from the rules in order to reach for greater expressive effect (within the bounds of decorum, of course). In addition to the Orders and their deployment, we will study the broader issues of classical composition, or what an early twentieth century writer might have called the “Grand Manner,” from antiquity through the era of the Grand Tour. Since the elements of the classical language serve to order the world, the ways in which they occupy and shape space are fundamental to understanding the very raison d’être of the classical language—its ability to be rhetorical, to speak coherently and eloquently of the issues that have occupied the concerns of thoughtful people and societies for millennia. In so far as a tradition in architecture can be called classical, it must rest on two analogies: of the building as a body, and of the design as a re-enactment of some primitive—or if you would rather—of some archetypal action to which our procedure might refer. From Vitruvius to Boullée, the texts suggest something of the kind, always in different contexts, since such ideas do not contain, or even imply, the repertory of norms and procedures which the constant alteration of circumstances forces you to renew, to rethink and to alter…. —Joseph Rykwert, “The Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Classical Tradition,” The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth Century French Architecture, ed. Robin Middleton, MIT Press, 1982, p. 17 In concert with our approach of examining the driving themes of Roman classical architecture, it must also be noted that, at the levels of morphology (form), typology (kind), and rhetoric (language) there have been, over time, diverse approaches to the inheritance from the past. One could talk about continuity, inversion, and invention as strategies for dealing with the legacy of past achievements. When you examine and analyze the places you see this
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