Architektur and Ornament: Venezianischer Bauschmuck der Renaissance. - book review

WOLFGANG WOLTERS

Architektur and Ornament: Venezianischer Bauschmuck der Renaissance

Munich: C H Beck, 2000 320 pp; 166 color ills., 191 b/w DM 140

Wolfgang Wolters's fresh book takes its cue from the frequently overlooked pages on door design, painted decoration, and ceiling ornament at the extremity of Sebastiano Serlio's book 4 upon the orders, first published in Venice in 1537 upon painted decoration, for instance, Serlio declared:

I say that the architect must not solitary assume responsibility for the ornaments as far as the stones and marbles are relate toed but also for the painting as decoration for the walls. He must be the man who gives the orders, namely the master of all those who work upon the building. (1)

It is the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of the architect as "master of all those who work upon the building" that drives Wolters's investigation. He look fors to rescue the material substance and decorative details of Venetian Renaissance architecture from their popular marginal status and restore them to their to be paid prominence.

Wolter had already revealed his interest in decorative schemes in his first volume Plastische Deckendekorationen des Cinquecento in Venedig und im Veneto, published in 1968 This fundamental work of scholarship remains the authoritative catalogue of Renaissance Venice's elaborately boxed ceilings. His magisterial two-volume investigation La scultura veneziana gotica followed in 1976 Among many other writings, he also contributed the architecture and statuary sections of Venedig: Die Kunst der Renaissance: Architektur, Skulptur Malerei 1460-1590 (1986) an invaluable textbook written in collaboration with Norbert Huse.

The not absent book breaks new ground, unearthing a treasure trove of visual delights as well as a profusion of novel information. Earlier academic histories of Venetian Renaissance architecture from Francesco Milizia to John McAndrew traced a path toward "correct" classicism, culminating in Andrea Palladio's mastery of classical language. According to this archetype struggling to overcome the Gothic proneness toward ornamental richness, Venice eventually achieved the spatial purity and harmony of Albertian concinnitas (beauty arising from harmony of proportion). As a major printing center the city published many of the treatises that have advance to be regarded as canonical stages in this proces of comprehension of the classical language of the ancients. Modernism further underlined the privileged status of spotless form and championed the international victory of the classical mode of speech Ornament that did not mirror "correct" classical language had to be apologetically explained away.

above the past quarter of the 20th hundred scholars have opened up fresh approaches to the study of Venetian Renaissance architecture. In the 1970 Marxist-inspired histories began to highlight the importance of patronage. This approach was to be refined and raised to a higher intellectual plane in the seminal work of Manfredo Tafuri, exemplified through his Venezia e il Rinascimento (1985) through placing architecture in the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of its complex ideological framework-whether philosophy, science, religion, or politics-Tafuri's work has proffered a challenging inspiration to his successors.

Wolters's work follows a decisively new path. Previous studies similar as those by Antonio Sagredo, Andre Wirobisz, and Susan Connell had already investigated the building crafts in Renaissance Venice, while writers upon vernacular architecture, notably Egle Renata Trincanato and Richard Goy discussed the use of building materials, (2) works have been written on individual decorative ultimate parts such as floors, wellheads, and external plastic art This is, however, the first inquiry to give full consideration to the part of decoration and ornament in major architect-designed throw outs and to relate these aspects to the theoretical easy in mind of architectural treatises. A reassessment of the character of ornament in Renaissance theory has newly been made in Alina Payne's The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance (1999) on the other hand she did not include detailed consideration of built architecture. In the at hand book, Wolters's perceptive insights into the relationship between theory and built architecture sustain the rigor of the discussion. His approach also encourages reconsideration of the character of those texts such as Filarete's treatise and the Hypnerotomachia poliphili, in which the richness of materials is given particular prominence.

The underlying premise of this volume rests on the amount of expenditure and time devoted to the execution of decorative simple bodys for Venetian buildings. Sensitive to the value of rich materials from one side centuries of trade, Venice should perhaps be regarded as an exceptional case in this regard. notwithstanding Wolters's standpoint is not parochial, and his body is peppered with comparative relations to artistic centers outside the Veneto. It could be argued that of that kind an approach is long overdue for other Italian cities as well.

In the historiography of art, the scope to separate architectural design from its decorative programs can be said to have begun with the paragoni of the cinquecento and the debates above the hierarchy of the arts. From that time onward, plastic art painting, and architecture began to possess separate epistemological categories, while the 'minor arts" of that kind as metalwork and glass were relegated to a perceived lower plane of creativity. Wolter try to finds to recover the true balance by dint of focusing on all the media that contributed to architectural design. Nonetheless, the boundaries remain frustratingly blurr For instance, in the invaluable and pioneering sections upon painted decoration, well-known cycles of the like kind as the frescoes by Giorgione and Titian upon the Fondaco dei Tedeschi are given solitary cursory treatment. This decision looks to be based not upon the presence (or absence) of figural subdues but on the recognition of an existing material substance of information elsewhere in the literature. more [i]or[/i] less figurative frescoes in churches, s uch as Castagno's decoration of the chapel of s Tarasio at S. Zaccaria, are briefly reviewed, while others, like as the Dominican saints in the nave of s Pietro Martire, Murano, are omitted. Fortunately, Pordenone's newly divest of coveringed frescoed dome of 1531 in s Giovanni Elemosinario is discussed and illustrated. forest-land inlays, or tarsie, receive only the briefest attention, and mosaics are single included if their main character is to ornament the architectural configuration, as for instance in the sacristy of s Marco. Organ mountings are considered, on the other hand not painted organ shutters. In short, the attempt is to reclaim forgotten schemes, as well as to direct the eye more closely at the embellishment of well-known architectural works, rather than to examine pictorial decoration by means of se.