ARCHITECTURE
Mannerism
The term Mannerism was first coined to describe painting of the
period. We have not encountered any difficulty in applying it to
sculpture. But can it be usefully extended to architecture as well? And
if so, what qualities must we look for? These questions have proved
surprisingly difficult to answer precisely. The reasons are all the more
puzzling, because the important Mannerist architects were leading
painters and sculptors. Reflecting our dilemma, only a few structures
are generally acknowledged today as Mannerist. Such a building is the
Palazzo del
Òå, Mantua, by
Giulio Romano (c.
1499-1566), Raphael's chief
assistant. The courtyard facade (fig. 698)
features unusually squat proportions and coarse
rustication. The massive, and utterly useless, keystones of the windows
have been "squeezed" up by the force of the triangular lintels—an
absurd impossibility, since there are no true arches except over the
central doorway, which is surmounted by a pediment in violation of
classical canon. Even more bizarre is how the metope midway between each
pair of columns "slips" downward in defiance of all logic and accepted
practice, creating the uneasy sense that the frieze might collapse
before our eyes.
The reliance on idiosyncratic gestures that depart from Renaissance
norms does not in itself provide a viable definition of Mannerism as an
architectural period style. What, then, are the qualities we must look
for? Above all, form is divorced from content for the sake of surface
effect. The emphasis instead is on picturesque devices, especially
encrusted decoration, with the occasional distortion of form and novel,
even illogical, rearrangement of space. Thus Mannerist architecture
lacks a consistent integration between elements.
698.
Giulio Romano. Courtvard,
Palazzo del Òå, Mantua.
1527-34
698.
Giulio Romano. Courtvard,
Palazzo del Òå, Mantua.
1527-34
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Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano, original name Giulio Pippi, in full Giulio di
Pietro di Filippo de’ Gianuzzi (born 1492/99, Rome
[Italy]—died Nov. 1, 1546, Mantua, Duchy of Mantua), late
Renaissance painter and architect, the principal heir of
Raphael, and one of the initiators of the Mannerist style.
Giulio was apprenticed to Raphael as a
child and had become so important in the workshop that by
Raphael’s death, in 1520, he was named with G. Penni as one
of the master’s chief heirs; he also became his principal
artistic executor. After Raphael’s death, Giulio completed a
number of his master’s unfinished works, including the
Transfiguration. In his original work from these years, such
as the Madonna and Saints (c. 1523) and the Stoning of St.
Stephen (1523), Giulio developed a highly personal,
anticlassical style of painting.
In 1524 Giulio left Rome for Mantua, where
he remained until his death, completely dominating the
artistic affairs of that duchy. The most important of all
his works is the Palazzo del Te, on the outskirts of Mantua,
begun in 1525 or 1526 and built and decorated entirely by
him and his pupils. This palace is almost a parody of the
serene classicism of Donato Bramante while retaining the
forms of Roman antiquity. The building consists of a square
block around a central court with a garden opening off at
right angles to the main axis—in itself characteristic of
the way in which all the elements are slightly different
from what would be expected. The design is particularly
famous for its capricious misuse of ancient Greek and Roman
ornamental motifs.
The principal rooms of the Palazzo del Te
are the Sala di Psiche, with erotic frescoes of the loves of
the gods; the Sala dei Cavalli, with life-size portraits of
some of the Gonzaga horses; and the fantastic Sala dei
Giganti. This showpiece of trompe l’oeil (illusionistic)
decoration is painted from floor to ceiling with a
continuous scene of the giants attempting to storm Olympus
and being repulsed by the gods. On the ceiling, Jupiter
hurls his thunderbolts, and the spectator is made to feel
that he, like the giants, is crushed by the mountains that
topple onto him, writhing in the burning wreckage. Even the
fireplace was incorporated into the decoration, and the
flames had a part to play. This room was completed by 1534,
with much help from Rinaldo Mantovano, Giulio’s principal
assistant. The colour is very crude; the subject is suited
to facile virtuosity and tends to bring out the streak of
cruelty and obscenity that runs just below the surface in
much of Giulio’s painting.
In Mantua itself he did a great deal of
work in the huge Reggia dei Gonzaga. The decorations of the
Sala di Troia are particularly noteworthy in that they look
forward to the illusionistic ceiling decorations of the
Baroque; this style was probably inspired by the presence in
Mantua of the Camera degli Sposi by Andrea Mantegna. Giulio
also built for himself a Mannerist version of the House of
Raphael (1544–46) and began the rebuilding of the cathedral
(1545 onward).
Encyclopædia
Britannica
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VASARI.
The Palazzo degli Uffizi in Florence, by
Giorgio
Vasari, whom we have
already encountered as a painter and biographer, consists of two long
wings
—originally
intended, as the name Uffizi suggests, for offices—facing
each other across a narrow court and linked at one end by a loggia (fig.
699). Vasari's inspiration
is not far to seek: the "tired" scroll brackets and the peculiar
combination of column and wall have their source in the vestibule of the
Laurentian Library. We will recall Vasari's praise for Michelangelo's
unorthodox use of the classical vocabulary. Does this mean that the
Laurentian Library itself is Mannerist? The case can be argued both
ways. On the one hand, Michelangelo's design is as willful a subversion
of High Renaissance classicism as Rosso's Descent from the Cross
(see fig. 675); on the
other, these devices serve a powerful expressive purpose in the
Laurentian Library that responds to the imperative of Michelangelo's
genius, whereas in Vasari's paraphrase they have been reduced to empty
gestures. Whichever side one takes (they are not mutually exclusive),
the differences in the results are plain enough. The Uffizi loggia lacks
the sculptural power and eloquence of its model; rather, it forms a
screen as weightless as the facade of the Pazzi Chapel (see fig.
583).
What is tense in Michelangelo's design
becomes merely ambiguous. The architectural members seem as devoid of
energy as the human figures in Vasari's Perseus and Andromeda
(fig.
681),
and their relationships as studiedly
"artificial."
699.
Giorgio
Vasari. Loggia of the
Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence (view from the Arno River). Begun
1560
Giorgio
Vasari.
The Uffizi colonnade and loggia
Giorgio
Vasari.
The Loggia of Vasari in Arezzo
The Vasari Corridor passing over the Ponte Vecchio
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Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari, (born July 30, 1511, Arezzo [Italy]—died
June 27, 1574, Florence), Italian painter, architect, and
writer who is best known for his important biographies of
Italian Renaissance artists.
When still a child, Vasari was the pupil
of Guglielmo de Marcillat, but his decisive training was in
Florence, where he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of
the Medici family, trained within the circle of Andrea del
Sarto, and became a lifelong admirer of Michelangelo. As an
artist Vasari was both studious and prolific. His painting
is best represented by the fresco cycles in the Palazzo
Vecchio in Florence and by the so-called 100-days fresco,
which depicts scenes from the life of Pope Paul III, in the
Cancelleria in Rome. Vasari’s paintings, often produced with
the help of a team of assistants, are in the style of the
Tuscan Mannerists and have often been criticized as being
facile, superficial, and lacking a sense of colour.
Contemporary scholars regard Vasari more highly as an
architect than as a painter. His best-known buildings are
the Uffizi in Florence, begun in 1560 for Cosimo I de’
Medici, and the church, monastery, and palace created for
the Cavalieri di San Stefano in Pisa. These designs show the
influence of Michelangelo and are outstanding examples of
the Tuscan Mannerist style of architecture.
Vasari’s fame rests on his massive book Le
Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori
italiani… (1550, 2nd ed., 1568; Lives of the Most Eminent
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1850–52, trans. of the
2nd ed.), which was dedicated to Cosimo de’ Medici. In it
Vasari offers his own critical history of Western art
through several prefaces and a lengthy series of artist
biographies. These discussions present three periods of
artistic development: according to Vasari, the excellence of
the art of classical antiquity was followed by a decline of
quality during the Dark Ages, which was in turn reversed by
a renaissance of the arts in Tuscany in the 14th century,
initiated by Cimabue and Giotto and culminating in the works
of Michelangelo. A second and much-enlarged edition of
Lives, which added the biographies of a number of artists
then living, as well as Vasari’s own autobiography, is now
much better known than the first edition and has been widely
translated.
Vasari’s writing style in the Lives is
anecdotal and eminently readable. When facts were scarce,
however, he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps with
information of questionable veracity. His bias toward
Italian (and more specifically Tuscan) art is also
undeniable. Despite these flaws, Vasari’s work in Lives
represents the first grandiose example of modern
historiography and has proven to be hugely influential. The
canon of Italian Renaissance artists he established in the
book endures as the standard to this day. Moreover, the
trajectory of art history he presented has formed the
conceptual basis for Renaissance scholarship and continues
to influence popular perceptions of the history of Western
painting.
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Pirro Ligorio.
The architecture of the High Renaissance took a
variety of forms. The Raphaelesque and classical
culture produced a naturalistic and pictorial type
of architecture, sumptuously interpreted by Pirro
Ligorio (1510-83) in the gardens of the Vatican. The
crucial role played by Michelangelo in architectural
works for the papacy led him to adopt an
increasingly individual and subjective understanding
of structures and the orders, transforming them into
dynamic new forms.
Pirro Ligorio,
the architect of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, built
the casino (garden house) for Pius IV in the Vatican
Gardens in accordance with the humanist ideal of
man's harmony with nature. The structure is on the
slope of a hill and is .surrounded by flights of
steps, niches, courtyards, and loggias. The whole of
the facade is decorated with classical motifs and
mythological scenes, which continue even more
abundantly on the interior. At about the same time.
Michelangelo was working on a model for the dome of
St Peter's, the final part of his design for the
basilica. Rejecting Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger's wild Mannerist design, he reinstated some
of Bramante's original features, but he kept the
Florentine ribbed dome in preference to Bramante's
hemisphere. When he died in 1564 the drum, with its
system of butressing consisting of projecting paired
columns alternating with large windows, was under
construction. Another of his designs that he never
saw completed was the magnificent entrance hall of
the Laurentian Library in Florence. This was built
from a model produced in f 1557.
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Pirro Ligorio
Pirro Ligorio, (born c. 1510,
Naples—died October 1583, Ferrara [Italy]), Italian
architect, painter, landscaper, and antiquarian who designed
the Villa d’Este at Tivoli (1550–69), which still stands in
its original state. Built for Ligorio’s patron, Cardinal
Ippolito d’Este, the villa has a planted landscape and a
vast terraced garden with spectacular fountains leading up
to the huge house. Ligorio also built the Casino of Pope
Pius IV (Casina di Pio IV) in the Vatican Gardens (1558–62)
and the Rotunda with Baldassare Peruzzi (1481–1536). He
decorated his works with profuse stucco ornament; the Casino
is a good example of his decoration. Ligorio also published
a work on Roman antiquities and compiled an influential
collection of Roman inscriptions, many of which were later
found to be fraudulent.
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Pirro Ligorio.
The lodge in the Belvedere courtyard, in Vatican Museums
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