Mannerism
in Architecture
In the same way that
Mannerism in painting includes a certain amount of shock value, knowing
the rules but bending the rules, high key pallets (very bright vivid colors),
high contrast of light and shadow Mannerist architecture shares some of
the same qualities. The Italian word
maniera meaning charm,
grace or playfulness can also be applied to much of the architecture of
the mid to late 1500's. Part of the mannered world of the late Italian
Renaissance was to recreate the glory of their Roman past but to do update
in a contemporary style.
A more sober
attempt to revive the classical theatre was made by the academies, organized
by upper-class gentlemen who assembled to read and, on occasion, to participate
in and to support financially productions of classical drama. The plays
were generally of three kinds: contemporary poetic dramas based on ancient
texts; Latinized versions of Greek dramas; and the works of Seneca, Terence,
and Plautus in the original. Toward the middle of the 15th century, scholars
discovered the manuscripts of the Roman writer Vitruvius; one of these
scholars, the architect and humanist Leon Battista Alberti, wrote De re
aedificatoria (1452; first printed in 1485), which stimulated the desire
to build in the style of the classical stage. In 1545, Sebastiano Serlio
published his Trattato de architettura, a work that concentrated entirely
on the practical stage of the early 16th century.
Serlio's treatise on
the theatre had three especially significant items. The first was a plan
for an auditorium and stage that assumed a rectangular hall, with spectators
arranged in the same pattern as in the Roman cavea (i.e., the tiered semicircular
seating area of a Roman theatre), the difference being that the semicircle
of the audience was cut short by the sidewalls. Second, his three types
of stage designs--tragic, comic, and satiric--were the same as Vitruvius'
classifications. Third, for the stage, he started with a Roman acting platform,
but instead of the scaenae frons, he introduced a raked platform, slanted
upward toward the rear, on which the perspective setting of a street was
made up of painted canvases and three-dimensional houses. Since the perspective
required that the houses rapidly diminish in size with distance, the actors
were able to use only the front houses. Serlio used three types of scenes,
all with the same basic floor plan. Each required four sets of wings (i.e.,
the pieces of scenery at the side of the stage), the first three angled
and the fourth flat, and a perspective backdrop.
"The
revival of theatre building in Italy."
Britannica 2001 Standard
Edition CD-ROM.
Copyright © 1994-2001
Britannica.com Inc. November 10, 2002.
Notice how the theatre
below uses Serlio and Vitruvius's ideas.
Andrea Palladio, Teatro
Olimpico (Olympic Theater)
Vicenza, Italy 1584
completed by Scamozzi
(Schamozzi)
Italian Mannerist
Architecture
|
Context: According
to the Brittanica,
"During his
stay in Rome, from 1554 to 1556, Palladio in 1554 published Le antichità
di Roma ("The Antiquities of Rome"), which for 200 years remained the standard
guidebook to Rome. In 1556 he collaborated with the classical scholar Daniele
Barbaro in reconstructing Roman buildings for the plates of Vitruvius'
influential architectural treatise (written after 26 BC) De architectura
(On Architecture). The new edition was published in Venice in 1556.
Palladio's last commission
came in 1579-80--to build a theatre in Vicenza for the Accademia Olimpica
for the performance of classical dramas. The design of the Teatro Olimpico
was in the nature of an academic exercise, being based on the reconstruction
of the ancient Roman theatre at Orange, in France.
The Accademia Olimpica
in the little town of Vicenza, near Venice, commissioned a famous late
Renaissance architect, Andrea Palladio, to design a theatre. This, the
Teatro Olimpico, was the first permanent modern indoor theatre,
and it has survived intact. Palladio thoroughly researched his subject
(the outdoor classical theatre of Rome) and without knowing it designed
something now considered very close to a Roman odeum. It is a scaled-down
version of an outdoor Roman theatre, with shallow open stage and a heavily
sculptured, pedimented, permanent background. A colonnade of heroic proportions,
surmounted by sculptured figures, surrounds a steeply stepped bank of seating.
Overhead is a painted sky. To promote an intimate stage-auditorium relationship,
he used a flattened ellipse in planning the seating, rather than the classic
half circle. The interior was to be lit by tallow candles mounted in wall
sconces. Palladio died before the building was finished, and his follower
Vincenzo Scamozzi completed the work in 1585. Behind the five stage entrances
(attributed to Scamozzi) are static, three-dimensional vistas of streets
receding to their separate vanishing points; it is not certain whether
this was the intent of the original design. In performance, the theatre
is efficient if the auditorium is full, and speech carries quite well because
of the small volume, flat ceiling, modulated sidewalls, excellent vertical
sight lines, and direct hearing lines from all seats to the stage. The
exterior is an ungainly, masonry-walled structure with a wood-trussed,
tiled roof."
"The
revival of theatre building in Italy."
Britannica 2001 Standard
Edition CD-ROM.
Copyright © 1994-2001
Britannica.com Inc. November 10, 2002.
Form: So what makes
this theater in the Mannerist style? A classical Greek stage would
have none of this ornamentation. Follow
this link to see. The theatre does use an overall classical vocabulary
of corinthian columns, triumphal arches and classical sculptures standing
in contrapposto stance, but, the way in which the elements are combined
is Mannerist because of the way in which the elements are combined in an
almost unclassical manner. In general, the overall decoration of
the facade of the stages backdrop is too busy and suffers from a very unclassical
horror vacui in which the parts of the entablature of ionic and corinthian
structures are reordered in an almost unclassical way. There are
columns combined with flattened pilasters. In some instances the
columns do not support an entablature but rather are pedestals for sculptures.
In addition to this, the over ornate qualities of the carved architectural
ornaments and sculptures are combined with different colored marbles and
a painted ceiling.
Iconography:
The use of classical themes and motifs in the Teatro Olimpico is
almost obviously an attempt to dress up and elevate the contemporary entertainment
of the Renaissance patron. |
The stage demonstrates
the development of perspective scenery. According to the Brittanica:
in theatre,
scenery and the scene design technique that represents three-dimensional
space on a flat surface, creating an illusion of reality and an impression
of distance. Developed during the Italian Renaissance, perspective scenery
applied the newly mastered science of linear perspective and brought the
craft of illusion to the Italian stage. An initial motivation may have
been to allow theatre to move from outdoors into closed rooms, where perspective
painting could make small spaces appear larger.
Influenced by the perspective
painting of Renaissance artists and by the 15th-century revival of Vitruvius'
writings on architecture, Baldassarre Peruzzi applied the laws of perspective
to scene design. His work provided a basis for his student Sebastiano Serlio's
De architettura (1545), which outlined methods of constructing perspective
scenery and the raked, or angled, stage--whence the terms upstage and downstage
derive. In Serlio's designs, painted scenery receded directly from the
viewer toward a single vanishing point at the back of the stage. Angle
perspective was an 18th-century refinement of perspective scenery. Several
vanishing points were set at the back of the stage and off to the sides,
so that the scenery, receding in several directions, was pictured at an
angle to the viewer.
Andrea Palladio, Villa
Rotunda also called the Villa Capra
Vicenza, Italy 1566-69
Italian Mannerism
|
Form: This building,
although a private villa (home) is still designed according to the basic
schema of a central church or temple plan very much like the Pantheon.
Nevertheless, the mannerist differences include four porticoes facing each
of the compass points. These porticoes were designed by Palladio
to give the resident a clear view of his lands.
Another change to the
central church plan is the proliferation of windows and arches throughout
the structure which light the interior of the building. The building
is also set up so that it has two stories that surround the central area
over the dome with bedrooms and other rooms.
Iconography: Overall
the basic plan really doesn't make sense for a private home but this kind
of plan wasn't created in order to house the Capra family in a pragmatic
way but rather to clothe them in a temple.
Context: By the
middle of the 1500's the population of Europe began to grow most likely
as the result of new types of crops coming from the Americas and the rise
of a new social order. As a consequence of these factors, war, famine
and disease became a natural part of city living. In addition to
this, Venice, which had owned much land and controlled trade with Greece
and some of the Eastern provinces lost some of its power.
Once wealthy Venetian
merchants who made there original wealth trough trade now no longer had
the continuous influx of wealth from it. They now turned towards
the investments they now held and one of these was the country estates
in the Vicenza outside of Venice.
These lands allowed
the wealthy merchant such as Giulio Capra, to escape the criminal, diseased
and dirty smelly cities to the country and this lead to the development
of the country estate. This lead to new commissions for architects
like Palladio and land became iconic of power which explains why Palladio
chose to create the four porticoes called belvederes (Italian for beautiful
view).
Palladio's architecture
and the fact that he published his own interpretations of Vitruvius
lead to a wholesale adaptation of his building style and philosophy.
This style, now known as Palladianism, spread all over the world
and is still used today. |
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580):
Church
of San Giorgio Maggiore,
Venice. Begun 1566
|
Form: The formal elements
that make this church a Mannerist style church are how the facade is organized
and the strange design of the interior. The facade is made of two
layers, one of which seems to be almost a facade that is placed on pillars
and breaks the space of the triangular pediment it contains. In the
interior, often flattened pilasters are combined with engaged double columns
in odd groupings which are a bit unusual.
. . .situated
on the island of San Giorgio, San Giorgio Maggiore's gleaming white facade
faces across the basin of San Marco to the great piazza. Built as part
of the Benedictine monastery on the island, the church's facade is scaled
to present a public face to the town of Venice. It dominates and partially
obscures the brick body of the church behind it, while it reflects the
interior space of the nave and its side chapels.
The central
temple front is articulated with four three-quarter Composite columns raised
on high pedestals, which frame the central door. In the back plane, the
lower body of the church is articulated by a smaller order of pilasters,
supporting two lower, half pediments on either side. The cornice line continues
through the central body, interlocking the two forms. The deep relief of
these elements, combined with the sculptural detail of capitals, cornices,
niches and figures, makes a great play of light and dark in the sunlight.
The interior plan combines
elements of longitudinal and centralized buildings, a resolution responding
to the Renaissance "ideal" of the centralized plan and symbolic cross form
and both the medieval tradition of nave churches and the requirements of
the Counter-reformation for functional churches with ample naves for a
large congregations as well as side chapels big enough for celebrating
the sacraments.
The interior ceiling
is a longitudinal barrel vault leading to a crossing, framed by grouped
columns and arches, which support a dome lit with a lantern. Cross vaults
above side aisles and a transept with apsidal chapels intersect the nave,
and beyond the crossing is a presbytery and a monk's choir. Thermal, clerestory
windows bring light to the side chapels and to the nave, and the interior
glows with a warm light, reflected by the painted stucco surfaces (over
brick) of the walls and vaults. In contrast, the architectural detail of
cut stone columns and pilasters, capitals, bases, continuous entablatures,
framed arches and railings, darkened with age, articulate the rhythmic
sequence of spaces. — JY
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/San_Giorgio_Maggiore.html
|
Giulio Romano, Palazzo
del Tè 1525-1532 Mantua, Italy
Interior Courtyard
Italian Mannerism
Giulio Romano, Palazzo
del Tè 1525-1532 Mantua, Italy
Metopes with fallen
triglyphs in the entablature
of the interior courtyard.
Giulio Romano, Palazzo
del Tè 1525-1532 Mantua, Italy
Fall of the Giants
fresco 1532-1534
|
Form: The design
of this country home is based on the enclosed courtyard design for similar
Roman style homes in Pompeii.
However, unlike the homes of Pompeii,
the central courtyard is not a perfect square nor is it perfectly symmetrical.
The classical order we come to expect from a building based on classical
Vitruvian concepts however is not really there.
The entablature contains
a rusticated and illogical facade of fake ashlar
bricks. Below the classical entablature are the triangular pediments
that one assumes should top structures such as they do in the Parthenon
and the front of the Pantheon and the Roman triumphal arches, niches and
windows often do not have any openings nor do they contain sculptures.
Romano also uses engaged columns which do not support the entablature and
are merely a decoration. All of these elements are very similar to Michelangelo's
library at San Lorenzo c1530.
Other, details of the
entablature are also a bit irregular. The entablature is Doric but
the capitals of the columns represent an invented style. The the
way in which the standard Doric style entablature is arranged is a little
odd. The metopes of the entablature contain coats of arms and grotesque
masks but alternate with fallen triglyphs. Compare this against the
entablature of the Parthenon.
Iconography:
The odd and "mannered" arrangements of the Palazzo are a kind of "What's
wrong with this picture?" game. The well educated courtier who came
to visit such a palazzo would have a lot of fun analyzing the irregularities
and laughing about them if he was knowledgeable enough. The fact
that Romano's patron was Frederigo Gonzaga (whose grandfather
Ludovico
Gonzaga commissioned Mantegna to decorate his Camera
degli Sposi, 1474) hired Romano to "play" with this architecture
symbolizes Gonzaga's intelligence and erudition (education).
Context: Giulio Romano
was Raphael's assistant. He was summoned by Frederigo Gonzaga the
Duke of Mantua in 1524 to design a recreation of an antique Roman villa
for the Gonzaga family. This was not meant to be a primary residence
but rather a “fun house” for them.
According to the Brittanica,
The principal
rooms of the Palazzo del Tè 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.
Form: The overall
room is meant to distort and create a type of funhouse effect. The
corners of the room, especially the ceiling corners have been smoothed
out with plaster to create a continuous illusionistic space in which the
ceiling and walls flow together. The swirling floor pattern when
coupled with the fresco's massive size and distortions of space create
an almost hallucinatory effect.
great extra info
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/orion/eng/hst/manneris/te.html
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/delte/delte.html |
ashlar
n [ME asheler, fr.
MF aisselier traverse beam, fr. OF, fr. ais board, fr. L axis, alter. of
assis] (14c)
1: hewn or squared
stone; also: masonry of such stone
2: a thin squared
and dressed stone for facing a wall of rubble or brick
rusticated
A type of rough or raised in relief masonry found on the exterior of building.
Michelozzo's
Palazzo
Medici Ricardi has this style of brickwork on the bottom courses.
trompe
l'oeil
n, often attrib [F
trompe-l'oeil, lit., deceive the eye] (1889)
1: a style of painting
in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail; also:
the use of similar technique in interior decorating
2: a trompe l'oeil
painting or effect
