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.
![]() 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.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. |
![]() Giulio Romano, Palazzo del Tè 1525-1532 Mantua, Italy Interior Courtyard Italian Mannerism
|
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
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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