Mannerism, modernity and the modernist architect, 1920–1950

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Between 1883 and 1889, four volumes came out in the series ‘Geschichte der neuren Baukunst’: C. Gurlitt, Das barock- und rococo-Ornament Deutschlands (Berlin, E. Wasmuth, 1883); Geschichte des Barockstiles, des Rococo, und des Klassicismus in Belgien, Holland, Frankreich, England (Stuttgart, Ebner & Seubert, 1886); Geschichte des Barockstiles in Italien (Stuttgart, Ebner & Seubert, 1887); and Geschichte des Barokstiles und des Rococo in Deutschland (Stuttgart, Ebner & Seubart, 1889). H. Wölfflin, Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien (Munich, T. Ackermann, 1888): here quoted from the English edition, Renaissance and Baroque, trs., Kathryn Simon (London, Collins, 1964), p. 145. Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, ibid., pp. 164f. A. Riegl, Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie (Vienna, K. K. Hof- und Staats-druckerei, 1901); Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom (Vienna, Anton Schroll, 1908). M. Dvořák, ‘Über Greco und den Manierismus’, in Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (Munich, Piper & Co., 1924), pp. 261–276; abridged English edition, ‘On El Greco and Mannerism’, in Magazine of Art, 46, 1 (1953), pp. 14–23. More recently published in, Gert Schiff, ed., German Essays on Art History (New York, Continuum, 1988), pp. 191–205. Dvořák, ‘Über Greco und den Manierismus’, op. cit., pp. 275–276. The relationships between Mannerist and Baroque art and contemporary religious movements were debated in the 1920s: W. Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der gegenreformation (Berlin, P. Cassirer, 1921) and ‘Gegenreformation-Manierismus-Barock’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 49 (1928); N. Pevsner, ‘Gegenreformation und Manierismus’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 46 (1925). W. Friedländer, ‘Die Entstehung des antiklassichen Stiles in der italienischen Malerei um 1520’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 46 (1925), pp. 49–86; and ‘Der antimanieristische Stil um 1590 und sein Verhältnis zum übersinnlichen’, Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1928–1929 (1930), pp. 214–43: here quoted from the later English book edition, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting (New York, Columbia University Press, 1957), p. 48. On Friedländer's position, see Donald Posner's Foreword to the English edition. Friedländer, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting, op. cit., pp. 6–7. P. A. Emison, Creating the ‘Divine’ Artist: From Dante to Michelangelo (Leiden, Brill, 2004), p. 52. Weisbach, for instance, in ‘Der Manierismus’ of 1919, while taking a negative stance on Mannerism, stressed its abstracting mentality: Weisbach, ‘Der Manierismus’, in Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst, 30 (1915). W. Friedländer, ‘Das Kasino Pius der Vierten’, in Kunstgeschichtliche Forschungen, 3 (1912). E. Panofsky, ‘Die Scala Regia im Vatikan und die Kunstsammlungen Berninis’, in Jahrbuch der Preuß, 40 (1919), pp. 240ff. N. Pevsner, Gegenreformation und Manierismus, in ‘Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft’, XLVI (1925); N. Pevsner, Leipziger Barock (Dresden, Wolfgang Jess, 1928). These studies were followed by another on Italian Mannerist and Baroque painting: N. Pevsner, Die Italienische Malerei vom Ende der Renaissance bis zum ausgehenden Rokoko (1928–32). On Pevsner's early years, see U. Engel, ‘The Formation of Pevsner's Art History: Nikolaus Pevsner in Germany 1902–1935’, in, P. Draper, ed., Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004), pp. 29–55, esp. pp. 34ff. E. Panofsky, ‘Das erste Blatt aus dem “Libro” Giorgio Vasaris …’, in Städel-Jahrbuch, 6 (1930), pp. 25–72: English edition in Meaning in the Visual Arts (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1955). Moreover, in Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffgeschichte der alteren Kunsttheorie (Hamburg, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Nr. 5, 1924), Panofsky had already shown the anti-naturalistic value of the Idea in sixteenth-century literature. E. Michalski, ‘Das Problem des Manierismus in der Italienischen Architektur’, Zeitschrit für Kunstgeschichte (1933), pp. 88ff. See also the small dissertation by Loni Ernst, Manieristische Florentiner Baukunst (Dissertation,Potsdam, 1934); H. Hoffman, Hochrenaissance, Manierismus, Frühbarock, Die italienische Kunst des 16. Jahrhunderts (Zurich-Leipzig, 1938). See also the short comments by M. Tafuri, L'architettura del Manierismo nel ‘500 europeo (Roma, Officina, 1966), esp. pp. 17–18. A. Payne, ‘Architectural History and the History of Art: A Suspended Dialogue’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians [JSAH], 58, 3 (1999), pp. 292–299; here, p. 294. S. Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich Eisen Eisenbeton (Leipzig & Berlin, Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1928). ‘Michel-Ange est l'homme de nos derniers mille ans comme Phidias fut celui du précédent millenaire.’: Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (Paris, G. Cres,1923), p. 133; citation from the English edition, Towards an Architecture, trs., J. Goodman (Los Angeles, Getty, 2007), p. 205. Le Corbusier refers to Michelangelo on various occasions in the book: see, for instance, the tracé régulateur on a photograph of the Campidoglio (pp. 59–60). Burckhardt also names Tintoretto, Correggio and Rembrandt who had been unable to control their artistic impulses. Rubens, on the contrary, was the modern artistic success, because he had been able to channel his artistic will into vast and complete artistic production. ‘L'oeuvre de Michel-Ange est une création, non une renaissance (…)’: Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, op. cit., p.134, pp. 132–133; English translation, Towards an Architecture, op. cit., pp. 205–206. C. Rowe, ‘Mannerism and Modern Architecture,’ Architectural Review (May, 1950), pp. 289–299: here quoted from C. Rowe, As I Was Saying, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1999), pp. 29–57; here, p. 51. E. Gombrich, ‘Mannerism: The Historiographical Background’ (1961) in On the Renaissance, vol. 1 (London, Phaidon, 1998), pp. 99–106; here, p. 103. T. van Doesburg, Klassiek-Barok-Modern (Antwerp, ‘De Sikkel’, 1918). C. Rowe, As I Was Saying, vol. 1, op. cit., p. 51. C-E. Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), ‘Le Renouveau dans l'architecture’, in L'Oeuvre, Organe officiel de la Fédération des Architectes Suisses et de l'Association Suisse romande de l'Art et de l'Industrie, I, 2 (1914), p. 34: ‘Nos Romains, nos Gothiques, nos Louis XIV, ce sont maintenant les ingénieurs.’ Pevsner would label the Palazzo del Tè as a ‘deliberate attack on the Renaissance ideal of the isolation and balance of all parts.’: cited in E. Verheyen, ‘The Palazzo del Te: In defense of Jacopo Strada’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians [JSAH], XXXI, 2 (1972), pp. 133–137; here, p. 133. W. Lotz, ‘Mannerism in Architecture: Changing Aspects’, in Acts of the XX International Congress of the History of Art, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 239–246; here, p. 240. E. Gombrich, ‘Zum Werke Giulio Romanos: 1. Der Palazzo del Te’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, N.F. [revised numbering] 8 (1934), pp. 79–104; and ‘Zum Werke Giulio Romanos: 2, Versuch einer Deutung’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, N.F. [revised numbering] 9 (1935), pp. 121–150. E. Gombrich, review of E. Verheyen, The Palazzo del Tè in Mantua: Images of Love and Politics, Burlington Magazine, 122 (1980), pp.70–71, my emphasis. Full quotation: When I first visited Mantua as a student my head was full of debates about the status and meaning of `Mannerism' in sixteenth-century art. Being startled by the Palazzo del Tè I was surprised to find that it had not yet been mentioned in these discussions and that in particular Giulio Romano's building designs had been completely neglected. This was before Rudolf Wittkower had published his seminal paper of 1934 on the Laurenziana as a document of Mannerist aesthetics, and the question whether or not the term Mannerism could be usefully applied to architecture was still sub judice. Julius von Schlosser readily accepted the thesis subject of ‘Giulio Romano als Architekt’ and I found to my satisfaction that much of what I had read about the alleged anti-classical style applied to many of Giulio's bizarre designs, while others seemed to me to be almost ostentatiously restrained and classical. I made much of this tension and of what it appeared to signify in psychological terms, though I explicitly rejected the recourse to the ‘spirit of the age' as an explanation of these characteristics. See also R. Woodfield, ‘Gombrich and Psychology’, in, P. Smith and C. Wilde, eds, A Companion to Art Theory (Oxford, Blackwell, 2002), pp. 426–435. Unedited typescript of Manfredo Tafuri's course Corso di storia dell'architettura 2A, Giulio Romano (15th November, 1985), p. 3: my translation. K. Forster and R. Tuttle, ‘The Palazzo del Te’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians [JSAH], 30, 4 (1971), p. 267. S. Freud, ‘Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci’ (1910), in Gesammelten Werken [GW], vol. 12, Vierte Auflage (Frankfurt, Fisher Verlag, 1968), pp. 128–211. The young Gombrich attended the lectures of the psychologist and semiotician, Karl Bühler, and participated in his students' experiments. See Woodfield, ‘Gombrich and Psychology’, op. cit., p. 426. Kris was close to Gombrich: he was the author with him of a book on caricature (eventually only published in a much abbreviated form in 1940), and, as the alliance between Hitler's Germany and Austria grew stronger, it was Kris who recommended Gombrich for a position at the Warburg Library. Gombrich would later explicitly refer to Freud: see E. Gombrich, Psycho-Analysis and the History of Art (1953), republished in Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (London, Phaidon, 1963); and ‘Freud's Aesthetics’, Encounter, 26 (1966), pp. 30–40. S. Freud, ed., Imago. Zeitschrift für Anwendung der Psychoanalyse auf die Geisteswissenschaften, published by the Internationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1923–33, 1935–37; as of vol. 19, the title changed to Imago. Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Psychologie, ihre Grenzgebiete und Anwendungen. See also Kris's article on the drawings of the fourteenth-century Italian cleric Opicinus de Canistris: E. Kris, ‘A Psychotic Artist of the Middle Ages’ (1936), in Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York, International Universities Press, 1952), pp. 118–127. J. Mirollo in F. Robinson and S. Nichols, eds, The Meaning of Mannerism (Hanover, University Press of New England, 1972). J. Shearman, review of Giulio Romano, by Frederick Hartt, Burlington Magazine, 101 (1959), p. 460. Ibid., original italics. J. Shearman, ‘Osservazioni sulla chronologia e l'evoluzione del Palazzo del Te’, Bollettino del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura ‘Andrea Palladio’, 9 (1967), pp. 434–438. One can find an argument against this position in the fact that the same contrast rustico-raffinato can be found in the painted architecture: for instance, in the villa vescovile di Quingentole; see Giulio Romano, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Electa, 1989), illustrations on pp. 218 and 524–525. R. Wittkower, ‘Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana’, Art Bulletin, XVI (1934), pp. 123–218; later republished in Idea and Image: Studies in the Italian Renaissance (London, Thames and Hudson, 1978). It followed Wittkower's 1933 article on the dome of St Peter's, Rome. Originally, Wittkower seems to have intended to preface the article with a now lost section, written a year before as ‘Das Problem manieristischer Architektur’, from which he most likely uses elements in the conclusion. The text was part of an unpublished typescript Festschrift für Walter Friedländer zum 60. Geburtstag am 10.3.1933: see M. Wittkower, ‘Foreword’ to R. Wittkower, Idea and Image, op. cit., p. 8. R. Wittkower, ‘Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana’, op. cit., p. 206: my emphasis. Ibid., p. 216. Ibid., pp. 215–216. Ibid., p. 213. R. Wittkower, and after him Rowe, would later refer to Ghyka's explorations of the Golden Section in: M. Ghyka, The Geometry of Art and Life (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1946). E. Garin, Der Italienische Humanismus (Bern, Francke, 1947). The text was first published in German, from the Italian manuscript, and only later, in 1952, in Italian. Here cited from the English edition, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance (New York, Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 10–11. A. Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, eine Auseinandersetzung über das Malerische in der Architektur (Leipzig, Hirzel, 1897), p. 46. Garin, Italian Humanism, op. cit., pp. 10–11. E. Panosky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (1937), later published as the Introduction to Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1955), p. 3. In a rather sarcastic footnote to the same article, Panofsky refers to the importance of Plato within the context of 1930s' politics: ‘Needless to say, the works of “Plato and other philosophers” also play an anti-Fascist role “in such circumstances”.’: p. 23, note 18. Panofsky is actually reacting against the accusation that the study of ‘Plato and other philosophers’ plays an anti-Marxist rôle. The whole footnote reads as follows: In a letter to the New Statesman and Nation, XIII, 1937, June 19, a Mr. Pat Sloan defends the dismissal of professors and teachers in Soviet Russia by stating that ‘a professor who advocates an antiquated pre-scientific philosophy as against a scientific one may be as powerful a reactionary force as a soldier in an army of intervention.’ And it turns out that by ‘advocating’ he means also the mere transmission of what he calls ‘pre-scientific’ philosophy, for he continues as follows: ‘How many minds in Britain today are being kept from ever establishing contact with Marxism by the simple process of loading them to capacity with the works of Plato and other philosophers? These works play not a neutral, but an anti-Marxist role in such circumstances, and Marxists recognize this fact.’ Needless to say, the works of ‘Plato and other philosophers’ also play an anti-Fascist role ‘in such circumstances’, and Fascists, too, ‘recognize this fact.’ In a critical remark following Anthony Blunt's lecture on Mannerism at the RIBA (later published as A. Blunt, ‘Mannerism in Architecture’, RIBA Journal (March, 1949), pp. 195–200, Peter Smithson seems to react to this perception. Smithson ‘wondered whether those with Academic training who then inverted the system, nevertheless retained something of their original academicism.’: cited in A. Vidler, ‘Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism, 1930–1975’ (PhD dissertation, Technische Universiteit Delft, 2005), p. 248, note cxxxvi. Later published as Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2008). N. Pevsner, ‘The Architecture of Mannerism’, in, Geoffrey Grigson, ed., The Mint: A Miscellany of Literature, Art and Criticism (London, Routledge, 1946), pp. 116–138. This would later be included in his An Outline of European Architecture. As we mentioned earlier, Pevsner had a pioneering rôle, in the mid-1920s, in developing the concept of Mannerism in architecture. I refer also to Blunt, ‘Mannerism in Architecture’, op. cit. See the Smithsons' defence of Wittkower's study in their 1952 letter in reaction to a very negative review in the RIBA Journal: the letter appeared later in Arena (February, 1966), p. 182; cited in Henry A. Millon, ‘Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism: Its Influence on the Development and Interpretation of Modern Architecture,’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians [JSAH], XXXI, 2 (1972), pp. 83–91; here, p. 89. R. Wittkower, ‘Principles of Palladio's Architecture, Part I,’ in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 7 (1944), pp. 102–122, and ‘Part II’, 8 (1945), pp. 68–106. Both texts were incorporated into Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949). C. Rowe, ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier Compared’, Architectural Review (March, 1947); later republished in C. Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1976). Alina Payne, ‘Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians [JSAH], 53, 3 (1994), pp. 322–342; here, p. 339. C. Rowe, As I Was Saying, vol. 1, op. cit., p. 34. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., pp. 32–34. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 45: ‘At the Bauhaus, while one registers mental appreciation of both plan and structure, the eye is faced with the disturbing problem of simultaneous impact from widely dispersed elements.’ Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 49. Ibid. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., pp. 49, 50. Probably first presented ca. 1960, and re-presented on various occasions and with slightly varying titles, but published much later, as C. Rowe, ‘The Provocative Façade: Frontality and Contrapposto’, in Le Corbusier: Architect of the Century (London, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1987), pp. 24–28. The text was later also published in C. Rowe, As I was Saying, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1999), pp.171–203. C. Rowe, ‘The Provocative Façade’, op. cit., p. 28. Ibid. Rowe, As I Was Saying, vol. 1, op. cit., p. 50 (my emphasis). Ibid. J. Ockman, ‘Form without Utopia: Contextualizing Colin Rowe’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians [JSAH], 57, 4 (1998), pp. 448–456; here, pp. 449–50. See Leon Satkowski's acknowledgements, in C. Rowe and L. Satkowski, Italian Architecture of the 16th Century (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), esp. pp. vi–vii. Rowe died in 1999. C. Rowe, ‘The Provocative Façade’, op. cit., p. 28. Rowe refers to Nowicki on several pages in C. Rowe, ‘“Neo-Classicism” and Modern Architecture I’, Oppositions, 1 (1973), pp. 1–26. M. Nowicki, ‘Origins and Trends in Modern Architecture’, Magazine of Art (November, 1951), pp. 273ff. Nowicki's text was republished in J. Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture, 1943–1968: A Documentary Anthology (New York, Rizzoli, 1993), pp. 149–156. Ockman refers to this quotation in the context of Rowe in Ockman, ‘Form without Utopia’, op. cit., p. 451. On Nowicki, see also H. F. Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673–1968 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 339–340.