Vincenzo Scamozzi Research Articles

Original or post-war paintings? The fixed wooden scenery of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza: a guided multidisciplinary approach based on scientific analyses and HBIM

Archival resources, a photogrammetric survey, analysis of materials and techniques, and evaluation of the state of conservation were interconnected phases in the interdisciplinary research on the perspective scenery of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. To fill existing gaps related to the history of this unique artefact and to the undocumented retouching of paint layers on the scenery during post-war reconstruction work, a broad analytical approach (optical microscopy, XRPD, SEM–EDX, μFTIR and μRaman) was applied to micro-samples, the selection of which was guided by consolidated geometrical and archival data. The aims were to obtain a characterisation of the pigments and binders and to evaluate the microstratigraphic sequence, the state of conservation of the scenery flats, and the deterioration processes involved. The findings unveiled a discernible variability in the production techniques of the finishes, frequently lacking the classic microstratigraphic sequence associated with the traditional method for painting on wooden panels from the sixteenth century. Moreover, by identifying many pigments that could be used as temporal markers we were able unequivocally to establish, for the first time, that a significant part of the scenery designed by the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi was heavily repainted in the post-WWII period. These analytical results and all the data collected on the artefacts over time were related through an HBIM model, enabling the historical and technical-analytical information to be linked to the geometrical survey and thus to provide guidance for actions based on current and future knowledge for the maintenance and monitoring of the Teatro Olimpico.

On the Traces of Vincenzo Scamozzi's Unrealized Projects for Rialto Bridge

On the Traces of Vincenzo Scamozzi's Unrealized Projects for Rialto Bridge

Neither Perfect Nor Ideal: Palladio’s Villa Rotonda

ABSTRACTThis article demonstrates that the most celebrated building designed by Andrea Palladio, widely known as the Villa Rotonda and begun around 1566, was left only partially constructed at the time of the architect’s death in 1580 and that, as a villa design, it was neither perfect nor ideal. Drawing on detailed records of the construction work carried out in the 1590s, the article shows that much of the villa was constructed or altered after Palladio died, in significant part so as to deal with practical difficulties and deficiencies inherent in the design originally published in Palladio’s treatise. Scholars in general have come to recognise that the Villa Rotonda is something of a palimpsest. However, it has not been properly understood that the building was largely constructed not as an adjusted scheme devised by Palladio, but rather as a strategically revised concept for a villa developed after Palladio’s time by Vincenzo Scamozzi. This preserved something of the original scheme as a hilltop belvedere — especially its outward appearance as a domed and isolated block with four near-identical porticoes — but it adapted what had been built, which was far from complete, to a much more practical vision of the requirements of rural life. What was built during this later period then remained intact until the late eighteenth century.

Review: Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi: un intellettuale architetto al tramonto del Rinascimento

Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi: un intellettuale architetto al tramonto del Rinascimento Palladio Museum, Vicenza, Italy 25 May–20 November 2016 Stepping into the exhibition Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi , the visitor immediately encountered a billowing cloud of stylized books floating on the opposite wall, which illustrated the nearly 250 titles quoted in Vincenzo Scamozzi's magisterial treatise of 1615, L'idea della Architettura Universale .1 This textual nebula emblematized the theme of the refined little show, hosted by the Palladio Museum in a single room on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Barbarano in Vicenza. Jointly organized by the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, in collaboration with the Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin, the exhibition was all about Scamozzi's books. It presented the lifelong process by which the first Palladian architect read, annotated, and illustrated the volumes he collected, as well as showing how he composed and edited his own publications—in short, how he used books as tools to shape his mind and his oeuvre as both a builder and a theoretician. The exhibition largely depended on the research of Katherine Isard, one of the curators, who recently reconstructed the architect's book collection and the role it played in a professional practice based on a relentless pursuit of learning.2 Such an …

The Flemish Merchant of Venice. Daniel Nijs and the Sale of the Gonzaga Art Collection

The portrait of a plainly dressed man offering for inspection what appears to be a vellum binding enclosing a few leaves – possibly drawings – occupies the front cover of this book. Ranged behind him are several plaster casts of identifiable sculptures. The reader may be forgiven for assuming that he is the ‘Flemish merchant of Venice’ of the title, but he is not. Traditionally identified as ‘a Collector’, he serves none the less well as a stand-in for the enigmatic Daniel Nijs (1572–1647), for whom there is no securely-identified portrait in oils. Merchants as well as artists and patricians were collectors of art in late-Renaissance Venice, and Nijs was praised as such by contemporaries: the poet Iulio Cesare Gigli and the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi. Anderson’s book may, therefore, be placed with those publications devoted to Venetian collectors and collections that now include a number of important, recent studies. But as Anderson’s chapter headings announce, Nijs also participated in the art market as a dealer, an agent and a broker.

Review: “Questo libro fu di Andrea Palladio”: Il codice Destailleur B dell'Ermitage, by Orietta Lanzarini and Roberta Martinis

Orietta Lanzarini and Roberta Martinis “Questo libro fu di Andrea Palladio”: Il codice Destailleur B dell'Ermitage Rome: “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, 2015, 320 pp., 70 b/w illus. €195, ISBN 9788891306685 “This book belonged to Andrea Palladio.” This intriguing attribution, inscribed by an anonymous, sixteenth-century hand (Vincenzo Scamozzi?) on the verso of the final folio of the coeval codex Destailleur B, hints at the illustrious provenance of this beguiling, little-studied manuscript of antiquarian study drawings, which is held in the Library of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. That is, the manuscript was little studied until now. Orietta Lanzarini and Roberta Martinis's “Questo libro fu di Andrea Palladio”: Il codice Destailleur B dell'Ermitage succeeds in providing comprehensive analysis and documentation of the 130-folio (260-page) manuscript. “Questo libro fu di Andrea Palladio” is composed of two principal sections. The first—a trio of essays—considers the form, content, and history of the codex Destailleur B; its relevance in regard to sixteenth-century antiquarian culture; and the archaeological information contained in its drawings. The second section takes the form of an extensive catalogue detailing the contents of each folio of the codex, including drawing analyses, transcriptions of annotations, bibliographic notes, and references to manuscripts or single-sheet drawings that illustrate comparable subject matter. The authors provide photographic reproductions of 139 pages from the codex—the vast majority of which have not been published previously—as well as two appendixes that catalogue extant manuscripts and drawings that may be directly or indirectly correlated to the Destailleur B. The attribution of ownership of the codex Destailleur B to Andrea Palladio provides the foundation for Lanzarini and Martinis's impressive and intricate reconstruction of the manuscript's provenance and history. Building on the previous scholarship of Federico Rausa, Michael H. Crawford, and Ian Campbell, the authors conclusively link the manuscript's contents—563 drawings of ancient buildings and objects—to the circle of Pirro Ligorio and to antiquarian …

‘The Signature of Architecture’: Compositional Ideas in the Theory of Profiles

The theory of profiles from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century is subtly distinct from the theory of the architectural orders. Francesco di Giorgio initiated the topic with his analogy of cornice and facial profiles. Michelangelo further exploited the conceit, while also developing the formal, particularly skiagraphical, potential of mouldings. In the seventeenth century, Vincenzo Scamozzi set the archaeological findings of architects into a framework of rhetoric, which furnished terms for formal analysis, audience reception, and ornamental affects. Rhetoric also encouraged profiles to be understood in terms of symmetry and decorum, so that the composition befitted its place within the genre of the order and the building. If the rhetorical model was applied to profiles, it could also be applied to architecture as a whole, in which case profiles were the equivalent to the rhetorical category of elocutio, which was the context for Boffrand’s treatment of profiles in the eighteenth century. And if profiles spoke, they could have character, as Jacques Francois Blondel would so famously demonstrate soon after. In contrast, William Chambers saw mouldings in terms of the expression of weight, an idea so appealing to Francesco Milizia that he copied Chambers’s entire account of the topic into his own Principii. Chambers’s implicit structural rationalism, however, was not so much a message from the future as a statement of the desirability of coherence, with each part performing its allotted role, in keeping with the rhetorical principle that expression must both fit together and be fitted to its purpose. The paper argues that rather than being minor details, mouldings encapsulated wider theories of expression — ‘the signature of architecture’.

:Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture

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Scamozzi’s Orders and Proportions: An End to Illusions or a Visionary Harbinger?

While many studies have addressed the issue of proportions in the work of Palladio, both in the orders and in the forms and dimensions of architecture, very little interest has been shown in Vincenzo Scamozzi’s handling of this theme. This article examines Scamozzi’s influential published commentary regarding the proportions of the orders, rooms, and entire buildings, and draws numerous comparisons with Palladio. It interprets Scamozzi as a bridge linking the Renaissance with Enlightenment thinking.

Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture. Ann Marie Borys. Visual Culture in Early Modernity. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. xix + 214 pp. $104.95.

Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture. Ann Marie Borys. Visual Culture in Early Modernity. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. xix + 214 pp. $104.95. - Volume 68 Issue 1

The Goldsmiths' altar in San Giacomo di Rialto: a documentary case study of Venetian trade guild patronage

The Goldsmiths and Jewellers constituted one of the oldest and most prominent trade guilds in Venice. In April 1601 they were accorded the rights to erect an altar to their patron saint, Anthony Abbot, in the ducal church of San Giacomo di Rialto, and between May 1601 and February 1607, they oversaw the design and production of one of the most elaborate and costly altarpieces ever to have been erected by a Venetian trade guild, employing Vincenzo Scamozzi and Girolamo Campagna, respectively Venice’s leading architect and sculptor. This article reconstructs in minute detail the commissioning history for the bronze and marble altar, critically analysing newly discovered documents in the Venetian State Archives and other primary sources. It is underpinned by a thorough examination of the project’s finances – an aspect which has been ignored by scholars. It is supported by a documentary appendix, which includes new transcriptions of the pertinent archival material.

オルドナンスとディスポジシオンについてのクロード・ペローの解釈 : ウィトルウィウス『建築十書』註解にみる構成への見解

Claude Perrault's views on composition (in general) appeared in his notes of translation of Vitruvius' Les dix livres d'architecture, especially concerning the two of Vitruvius' six principles on architecture, ordinatio and dispositio. His interpretation on these conceptions didn't cause as much controversy as his untraditional views on proportion. But, when compared with the views of the Italian interpreters of Vitruvius, such as Daniele Barbaro and Vincenzo Scamozzi, Perrault's misunderstandings or intentional paraphrases are made clear. He understood the two conceptions with making reference to French contemporary residential architecture, and confused their original attributions, which had been re-interpreted in the regular and characteristic compositional system of the residential architecture in Italian Renaissance.

ヴィンチェンツォ・スカモッツィの建築理論における"scienza"について : アルベルティ,レオナルド・ダ・ヴィンチの"scienza"概念との比較を通して

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of the"scienza"in Vincenzo Scamozzi, as compared with that of Alberti or Leonardo da Vinci. For Scamozzi, who was an architect and a theorist in the 16th century Italy, "scienza" was by far the most important concept in his architectural theory. Scamozzi tried to establish his own architectural theory by four principles, that is to say "scienza", "invenzione", "disegno" and "peritia dell'arte". Above all, "scienza" is the most important principle of them, and it has an effect that controls the functions of the other principles.

Number, Spoils, and Relics: Totemic Images in a Mnemotopia

At northern Italian Counter-Reformation pilgrimage sites known as sacri monti (sacred mountains), the traditional focus on a site made sacred by events of religious importance is replaced by a condition of exile to a remote and difficult landscape. Judith Wolin argues thatsacri monti as a group can be understood as mnemotopias, “memory places,” whose primary function “is to allow the revisitation of ‘remembered’ events.” An unusual site with similar intentions, designed in the 1590s by Vincenzo Scamozzi as part of a villa project, shares some defining qualities ofsacri monti. Yet Scamozzi's project is unique; the goal of this paper is to show how Scamozzi participates in the mnemotopic tradition without employing explicit representational narrative. In its place stand number correspondence, a narrative use of the orders, and a layered speculation on bodies and fragments.

Thermoluminescence Dating in Architectural History: The Chronology of Palladio's Villa Rotonda

The dating of Palladio's Villa Rotonda by thermoluminescence (TL) has made it possible to establish a more reliable chronology for this building: Vincenzo Scamozzi's completion can be more accurately defined, and the early 18th-century interventions by Francesco Muttoni are proved to be far greater than hitherto assumed. The TL results, furthermore, give criteria by which to assess the relative value of various other documentary sources for the Rotonda, and so indirectly allow an image to appear of what the Rotonda was at its original completion and how it was used.