6/16 Verona

Home to the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet, Verona was but a short day trip away for us from Venice. The first structure that we analyzed was its Amphitheater, which bears a striking resemblance to the Colosseum in Rome, but without the layering of Classical orders. It is unclear how tall the original structure was, as only 2 of its stories survive to the present day. Although we are still on the Italian peninsula, it still amazes me how far the culture of Rome spread and the fact that they would build such massive structures the same everywhere they went. It certainly gave the Roman Empire a sense of continuity, as they would come and lay down a town in exactly the same way everywhere they went (talk about superstition). The structure is built mainly out of large tufa blocks, which have been shown plenty of times around the ancient Roman world to be of high and lasting quality.

The 1^st century BCE Roman Theater, which is still in use today for concerts, was the next Roman building on the agenda. It was constructed facing the river, which adds to the sense of drama when it was filled to capacity with an audience. What survives today of it is a good amount of the seating, some of which was covered up in the 10^th century when churches and houses were built on top of it at the back of the theater. What was astonishing to me was that it was only discovered in the 19^th century after systematic excavations. It must have been covered quite a bit for it to be excavated that far down: it rises some 107 meters from the bank of the river!

The building that I personally enjoyed the most visiting on this day was Castelvecchio. Acting aesthetically like a mid-14^th century fortified residence, but restored from 1959-1973 by Carlo Scarpa, Castelvecchio provides a really interesting case study into retrofitting museums, what it means to build a new museum vs. renovating an older structure, and how the experience of a museum is changed through the architect’s positioning of art and sequence of spaces. Scarpa, who is a local architect from Vicenza and was never officially licensed, simply had a different way of approaching museum design when he attacked this project. John Peponis wrote an essay analyzing the sequence of rooms and spatial procession within the museum. It was his contention that the arrangement of paintings didn’t just give the viewer an opportunity to learn about local artwork of the Renaissance. Instead, the arrangement allowed you to be a part of the room and have a co-presence with the artwork. As I would come to find out some of the paintings were freestanding in the middle of the room, giving a new depth and perception to the entire experience of walking through a museum, instead of having them all flush up against a wall.

We were also asked to consider whether seeing is culturally constructed. This is a matter for everyone to consider within the confines of his society. It’s quite clear that we are all raised within a certain construct of our civilization, whether it be in the Modern world, Renaissance world, or Prehistoric world. And clearly our perception of the world is dictated both by our subjective experience of it, and the forces of society that seek to apply their standards of the world on you; the timeless nature vs. nurture debate. I think that seeing the world is definitely more culturally constructed than it is personally constructed. You can be as daring as you want in terms of asking questions about the society you’re raised in, but if you never leave the bubble you’re born into, society will grab ahold of you and steer you in the direction they want, not what you want for yourself. I would say that I try as much as I can to see different perspectives of the world through the eyes of different cultures, but most of the time I always come back to what I know. When I return home from this trip I’ll be surrounded by my family in Norton, Massachusetts, a small suburban town south of Boston that has your typical New England feel to it. I’m used to this feeling, I like this feeling. However, if I’m unable to leave and continually view the world from the same location, I’ll be reinforced with those feelings and will have a rather myopic view of the world. I have actively chosen to try and experience different cultures around the world. At least from my perspective, I try not to let just New England values and ideals influence my way of life. This may sound nearly impossible, but it would benefit society greatly, I think, for everyone to try and experience as many different cultures as we can in order to try and see things from different perspectives. As it pertains to this particular project, I believe we all do see the artwork through our own cultural values and personal preferences. An Atheist may see a painting of a Pope or Priest as just another example of a fundamentalist ruler imposing his beliefs on a people, whereas someone of faith may see him as doing the Lord’s work and spreading the gospel as he is simply commanded to by the Bible.

The way we see the actual building may be culturally constructed as well. Someone from the 18^th century may have found the use of steel supports in this structure blasphemous. There was a widely held belief, popularized by John Ruskin, that steel should in no way act as a supporting member in a building or bear any weight of the structure whatsoever. To look back on these comments centuries later is somewhat laughable; steel is one of the most efficient ways of structurally supporting a building. Could you even imagine today building the Empire State Building out of stone? Preposterous! It couldn’t be done. While the emphasis in the Romantic era was on hand-crafted techniques and truth in materials, a retrofitting of this type of structure that requires it to last for at least another century would be nearly impossible without steel supporting members. My point here is that the culture surrounding any era which has different tastes and theories than another era supports and reinforces certain practices and principles, and it is only when we take a broad-minded approach do we come to solutions that will be appealing to multiple generations.

An interesting quote from the presentation today by Nelson Goodman, “a museum is a tool for the cure and prevention of blindness…we should be interpreters rather than consumers”. The artwork contained within the museum and all art for that matter should raise questions and make you try to interpret your world just a bit differently than what you’re used to. Art should challenge your preconceived notions of the world, and make you active in the process; after all, it’s you who the art is aimed at, and therefore you should be the one who is both affected by it and perhaps changed by it.

6/15 Vicenza

Not one of the structures that we saw today was from anyone other than Palladio. And to imagine that he received all of these commissions in his lifetime is staggering. He really was the counterpart to Michelangelo in Florence. With his entire lifespan coming in the 16^th century (1505-1580), Palladio was extremely influential in both his designs and his theories. The publishing of The Four Books on Architecture, written near the end of life, documented his entire collection of built work, some of which was completed posthumously. He modeled himself after Vitruvius; his idea was to attain authority in the field through great achievements in practice and theory. While he was unable to study Classical Roman architecture in Venice, he did some traveling throughout Italy and became a documentarian of antiquity. From churches, to residences, to theaters, to palaces, his work runs the gamut of a vast amount of architectural production in a manner of just 75 years.

The first building we visited today was the Olympic Theater and Academy, one of the last works designed by Palladio and completed after his death by Vincent Scamozzi in 1585. The recreation here is of an ancient Roman theater scene: the stage set is at the back of where the actors would typically perform and is noted for its use of false perspectival space. It reminds me somewhat of the Piazza del Popolo, as you can see straight down different long corridors. This instance, however, creates a trick of the eye as the scene does not actually go as far as it would seem in real life. The structure just gets shorter and the street raised vertically to give it that effect. Nevertheless it is quite an amazing streetscape, with 7 different views possible (not all at once). By this time the architect and the artist seemed to have an adequate grasp of optics and perspective, as evident in the amount of depth given to the stage set.

The façade of the structure as well is an interesting study of High to Post-Renaissance architecture. It has all of the elements necessary to be considered a revival of classical design. The cornices, dentils, columns, and Corinthian capitals are all rendered with exacting precision. Palladio does add somewhat of a twist on what you would typically expect out of architecture from antiquity. Multiple engaged Corinthian columns are grouped together in such a way that their capitals often collide, producing interesting results. This effect happens on both the upper and lower stories. In addition, the fore-most columns that would seem to want to hold up some kind of arch or heavier element above simply stop halfway up the structure and turn into pedestals for statues. This is quite an interesting twist on the typical function of columns, but is not altogether displeasing to the eye. It creates a nice undulating rhythm across the façade as well as an appropriate place to hold statues of important figures. Other rhythms created across the façade have to do with the niches that are in between these columns, featuring alternating rounded and triangular pediment sections that vary both up and down between stories and side to side across the face of the structure.

As I mentioned before, Palladio received many commissions in Vicenza. Specifically, he was charged with designing many of the famous Palazzos in the city. Keeping track of them, however, is a different story altogether. Here is the list of the ones visited today.

· Palazzo Chiericati

· Palazzo Thiene

· Palazzo Barbaran da Porto

· Basilica Palladiana

· Palazzo Valmarana-Braga

· Porto Breganza

What I found most interesting about the structures that we visited today was the amount of rustication he used throughout these designs. What I mean by that is the types of finishing materials on the exterior were sometimes overwhelming for the design itself. He does tend to stay with the tradition of keeping the Doric order below the Ionic order below the Corinthian order, and I can appreciate his willingness to stay with tradition. The exterior of the Palazzo Thiene, for example, features, in my opinion, too much rustication. I can appreciate the look he was trying to achieve on the ground floor. We’ve seen this look before: raw, uncut stones meant to give the building an imposing feel. However, the series of rectangular ‘rusticated’ stones on either side of the windows on the second story is far removed from any of the rustication schemes we have seen so far and makes the upper story feel too heavy. The upper story was normally reserved for refinement and communicating to the public that “the people who inhabit this house are better and more sophisticated than you common people”. Chalk it up to a difference in taste, but this aspect of Palladio’s signature does not make the Palazzos he designed in Vicenza feel superior to the ones we saw in Florence.

We did, however, get to visit one of his most respected and often imitated works: the Villa Rotonda. Palladio’s 1^st patron, Trissino, gave him the opportunity to study in Rome. What he came back with was a deep understanding for the Classical orders and how they should be presented. As luck would have it, in 1565 Paolo Almerico decided to retire from the Vatican and build a country house in his hometown of Vicenza. Palladio was certainly up to the task as what he produced was so well received and influential, it was put on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites: a symmetrical, square/Greek cross plan villa, rotated 45 degrees to let each room have equal sunlight, with 4 replicating projecting facades and hexastyle porticos. Even though I do prefer some Baroque and Mannerist architecture where the Classical orders are continually played with, I also have a deep admiration for a building which stays with tradition and renders the orders with an exacting purpose and dignity. You could say that the building is somewhat unique because it acts more like a complete three-dimensional object rather than just a frontal one (as we have seen in some earlier churches). You can walk completely around the building without ever coming to the “back” of it, a feature that I approve of greatly, as a lot of the times architects will render their structures with what I personally refer to as the Diorama Effect. I understand that sometimes the constraints of a site require that the building have a frontal orientation and cannot accommodate it being free on all sides, but whenever possible I personally prefer those buildings whose attention to detail and overall composition encompasses the entire structure, not just the front. Architects, from my perspective, should design the whole building, not just part of it.

6/14 Venice Intro

I had been looking forward to coming back to Venice (I was here last in 2006) simply because I was tired of all the cars in Rome! It feels a bit strange to walk in the middle of the streets with all of the other pedestrians, not having to worry about getting run over by someone in a SmartCar. But were we walking in the streets? Or are the streets actually the canals here in Venice? It’s a strange sensation to walk down the “street” and come to a waterway, mostly because I’ve never lived in a city where this was the case. I guess I would categorize the places where people walk as somewhere between a street and a sidewalk; it’s a bit of both. Nonetheless it’s quite an odd condition to experience, and is probably very unique in the world.

Obviously, the first place we had to go when we arrived in Venice was the Piazza San Marco, a place which Napoleon once called “the drawing room of Europe”. It is trapezoidal in shape, owing to the fact that all of the parts that make it up today were not all designed at the same time. The south side, for instance, has been moved back in the 19^th century away from the tower (original 12^th century, restored 16^th century) in order to set it free as an object and give it more prominence in the square. This creates a more or less axial view of the cathedral, as seen from the other end of the piazza. Next to St. Peter’s square and the Piazza del Popolo, I would have to say that this is one of the largest squares we have visited so far on our trip (if you could the entire L shape). It doesn’t feel as empty, however, as I felt when I was in the Piazza del Popolo, and is quite an amazing showcase for Venetian culture. Venice was seen during the Middle Ages and Renaissance to be the Gateway to the Orient: it is at the head of the Adriatic sea and anyone traveling from Northern Europe would have been obliged to recognize the strategic importance of this location with regards to its ability to trade via the sea. It did not begin as a Roman creation; it has borrowed heavily from Byzantine influences, specifically Constantinople. A crusade was organized around 1215 by the Duke of Doge which even sought to bring back relics to Venice from Constantinople.

It is immediately evident looking at the church of San Marco that there is little to no resemblance to the other churches we saw in Florence. Yes, the arches are somewhat Romanesque, but it is quite a different structure after that. it has none of the verticality of those churches in Florence; rather the façade is more horizontal due to its 5 portals that run along the front side. A typical Gothic or Renaissance church would have three portals; however since this church started in the 9^th century, it had none of these precedents from which to work and since Venice was heavily involved in trading with the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic world, much of their influences are evident here. I did not realize until the presentation today just how old San Marco was. The basilica began as far back as 829, which took cues from a 6^th century church in Constantinople built by Justinian and finds itself squarely in the medieval realm. Its Greek cross plan is emphasized on the exterior by having a dome over each extended arm and the centroid, topping off a structure whose main emphasis seems to be on the exotic and Byzantine rather than the rational. This concept is further reinforced through the fact that each of the niches on the exterior that are carved out by porticos has supporting columns that are all completely different from each other. Some are made of green stone, some porphyry, and some marble. There seems to be no shortage of spolio at the exterior of this church. The inside is no less fanciful and decorated than the outside. It reminds me a bit of the Baptistery of St. John in that its mosaic work is unparalleled to anything we have seen before. Scenes from the Bible in golden tiled patterns fill the interior volume of the church. It doesn’t seem to have that amazing of a spatial interior, however. The volumetric spatial characteristics seem to be low to the ground rather than stretched vertically. This could have been a result of it being built with rudimentary construction techniques; after all it was built during the Middle Ages when the technology from classical Rome had been lost and/or forgotten.

Sitting adjacent to San Marco, the primary religious structure for the heart of Venice, sits the Doge’s Palace, which is the main set of governmental power and bureaucracy. Acting similarly to Florence in that the two structures are some of the most visible in the city, the main square provides a glimpse into what were the main institutions during this time period. The Doge is specific only to a certain amount of republics in Italy, one of the main ones obviously being Venice. It was the seat of supreme authority, chief magistrate, and senior most elected official for Venice for over 1000 years, until the final one in 1797. The first palace burned down and was rebuilt in more of a fortress-like manner the second time with a portico and loggia. What we see today was constructed from 1309 to 1424 and represents influences from Gothic to Byzantine to Islamic (due to the fact it was built in stages). The ground floor arcaded colonnade exhibits Gothic arches that have some kind of stylized, mutated Corinthian capitals. The second story, open loggia has a lot of different things going on. First, it has a regularized rhythm of columns that makes quite an interesting pattern. Second, the tracery-like arches and quatrefoil punched openings above have definite Gothic influences as well. The two shapes make it seem as though they are blending into one another. I think one of the most beautiful aspects to the building is its brick patterning on the upper story (complete with more Gothic arched openings). It almost looks like some kind of pixelated pattern developed on a computer (to the modern eye) but of course was developed in this style regionally and with careful consideration to the placement of each and every brick. If this were a normal brick building, you wouldn’t care where each brick went. In this case, however, each brick had to be carefully chosen for its hue and placed in the right spot or the configuration and therefore overall effect would be lost.

I think regionally-influenced architecture features some of the most compelling buildings we have seen so far. Yes, I can appreciate the International Style that the Modernists were trying to achieve, as their designs were supposed to be portable and could theoretically be placed anywhere and still function. The same goes for the Classical style; it was to have these same features as well. However, when you get into the realm of Regionalism, some of the more daring, dynamic, and unique architecture starts to appear. Would Venice have looked the same had San Marco been another imitation of Florentine architecture, with its pink, green, and white geometric pattern façade? Or was it better for the city to have a church that took from a great many sources for inspiration? I say the latter. I want to see some of these older cities feature local architecture, something they can call their own and be proud of, not some generic (I mean this in the nicest way possible) structure that looks the same as the one down the road. The cathedral in Siena had to be the quintessential definition of Regionalism. That type of interior is found nowhere else in the world. The same can be said about bot the interior and exterior of San Marco. Even though they were influenced by other sources, the fact that they pulled from so many precedents is what makes that aesthetic unique. The churches that we saw in Luca just a few days ago were some of the more unique and interesting ones I have seen. This is not to say that they were the most beautiful or that I would want this style to spread to other parts of Europe, but to have a church that you can call yours with its own distinctive style is really what makes traveling across Europe fascinating; the endless variety of local architecture.

6/13 Michelangelo

Michelangelo's New Sacristy at the Medici Chapel

Built as an additional place of burial for the members of the Medici family, Michelangelo was commissioned to design 4 tombs, however only 2 were completed. It is quite an example of Mannerist architecture, as he plays small tricks with your eye and its view of perspective, as well as taking classical orders and portraying them in a way never before seen. The clerestory windows, for instance, are projected and angled out, creating a false perspective when viewed at the correct angle. It has a coffered dome which, similarly to the Pantheon, creates another false perspective as the increasingly smaller coffers make it seem like the dome is taller than it really is. Even though it is rendered in somewhat of a Romanesque style with its rounded arches, just the way that he takes the Corinthian pilasters and intersperses half-rounded niches between them gives the whole composition a feeling of tension. He will overlap pilasters, break typically Classical forms, and create an undulating, complicated, sculptural wall plane that further pushes it into the realm of the Mannerist.

Michelangelo really was the archetypical Renaissance man. As mentioned before, he sculpted the David and Pieta all before he was 30 and was quite a prolific artist throughout his lifetime. Raised in Florence but taught most of what he knew in Rome, Michelangelo had a wealthy patron in the Medici family which obviously helped him in life get the kinds of commissions he searched for. Giorgio Vasari one said about the Pieta, “art improves on what nature has created”, referring to the lifelike quality and the expression of pain and despair on Mary’s face. The middle of his life was spent painting the Sistine Chapel and being the chief architect of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He is buried in the church of Santa Croce, and even some of his drawings are still being uncovered today, a testament to the volumes of work he completed throughout his life.

Location: Palazzo Medici / Palazzo Strozzi

Designed by Bartolomeo (a student of Brunelleschi) and commissioned by Cosimo the Elder, a prominent member of the Medici family, the exterior of this structure is what definitely interested me the most. It has a tri-partite design, typical of houses of this time. The lower floor has a look that can be described as rusticated: the stones have been left uncut and raw, giving the entire story a very rough and crude appearance. The 1^st floor, referred to here as the Piano Noble, is faced with ashlar and is a bit more refined, although you can still see the outline of each individual stone and the coursework. Finally, the 2^nd floor has a smooth, refined finish. My guess as to why the architect decided to give the building this particular look was that the ground floor was where all of the common people inhabited; and these people were unsophisticated and lower on the social ladder. As you move up, however, in life and on the building, you become more refined until you reach the top floor. The people that inhabit this floor are rich, high-minded aristocrats who look down on the commoners with an air of disdain, as if they are more polished than the plebs. Conceptually, the building works the way it is shown on the outside. In addition, each of the floors gets shorter from the ground floor up, further emphasizing that there are fewer polished people in the world and more unrefined people that make up the working class, a kind of societal pyramid. Bookending the structure on the top and bottom are an 8’ cornice line that really defines the edge of the building, and a line of benches at the exterior ground plane.

In the same vein as the Palazzo Medici, the Palazzo Strozzi was also a statement of family power for this wealthy family. Commissioned in 1489 but finished in 1536, it features the same tri-partite division on the exterior: rustication ground floor, smooth refinement on the top floor. Amazingly, its square footage is more than 50% greater than that of the White House.

Location: Palazzo Pitti / Boboli Gardens

Luca Pitti, who was another wealthy Florentine banker and the unofficial 1^st citizen of Florence, built this large Palazzo on the opposite side of the Arno away from the heart of the city in 1441. It was again left to (who else) Brunelleschi to design, with Vasari coming later on in the process to add additional wings. Once the Medici family pushed out the Pittis, they took control of the Palazzo and used it as lodging for guests and was their residence until the 18^th century; today it houses a museum. There is really no other way to describe this structure other than it is a foreboding, imposing, and unwelcoming massive Palazzo in which its mounded entry places it even higher up from the street and the average person. The family who built this especially wanted to show off their power, so much more than any of the other families who built similar building types closer to the heart of the city. It also features the same rusticated feel as the previous two examples: each stone is left uncut and raw; the gates over the windows and the lion heads below them only serve to add to this effect. The Palace of Versailles actually drew inspiration from this building.

Behind the Palazzo is an expanse of gardens designed by Niccolo Braccini in 1550. The Boboli Gardens is a very interesting study in Baroque cultivated landscape, as it plays with your sense of perspective when viewing it from the Palazzo. Its main axis features an incline off in the distance which could seemingly go on into infinity: you can’t see over the ridge, so your expectation is that it could extend indefinitely. Obviously, it doesn’t and as we got to the top of the hill we realized this to be true. Nonetheless it affords wonderful views of both the Palazzo and the rest of Florence and has water features that needed to be supplied through an aqueduct, as there was no natural supply to feed the fountains.

Final Impressions:

I have a much different impression leaving Florence than I did leaving Rome. Rome, to me, seemed like it was caught between the Classical world and the Modern world; unable to determine what kind of identity it should take on. Florence, on the other hand, seems more content to be exactly what it is: a Renaissance city with a true identity. There didn’t appear to be any excavations happening in Florence while we were there. You can easily view the city in its entirety simply by walking around it. It’s definitely also at a smaller scale than Rome and has a more comfortable feel to it. Rome seemed to be more along the lines of a large metropolis, like Boston or New York. I would compare the walkability and scale of Florence to that of Charleston, SC, a city I lived in for 3 years. Both of these cities were more or less resistant to any major changes in the fabric of their city, as an ordinance in Charleston prevented any building in the downtown area to be greater than 5 stories. In the same sense I could not imagine a modern glass and steel building to occupy any of the spaces around the Duomo in Florence, save for the small shops that line the ground floor of the buildings. I can appreciate Florence wanting to remain with the same character it has possessed since the Renaissance, but at what cost? Is it “stuck” in this particular aesthetic purely for the tourists? What will the city look like in another 500 years? My guess is that it will remain just the same as it is today: quaint, walk-able, a reminder of Florence’s great artistic past, and one of the best examples of how life was in the Middle Ages.