So the temple, the palace, or the basilica will be outside, and the outside inside, will they not? To rectify such anomalies, such travesties of architecture, take note: internal walls of buildings with no architraves, friezes, and cornices.Īnd then, on these cornices, which stand for eaves, vaults are erected. These eaves, however, will drip rain inside the temple, the palace, or basilica. And when those features are absent, and the friezes and cornices are smooth, even then the architraves and friezes will seem to support a roof and the cornices seem to be the eaves. Around the walls we shall observe architraves, friezes, and cornices adorned with those features that you just described as standing for the roof of a building - triglyphs, modillions, and dentils. Let us go inside a temple, a palace, wherever you choose. Now it is your turn, Signor Protopiro, to purge architecture of all the other ornaments that you disparaged just now.ĭidascalo. Thus, the ancient architects cited by Vitruvius held that temples ought not to be built in the Doric manner better still, the Romans used the Doric without the added clutter. It is madness that a few small cuts on stone or mortar should dictate the proportions of a building, or that all or some of the due requirements of the building should be sacrificed to them. If they are moved away from the corners, they can then be placed symmetrically only if the building is narrowed or widened with respect to the triglyphs. When they are placed at the corners of the building, however, not only do they belie this description but they can never be placed at regular intervals, because they have to be centered over the columns. What do the triglyphs stand for? Vitruvius says that they represent the ends of the joists of ceilings or soffits. So what is the point of the fasciae or of the band that projects from the surface? To catch the water and go rotten? Take note: architraves with no fasciae and no band. Never fear there are other rigorists who also call for smooth columns, no bases, and no capitals.Īs for architraves, you want them to look either like tree trunks placed horizontally across the forked props or like beams laid out to span the tree trunks. If that is not definite enough, remember that the capitals must represent solid things, not heads of men, maidens, or matrons, or baskets with foliage around them, or baskets topped with a matron's wig. The tree trunks, if they were used to support the roof, would be smooth and flat on top the forked props can look like anything you like, except capitals. Indeed that is how the Dorians thought of their columns. The forked uprights and tree trunks should be planted in the earth, to keep them stable and straight. Now what do you think about flutes? It seems to me that columns ought to be smooth. So the columns stand neither for forked uprights nor for tree trunks but for women placed to support a roof. And the flutes on the columns: what do they signify? Vitruvius thinks they are the pleats in a matron's gown. Reprinted with permission of Getty Publications. Los Angeles: Getty Publications Program, 2002, pp. Caroline Beamish and David Britt, in Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from Parere su I'Architettura (1765), trans. So it is Greece and Vitruvius? Very well: tell me, then, what do columns represent? Vitruvius says they are the forked uprights of huts others describe them as tree In short, Didascalo's argument is a defense of the various traditions of architecture, including its baroque tradition, against the simplicity of classicism, and it rallies around the architect's freedom to invent and re-use traditional forms - in short, eclecticism. Didascalo then usurps Protopiro's reformative purism and sarcastically eliminates nearly everything else from architectural usage, leading him to conclude that if Protopiro and Laugier had their way, everyone would once again be living in primitive huts. In the first part of the dialogue Protopiro has his way, and in the spirit of Laugier he points out the many abuses of contemporary practice with its over-reliance on ornamentation. His villain here is actually Laugier and his reform-minded rationalism. Piranesi wrote it when he himself was making his way back into architectural practice, and he now shifts from his earlier archaeological argument into an architectural one. It is a dialogue of the greatest importance to architectural theory because it opens up an entirely new line of theoretical development and reflects the crisis of academic theory in the 1760s - a crisis that would continue until the end of the century. The second part of Piranesi's published response of 1765 takes the form of a Socratic dialogue between the characters Protopiro (who represents the classical "rigorists" seeking to simplify and limit ornamentation) and Didascalo (the mouthpiece for Piranesi).
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