ANGEL AK I

journal of the theoretical humanities volume 16 number 1 march 2011

ietro Aretino was one who had reflected on the urban decorum of the houses on Venices Grand Canal when in 1538 he became a resident at CaBolani, near the Rialto. He commented at the time in a letter to a friend:

But for anyone who wants to see how clean and bright is his spirit, let him look at his face and his house; let him look at them, I say, and he will see what calm and what beauty one can contemplate in a house and in a face.1

desley luscombe BETWEEN SKY AND WATER the face of urban decorum in the late renaissance houses on venices grand canal
characteristics in combination with those specific to the individual familial lineage. For us now, as an audience versed in the historiography of architecture, such accounts form a less common basis for investigating architecture. Architectural discourses since the Renaissance have been understood through the classical values of Vitruvius and his humanist interpreters.2 Architecture has been framed since that time through analytical processes that are abstract and internal to the discipline. Common inclusions for analysis now are the formal notions of order, composition, and urban setting in the attribution of value assigned in establishing a coherent understanding of

Although this was intended as praise for the obvious beauty of Venice, Aretinos comment linking together the face ( fronte, faccia) of the citizen and the front or fac ade ( facciata) of the Venetian casa implies an allusion to an inner common spirit influencing both. This suggestion is supported by his response to qualities he found in the portraits by Titian whether considering the face of a portrait or an architectural fac ade, the one and the most important quality was the perception and reception of inner beauty. Consistent with Aretino, in an exterior expression, beauty is developed through the close correlation of a coexisting inner character and its response to influences; a constancy in the context of the non-permanence of situation. Influence from such situations could be characterized, for example, by representations of the effects of atmosphere, light, and ageing. Just as the portrait for Titian had been a mnemonic device, a way for the viewer to speculate on the subjects inner character and how this had uniquely responded to specific influences over time, so too was the fac ade of the Venetian house (casa), imbued with an inner character of its Republican family (casata), an embodiment and an account of social and culturally unique

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/1 1/010041^22 201 1 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2011.564363

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architectures discipline. Little attention in these analytical systems is given to notions of character or the characterizations imbued by a society to its artefacts. For architecture, Aretinos allusion provides an alternative discourse, one based on specific values, not bound by abstract and selfreferential classical systems. The equivalence in a cultures ability to perceive the links of face to inner character, and fac ade to collective human character of the family, raises the possibility of an alternative for understanding architecture, which, while accepted in Renaissance discourses, is now not easily grasped. This paper investigates how, in the political positioning of Venice as a Republic, alternative conceptualizations of architecture such as Aretinos became important, particularly for those who for political purposes attempted to steer power to an alignment with Venices foundational myth. Study of these discourses projects a different understanding of Venices coming modernity, and aids understanding of its residential building campaigns during the latter part of the sixteenth century. In these building campaigns, those houses most valued by recent historians have been the new palazzi, inspired by Roman classical ideals and conforming to classical systems of composition. However, amongst the fac ades of houses built on the Grand Canal were ones that showed different architectural origins in their form. In the architecture of Renaissance city-states like Venice, this variety, and a similar variety of discourses concerning them at the time, defined architecture within a rhetoric that was contested and local. In the discourses of influence to this alternative understanding of architecture was Paolo Parutas Della perfettione della vita politica, a political dialogue printed in 1579 that uses a similar association between face and character, fac ade and family, to that expressed in Aretinos letter.3 Parutas project is more complex than Aretinos in that he combines in dialogue form his personal agenda to preserve and albeit modernize Venetian Republican architecture, whilst using as interlocutor Daniele Barbaro, an accepted authority but known as a scholar of Vitruvius and Roman classicism. Parutas use of Barbaro expands Barbaros attitude to ones questioning the role of architecture to society, thereby reinforcing anti-Romanist attitudes that Paruta wishes to present. Fundamental to this papers examination of Venices complex setting is the role of architecture in Parutas dialogue. In the struggle for power between the vecchi and giovani during the late 1570s, Parutas politicizing of antique values through his dialogue could be argued to be to his personal advantage. Presenting his political propositions, it was important for him to address the issues of Venices changing physical environment, its face or those visible characteristics defining its beauty. Not simply at ease with following the dictum of a growing modernity shown in the increasing appearance of Roman classical formalism within the city, Paruta re-presented notions of the family and the Republic that had been fundamental to traditions, tying the casa form to the Republics values. While avoiding conservatism, Paruta wove his argument to present, in the face of its architecture, the fac ade of the casa rather than the palazzo, a visible metaphor for Republican values and a representation of its true beauty. This changed significantly the role of architecture in Venices political settings. Parutas success, evidenced by his election to minor office in Venice in 1581, to the Collegio in 1582, and finally nominated by the Senate as Procurator of Saint Marks in 1597, suggests that his complex interweaving of ideas had been comprehended not only as rhetoric, in its defence of republicanism, but also within debates surrounding the changing attitudes to architecture of the city. For Venice, architectures role was unique. The case or houses on the canals brought to Venice and its citizens a visual representation of Republican values, of citizens bound by a common understanding of their laws and structures of urban governance.4 Venice referred not only to the island community of like dwellings in an urban formulation but also to the collective body of its citizens in their formation of a unique Republic. Reinforcing this idea, Venetian houses functioned like the Republic in microcosm, with each house accommodating numerous extended family groups.5 Only one or two sons of Venetian families could

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afford to marry, but to provide continuing support for family members, other brothers often worked for the family and continued to live in separate apartments within one household. Family groups (casata) often expanded to form compounds incorporating a number of attached dwellings. As Patricia Fortini Brown has suggested, what was important about this model, and what made Venice unique, was that property and wealth derived through patrimonial inheritance offset household expenses for the good of all family members.6 This was achieved through a family accounting system where the extended family formed a fraterna, a bond created between the brothers, with the aim of the maintenance and growth of family wealth and so of their collective social status. The architecture of the house reflected these Republican ideals in its composition. Apart from the constraints of the Venetian concept of mediocritas and the Daulo law that demanded conformity in height and fac ade treatment in residences, the house in Venice was never seen as a private fortress. It was understood as the familys dwelling, not as its defensive stronghold.7 The Republic retained the right of eminent domain over ownership, insisting that the doors of private homes remain open.8 Because of this, although houses were essentially private, they also belonged conceptually to the public domain, reflecting the Republican ideals of equality and communality. This can be seen in the composition of the fac ade of each house. There was a single ceremonial entry from the canal, with the dominant architectural elements on the fac ade reflecting at ground level the androne and on the piano nobile the salone passante or portego, a room that acted both as the point of convergence bringing the whole family together and the point of dispersal to each subfamilys apartment.9 In architectural terms, this privileged the family as a collective rather than as individual units. Each household confidently expressed the value of their unification, and because of the dominance on the fac ade of the openings from the salone passante, the citizens of and visitors to Venice would be able to decipher Republican values as they traversed its canals. This visualizing of identity through the Venetian casa accords with Aretinos sentiments it was the facciata or fac ade of the casa that portrayed the collective spirit of the family tying each family of brothers to virtues of character held important to the Venetian patriciate. Fundamental to these ideals was each citizens conformity with governance and their observance of mediocritas.10 This meant that displays of private wealth were limited to the interior of houses unless the function of that exterior symbolism depicted allegories of the Venetian Republic. Yet, despite houses being essentially structures of conformity and mediocritas, diversity in representation of urban decorum produced individualized fac ades. In taking an active part in developing its figuration of state, the canal fac ade also developed an organic licence.11 This licence included the incorporation of architectural spolia from distant locations, antique columns, statues and exotic stone from the Islamic world. Spolia were used to encrust fac ades and visibly link Venetian urbanity to its distant victories in war and their locations antique pasts.12 Adding to this licence was the recognition of the ephemeral nature of Venice. This ephemeral quality had caused Daniele Barbaro to acclaim, they say our [dwellings] are built in the air, with the sky and canal seemingly joined in unity through reflection.13 This attitude was reflected in the popular use of the Venetian stemma of Mercury and Neptune, the twin deities who presided over sky and sea.14 The traditional canal casa developed a contribution to urban decorum through the fac ades active engagement with the ephemeral nature of atmospheric changes: the quality of light, materiality enhanced in its depth of colour and reflectivity by water, and the decay immediately apparent through the ageing of urban fabric. Very consciously, for example, in the CaDoro the Verona marbles were polished with oils to appear as though they were wet, thus enhancing their colour and reflectivity.15 In another example, the ephemeral was embraced in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, originally painted with frescoes by Giorgione and Titian created specifically so that weather conditions would age the finished imagery to the point of its requiring renewal. However, building on the ephemeral

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nature of fresco painting, when renewal was necessary the programme of allegory could then be reconceived, focusing on a different historical setting. Others, using the solidity of brick with patterns incorporating marble, gold leaf and coloured stones, enhanced their visual appeal and their different reflective qualities, creating an illusion of change during the daily passage of the sun. The conscious exaggeration of this ephemeral quality reinforced the notion of maturation in the character of the house. Like the face, the fac ade had a quality that reflected the subtle inevitability of the non-permanence of situation. For Venices citizens and visitors, the houses (represented by the salone passante and the openness of the androne) visibly reinforced the traditional values of the Venetian Republic, but their setting and the changing material nature of the fac ade over time reflected as well its individuality of situation. Aretino had recognized and praised these values of Venetian houses.16 The character of Aretinos man, the resident of the house, would be not only the embodiment of attributes fundamental to the Republic, a visual representation of self in the day-to-day political settings of the Republic, but also one grounded by longsurviving values of the mythic origins of Venice. So too, his house mirrored this analogy. However, to further confound the clarity of this symbiosis, by the mid-sixteenth century the construction of the Roman-inspired classical palazzi of Jacopo Sansovino and Michele Sanmicheli were being completed on the Grand Canal. Introducing a changed urbanity, these palazzi, in both their representation and planning, transformed the defining role of the Venetian Republic for the family dwelling. By 1581, Francesco Sansovinos Venetia citta nobilissima, et singolare, descritta in XIIII libri appraised these buildings as the modern, and stressed their dominance over other houses constructed during those decades.17 Coinciding with an experimentation not previously seen in Venice, these palazzi provoked outcry amongst the patriciate, with a notable disclaimer for the work of Jacopo Sansovino in the commentaries on Vitruvius by Daniele Barbaro.18 Barbaros views were complex. While he was well known for his translation and commentaries of Vitruvius De architectura printed in 1556 and 1567, he had defended architecture as the result of the architects rational intellect, refined to a point where in architectural composition order was equivalent to rational truth. This defence was distinct from his understanding of the designs of Jacopo Sansovino. In Barbaros notion of truth, each element of composition in Roman classical architecture would be co-dependent and proportionally exact. Sansovinos compromises for the design of his palazzi had obviously offended Barbaros sense of classical purity. In his Vitruvian commentary, Daniele Barbaro had provided hierarchical and encyclopedic understandings of classical architecture that were abstractly formulated and co-dependent. The aim of Paolo Parutas use of Daniele Barbaro as one of the main interlocutors for his Della perfettione was to ensure support for his own narrative of continuity between Venices architecture and its values. This was a complex choice.19 Firstly, although Daniele Barbaro had died in 1570 and was a waning political force in Venice by the time Paolo Paruta was publishing his dialogue, support for Barbaros ideas continued through his brother Marcantonio.20 Secondly, fundamental to Parutas validation of Venices governance was the Roman classical concept of corpus rei publicae body of the republic uniting citizens through their governance and urban setting.21 Shifting this metaphor to Venice, Parutas dialogue used Daniele Barbaro to establish Venices case on the canals as having a natural correspondence with its own body politic. This also followed the assertions of Pietro Aretinos letter, whereas Barbaros classical sources, even though he was critical of Sansovino, were recognized to depend on the work of Roman architect Vitruvius. Vitruvius De architectura described and defined for the Renaissance readers the design principles of Roman classical architecture of the time of Emperor Alexander. However, these principles were not consistent with Venetian Republican ideals as they were referenced to a different type of body politic. Paruta had presented the Venetian Republic as a republic of optimates, a vision of antique Rome that

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pre-dated Vitruvius.22 By making Daniele Barbaro his mouthpiece as classical authority, Paruta subtly exposes and navigates resolution of these debates of his interlocutors.23 Positively framing his primary interlocutor, Paruta writes that Barbaro had brought Vitruvius from the Latin into our vulgar idiom and illustrated and clarified those parts that were most obscure, so that those who read must recognize what can be drawn from this work in the present.24 This presentation is consistent with many views presented by Barbaro. It would also have been well understood that Barbaro had increasingly defended Venice in each new edition of his commentaries on Vitruvius, including a map in the Latin edition of 1567.25 For Paruta to have used Barbaro a member of the political vecchi, the older politicians of the Venetian Republic at the time demanded that he negotiate the power of Barbaros authority and its dependence on others more aligned to papal Rome of the late sixteenth century, against the proposition he, Paruta, wanted to espouse for his own political agenda. During the period when Paruta was writing, between 1563 and 1579, much of the Venetian islands architecture could be seen as continuing past formal and compositional traditions. These traditions were recognized as being sourced most explicitly from the Gothic houses built in Venice during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even though they were old, many of these houses were seen as exemplars of Venetian culture and still considered architecturally important. However, by the late 1560s1570s, the renovatio programmes of Doge Andrea Gritti were beginning to visually transform and classicize the urban fabric of the Piazza San Marco and the Rialto, as well as some palazzi on the Grand Canal. The completion of these new palazzi during the second half of the sixteenth century signified the spread to domestic architecture of the renovatio values of earlier Doge. Ignoring the new modernity of these Roman classical palazzi, Paruta framed Venice as conceptually, experientially, and structurally unified and ideal. Such a stance presents an apparent dissonance between Parutas ideal and the reality of the architecture. The validity of Parutas analogy would require that its citizens see the ideal nature of their social governance reflected in the architectural evidence of their daily experience in the city. This paper explores those fac ades of late sixteenth-century houses of the Venetian canals in the context of Parutas discourse on architecture, and their representation of the city and its governing order. It questions how the new and provocative architectural imagery of the Roman classical palazzi could be reconciled with the self-presentation of a political state.

three venetian urban fac ade types being built during the late sixteenth century
To understand the impact of the Roman classical palazzi being completed on Venices Grand Canal in the latter half of the sixteenth century, an examination of the broader range of Venetian canal case conveys how heterodox the architectural situation was at that time.26 Clearly, the writing of Francesco Sansovino has dominated historical understandings of what has been valued as the modern in Venice. However, Parutas text acknowledges the importance of other, nonRoman classical houses that were also being constructed at the time. Many of these explicitly address the traditions of Venice whilst classically reforming the architectural composition of these traditions, and without taking on the rigorous abstraction of Roman classical forms employed by Jacopo Sansovino and Michele Sanmicheli. Among the houses constructed during the latter half of the sixteenth century, three new fac ade types dominated the Grand Canal. These can be revealed by comparison of Jacopo deBarbaris woodcut Venetie MD, carried out at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and Gian Battista Arzentis oil painting Veduta di Venezia, completed c.1620.27 Each new house type differed from the Venetian Gothic traditions of the casa.28 The most radical was the new Roman classical palazzi designed by Jacopo Sansovino and Michele Sanmicheli that dominated sections of the Canal in height, materiality and composition. The underlying design concepts for the Roman classical palazzo focused fac ade design on abstract and rigorous mathematical

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Fig.1. Left: Jacopo Sansovino, Palazzo Dolfi'n,1545. Photo: Leo Campbell and Desley Luscombe. Right: analytical drawing of fac ade composition, its depth developed through continuation of modelling on the side walls and the relationship of fac ade to water level and upper level plans. The plans are with reference to Manfredo Tafuris analysis of Giovanni Selvas survey prior to alteration. See ManfredoTafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes,Cities, Architects (New Haven: Yale UP, 2006) 230 ^35.

systems of taxis that were rhythmically structured by the horizontal repetition of column and arched-bay openings, and the vertical repetition of entablatures and balconies separating the floors.29 Distinct from Venetian-Gothic traditions, these houses considered the fac ade as a grid-like element separated from the divisions of the house interior. This separation further extended to a differentiation between formal compositional imagery of the fac ade and functional aspects of the building with, for example, the removal of chimneys and rainwater spouts from the front elevation to exaggerate the clarity of the fac ade grid. The predominant material of the fac ade was Istrian marble with a consistent stark white finish without the veins of colour so often seen in the Verona marbles used for traditional houses, such as the CaDoro. This crystalline starkness was a disruptive element on the continuous fac ade of the Grand Canal, which until then had been muted by the predominantly earth colours of local materials.30 For these palazzi, the fac ade became an applied mask, a two-directional grid often falsely deepened to appear like a colonnade covering and disguising the organism of the house interior.

Jacopo Sansovino designed two palazzi of this type, Palazzo Dolfin at San Salvadore, which was completed in 1545, and Palazzo Cornaro near San Maurizio completed in 1561. Michele Sanmichelis Palazzo Grimani, which was finished by 1575, followed these examples. Examining each fac ade makes explicit the distinct difference in self-presentation that these Roman classical palazzi brought to the Republic of Venice. Built for Giovanni Dolfin, Palazzo Dolfins fac ade incorporates shops at the water level. The domestic entry to the palazzo was through a cortile from the Rio deCoffaneri. From this entry, the ceremonial stairs of the house brought the family to the salone passante and the houses apartments from the rear through a loggia. This side entry exaggerates the separation of the fac ade from the interior organization of the house. Palazzo Dolfins classical arcade at the level of the androne adopts a regular six-arched intercolumniation for the shops, probably based on pre-existing foundation walls.31 The upper floors take on a very different division in their fac ade openings, with the four windows of the salone passante repeated on both levels above the central two bays of the arcade. The changing

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Fig. 2. Left: Jacopo Sansovino, Palazzo Cornaro, 1561. Photo: Leo Campbell and Desley Luscombe. Right: analytical drawing of fac ade composition, its depth developed through continuation of modelling on the side walls and the relationship of fac ade to water level and upper level plans. The plans are with reference to L. Cicognara, A. Diedo and ' conspicue di Venezia misurate, illustrate e intagliate (Venice: Antonelli,1858). G.A. Selva, Le fabbriche piu

rhythm of six openings on the level of the arcade to eight openings on the levels above disturbs the clarity of the fac ades taxis in terms of Roman classicism, but equally the attempt at classical grid-like rigour diminishes the palazzos representation of Venetian traditions.32 The institutional civic formalism and Roman classical intentions of the house, as opposed to its domesticity, would be easily recognized by the citizens on the Canal as a lack of sensitivity to Venetian understandings of the urban. In contrast to the close-by twelfth-century houses CaFarsetti and CaLoredan that had shops at the water level with domestic formalism dominating through the arcades being consistent with upper rhythms, on Palazzo Dolfin the arcade separates and reduces the importance of the salone passante by introducing a continuous balcony balustrade. Exaggerating the depth and dominance of the fac ade as a distinctive element, the width of the pedestrian arcade at the shop level extends beyond the body of the casa, necessitating a protrusion on the side wall to the roof. The fac ade thus requires an extension to the roof from that covering the body of the house. This

extended roof with protruding wall enabled the rainwater removal to be located on the side wall away from the importance of the canal face. The resulting composition compromises the unity of the house as an organism representative of the family as at one with the exteriors logic. Its logic is internal to the discipline of architectural formalism. Similarly, the Palazzo Cornaro, built for Giorgio Cornaro between 1539 and 1561, establishes a depth of fac ade by continuing the classical modulation by one bay on the side elevation facing the Rio di San Maurizio.33 While the design better resolves the relationship between the androne and upper floors, two entries are introduced. The first entry is from the Canal and the second is through a cortile on the side rio, where ceremonial stairs lead internally to the upper levels. This doubling of entry through the androne enabled the introduction of separate stairs to apartments from the androne, an act as Manfredo Tafuri points out that undermines the representation of family unity as analogous principle to the character of the house. The two entries to the house compete, both portraying a classical formality, and complicate

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Fig. 3. Left: Michele Sanmichele, Palazzo Grimani, 1575. Photo: Leo Campbell and Desley Luscombe. Right: analytical drawing of fac ade composition, its depth developed through continuation of modelling on the side walls and the relationship of fac ade to water level and upper level plans. The plans are with reference to F. Ronanzi, G. Luciolli and F. Zanotto, Le fabbriche civili, ecclesiastiche e militari di Michele Sanmicheli (Genoa: Morando, c.1850) 15a ^ d.

the external recognition of the spatial organization of the house. In addition, from the Canal the traditional tripartite division of the fac ade is changed to seven near-equal divisions in an A-AB-B-B-A-A rhythm with little comprehensibility of the hierarchy of importance in the rooms that lay behind. Completing the two-directional grid, entablatures and continuous balcony balustrades cut the composition at each floor, creating a focus on the triumphal tripartite entry of the androne rather than the salone passante above. This emphasis on the triumphal entry at the androne suggested a formality usually associated with institutional and public buildings. Michele Sanmichelis Palazzo Grimani, built for Girolamo Grimani and completed in 1575, with changes to the original design carried out by Giancomo deGrigi, continued this Roman classical radicalism in its fac ade. Structured in white Istrian marble, bringing a depth of solidity to the fac ade in an A-B-C-B-A intercolumniation where A and C are emphasized with expansive arched windows, Palazzo Grimani continues its fac ade treatment on the wall facing the Rio di San Luca. On the Grand Canal, Sanmicheli Romanizes the central bay of the composition, including the modules B-C-B, by applying a strict

classicism and depth of fac ade. He places the compositional taxis of the fac ade between the columns in the outer bays and at the central axis of the columns in the central bay. This separates the defining taxis from interior room divisions. The intercolumniation of the fac ade, because of the single large window to the salette, and because of its fac ade-focused taxis, demonstrates a lack of comprehension of Republican values on the exterior and the traditional importance for family unity of the salone passante. In addition, the salone passante is changed dramatically on the interior with the introduction of a front room that is distinct from the tradition in that it does not form a single volume to the rear wall. This room introduces a different formality to the plan that in turn suggests ambivalence in its association with the fac ade. Becoming essentially a civic rather than domestic face, the fac ades emphasis given to the entry to the androne rather than the openings of the salone passante announces an anti-Venetian focus distinct from the familys inner domestic unity. This Roman classical palazzo type has been suggested by Manfredo Tafuri to have delivered a compositional dialogue with a consuetudo towards Venetian models, a term he describes as

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Fig. 4. Palazzo dAnna with fresco by Giovanni Antonio de Sacchis, known as Pordenone. The layout of the frescoes and their extent on the fac ade is with reference to an anonymous illustration, Fac ade of the Palazzo Talenti-dAnna, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

where the new is accepted on the condition that it renounce its claim to be absolute the new design principles taking up an active architectural dialogue with Venetian traditions.34 However, while some minor details change, rather than dialogic consuetudo the classicism of these houses acted as a mask to Venices Republican values. There is little conceptual compromise towards Venetian attitudes in these designs beyond the retention of some room divisions in plan. The mask of anonymity developed in the fac ade changed the nature and meaning of the Venetian casa. The reduced importance of the salone passante on the fac ade was replaced by the exaggeration of the water-level ceremonial entries. Applying techniques to a private dwelling that were usually associated with public or civic architecture introduced concepts of princely power and monarchic omnipotence not usual to Venices families. The patriciate had also aligned the Roman classical architecture with a visual statement of support for the Apostolic See. Tafuri includes in this group both the Grimanis and the Cornaros, while the Dolfins are associated through friendship with these leading advocates of pro-papal attitudes.35 Importantly, these new

classical palazzi did not become the only preferred model for future development on the Venetian island. Their low numbers may have been the result of political activism with the changes in power struggles amongst the patriciate during the 1560s. Certainly, the core values of the Republic were more centrally debated with the rise of the giovani or younger generation amongst the more powerful families.36 It may have been this level of discussion that slowed the repetition of the Roman palazzo type on the Venetian canals. The second type of new palazzo on the Grand Canal can be explained through houses like CaBarbarigo, completed in the late sixteenth century, and Palazzo dAnna, completed prior to 1540. These houses continued the urbs picta fresco traditions seen earlier in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi.37 The frescoes for CaBarbarigo by Camillo Ballini (active in the Ducal Palace c.1570) survive today in ruined state, and reveal the ephemeral qualities of this fac ade type. Frescoes for Palazzo dAnna designed by Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone had included on the main level Mercury in flight, and Cybele on a flying carriage. Continuing

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Fig. 5. Left: Palazzo Trevisan in Murano, 1557 , attr. Daniele Barbaro, with fresco by Prospero Bresciano. Photo: Leo Campbell and Desley Luscombe. Right: the layout of the frescoes and their extent on the fac ade is with reference to an early eighteenth-century illustration by Pietro Uberti, Fac ade of PalazzoT revisan at Murano, Museo Civico Correr, Venice.

the traditions of the dominance of the salone passante on the fac ade, these houses restrict their classically ordered framing to the openings on their fac ade rather than use Roman classicism to order the whole fac ade through taxis. In this manner, the classical attitudes of the design are established without the dominance of classical taxis and intercolumniation necessarily dislocating the fac ade from the interior organization. The frescoes, because of their colour and allegorical narrative, become the important visual feature in establishing an urban decorum. The allegorical programmes of the frescoes for the fac ades, rather than prominently portraying individual emprese or family stemma, focus on the attributes of the Republic of Venice. By emphasizing the collective virtues of the Republic rather than those of the individual owner, the fac ades took part in an urban decorum that valued the underlying concept of mediocritas amongst Venices citizens. Although not on the Grand Canal, this fac ade type can be most easily seen in Palazzo Trevisan in Murano, designed for Camillo Trevisan and attributed to Daniele Barbaro, and completed around 1557.38 This palazzo had a programme of allegorical figures painted originally by Prospero Bresciano, presenting Venetian dominance over other states as part of the natural order. Although now totally bleached, Pietro Uberti recorded the programme of the fac ade in a late seventeenth-/ early eighteenth-century watercolour.39 The

fac ade fresco brought together the attributes of Hercules and Neptune, both recurring themes in Venices figurata of state.40 Integral with the fresco, the palazzo fac ade retains the central expression of the salone passante as the dominant feature. Classical elements are seen as secondary, adorning the openings and structuring the proportion of the composition. The elevational treatment of the salone passante, with a classical temple portico-surround to window openings, reduces the importance of the waterlevel and top floors. The apartment rooms to each side of the salone passante follow Serlian traditions, with a predominantly solid expression enclosing the interior and defining an urban decorum on the exterior. In this way, there is an immediate comprehension of the hierarchy of relationships between all elements of the urban fac ade. Unlike the contemporary Sansovino or Sanmicheli houses, Barbaro did not repeat the intercolumniation and symmetry of classical orders in an abstract grid-like manner, but developed an interrelated yet distinctive solution to each face of the building. The architectural elements of the fac ade form a single hierarchy a family of elements. The fresco reinforced the decorum of this arrangement, and unified the composition further by emphasizing hierarchies of importance in the palazzos urban face. The third type of new palazzo to be built on the Grand Canal can be understood

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Fig. 6. Left: Giangiacomo deGrigi, Palazzo Coccina Tiepolo, 1571. Photo Leo Campbell and Desley Luscombe. Right: analytical drawing of fac ade composition showing the traditional tripartite division with a thin veneer of stone to form the fac ade. The plans are with reference to Tito Talamini, Il canal Grande, il rilievo. 67 tavole che raffigurano 387 rilievi delle facciate di tutti i palazzi prospicenti il Canal Grande (Venice: Forni, 1990) and Elena Bassi, Palazzi di Venezia (Venice: Stamperia di Venezia Editrice,1976), which differ.

through the example of Giangiacomo deGrigis Palazzo Coccina Tiepolo, completed before 1571.41 Its composition attempts a compromise between the Roman classical palazzi and the traditional Venetian casa. The fac ade of Palazzo Coccina Tiepolo emphasizes the salone passante with a central arched Serlian window, which is dominant in width and height on the fac ade. The salone passante is further emphasized with a balcony balustrade compositionally separating the fac ades central division from that of the salette at the sides. The tripartite framework of the composition relies on the location of internal walls in their intersection with the fac ade, producing comprehension of the interior organization of the house from the exterior composition. The composition of the windows to the salette respond to Serlios call for windows to be located at the edges of the room allowing a fireplace centrally: the windows are the eyes for the light and the fireplace represents

the nose which always takes in the fumes.42 The fac ade is reminiscent of traditional Venetian houses where the skin-like face provides an exterior recognition of the interior division of rooms and their importance for reinforcing family values. This type of classicism can be seen in other houses, such as Palazzo Grimani Marcello, CaGussoni Grimani, Palazzo Contarini delle Figure, Palazzo Mocenigo Casa Nuova and the Mocenigo compound, Palazzo Emo, Palazzo Malipiero and Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, each constructed in the mid- to late decades of the sixteenth century. The compositional device of using thin veneer panels of stone, emphasizing veining and changes in colour through weathering, links this elevational treatment with the tradition of urbs picta. In contrast to emulation of the civic architecture of the Rialto or Piazza San Marco, these houses allude more acutely to the traditional Venetian case where the readability of the fac ade associates

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domestic spatiality with the values of the Republic. Rather than these more numerous types of casa on the Grand Canal, the importance given by Francesco Sansovino in his Venetia citta nobilissima to the Roman classical palazzo type remains topical in recent histories. His framework for description emphasized the classical format, using the term palazzo instead of casa, immediately referencing the classical palazzi of Rome and Florence in the claim for Venices modernity.43 Sansovino forcefully claims the dominance of Roman classicism against a backdrop of a variety of fac ade types experimenting with modernizing the traditions of the Venetian casa. Other presentations of the developments along the Grand Canal at the time have been less forceful in their attribution for the modernity characterized uniquely by the Roman classical palazzi. An example is Gian Battista Arzentis painting Veduta di Venezia where, because of his application of colour, the new Roman classical constructions blend with other types except for the earth colours, being those of predominantly brick houses.44 Sansovinos claim for the modern has provided a source for the evaluation of Venice in the attempt by historians to source the critical principles of the modern as continuity of Roman classicisms values from the preRenaissance.45 However, this may not have been generally accepted in Venice at the time. Sansovino favoured the new classical Roman style, accusing Venices Gothic architecture of being barbaric and diminishing Roman beauty.46 His vision of Venetian modernity entailed singleminded adherence to Roman classical values, composition and materials. What is suggested by the appearance of texts at the time like those of Pietro Aretino and Paolo Paruta is that Sansovinos views may not have been all pervasive. The political dialogue of Paolo Paruta, appearing in print only two years prior to Sansovinos text, defined a different modernity. His dialogue was not simply a return to conservative values expressed in the Venetian politics and architecture of the pre-Renaissance. In an attempt to distance himself from the vecchi (older politicians and pro-papal patricians) and their pro-Gritti advance of specifically Roman classicism, Paruta developed a new ground for architectural thinking. Negotiating the ground between the vecchi and the sentiments of the giovani, the younger generation of patricians, Paruta attempted to promote classical attitudes to architecture and politics without the Roman classical influence of recent developments.

politicizing the representation of architecture and the houses on the grand canal
It was in 1579, at a time when these new types of palazzi were dominating the vista of the Grand Canal, that Paolo Parutas Della perfettione della vita politica was published.47 Traditionally Venices laws were used as the representation of its good governance.48 In Parutas political treatise, architecture, and more specifically the Venetian casa, became the metaphor for the ideal structure of Venetian governance. Set in 1563, Della perfettione was a dialogue recounting alleged conversations held at a series of informal dinners where members of Venices patriciate, coincidentally attending the Council of Trent, discussed the nature of Venice, its governance and its ideality.49 This section of the paper analyses Parutas dialogue, providing a close investigation of his use of architecture. In addition to re-conceptualizing, for Venice, the relation between the body politic and the body of architecture, Paruta localized classical values to successfully re-present Venice as a perfect modern state. These attitudes provided fertile ground for thinking about architecture. Paruta expanded the face/character analogy to include body, family, and state to develop progressive stages to his understanding of character in Venice. To achieve the first stage in the re-conceptualization, Paruta uses the concept of the house the Venetian casa as a symbol of familial and social order. Using Daniele Barbaro as his main interlocutor, Paruta initially defends Venices governance as analogous to the family. By shifting between the casa, the family and the governance of the Republic, Paruta depicts the classical concept of the body politic as equivalent

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to the body of the Venetian Republic the Republic that included the Doge, the Senate, Council of Ten, and the Cabinet of Ministers. Paruta expands the argument for these ideas in this dialogue form, including as interlocutors Matteo Dandolo and others, to reconstruct the body politic of Venice as natural in its formation, relying on both Vitruvius and Aristotle as supporting sources. Shifting and enlarging the concept of the monarchic body, together with redirection of the concept of the house to the expanded symbolic meaning then attached in Venice to the word casa (house) in association with casata (family), enabled Paruta, by analogy, to attribute to the city of Venice the physical embodiment of civic humanism and of social ` , while avoiding the Caesarean imperialism virtu intended by Vitruvius. In establishing his point of view, Paruta has Barbaro enunciate an understanding of the city as a collective of families, saying:
And because man does not live in solitude with himself but instead in the company of other men, of friends, of the homeland; then our individual good is joined to that of the family and of the city. Therefore it is not conscientious for the prudent man to acquire these goods for himself alone but to adorn with them his home and his city. Moreover, as the collective good is more excellent and more perfect than the individual good so must we consider prudence a more noble and true virtue when it is used to the advantage of many than when it is used to look after ourselves alone.50 look after his own needs even if he does provide for himself most excellently.52

Underlying this statement about Venetian society is an assumption of the importance for all Venetian individuals to understand the concept of mediocritas, whereby individual displays of wealth for their own sake are shunned. Instead, the familys provision took on the notional and componential mirroring of the Republics provision for all citizens, the family and state being a single concept differing only in scale. For the second re-conceptualization, Paruta uses Matteo Dandolo to compare the city to the structure and function of the human body, returning this analogy to the ideas expressed by Daniele Barbaro. This notion of architecture and the city as a biological organism was necessary if Venetian ideals were to remain consistent with their Republican values. Dandolo says:
The City resembles our body [ . . . ] [which] has many members and various operations for the ordering and disposition of its health [ . . . ] [equally] the City [has] citizens of different grades and offices who all tend to the same end the public good.53

The analogy of the body emphasizes a plurality of functions working in unified harmony. In addition, by referring to the nature of the city through the collective of its citizens, the intent of Parutas focus emerges: to validate Venices Republic as a natural functioning structure for human habitation. This naturalism is then presented as mirroring concepts of natural order in its casa. Paruta has Dandolo say:
Who cannot see this type of mixed rule in [Venice]? If we look at the body it is a very noble heart, amongst all the other members, that holds the prince-hood and it exercises this power because it gives all the other members their particular tasks [ . . . ] [This] type of government can also be observed in the soul where reason, the queen of all the other powers, is seated in the head commanding all the other faculties [ . . . ] You can see the same thing happening in a house with the rule of the father over his children and for the authority he holds over them and for the fairness with which he governs.54

Through presenting a notion of an urban citizen living amongst equals, amongst friends with common intent, Paruta introduces the concept of the ideal social fabric of the city as one embodying the character of a community.51 Barbaros description of the importance of the social organization of the house, and respect for the needs of all occupants, is the continuing focus of his speech. Paruta has Barbaro say:
But a man who, placed as governor of his home, looks after and increases the riches and dignity of his family, is worthy of greater praise than one who does naught other than

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By returning to Barbaros analogy of the house through the social conventions of Venices citizens, Dandolo provides the link between Venetian governance observed in the fabric of its city and the concept of the citys symbiosis with its body politic. To finalize the link between the family, the house and governance, Paruta pluralizes the figure of the head of the family. This multifaceted figurehead is thus able to symbolize the social ordering of the whole of the Venetian Republic. By returning to his linking of the bodys functions being performed by its various parts, Paruta equates this to Venices structure of governance. Just as each organ in the human body has other essential functions, so too does the family within the Republic, with the constituent parts of the body of governance in the Venetian Republic being the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the Collegio. Paruta, through Dandolo, concludes:
A Republic of optimates whose counsel, born of many wise men, is held in high regard because the authority of one is tempered by the power of the other [and remains] [ . . . ] in a state half way between a kingdom and a popular state [ . . . ] Our Republic [ . . . ] clearly expresses a resemblance to all the best governments. The Doge represents the royal majesty, he in whom dignity is perpetual, and who is held in utmost veneration by all orders of citizens [ . . . ] but the Senate, the Council of Ten, and the Collegio, are the true and proper Magistrates of the Republic of the optimates [ . . . ] and their authority is that of citizens.55

Furthering this generalization, and constructing a new identity for Venice, Parutas dialogue uses Uberto Foglietta, a historian and utopianist, as the interlocutor who integrates in a single framework specific types of house in Venice.56 Using Foglietta relieves Paruta of having to explain inconsistencies in architectural composition emerging when Barbaros text is compared with new constructions on the island. Fogliettas comments on the house come directly after Barbaros and prior to Dandolos on the body politic. Paruta, in allowing Fogliettas opinions to merge the narrative of his dialogue, has him suggest in answer to a question of the magnificence of the new architecture of Venice that there is a need for their magnificence, saying:
In these times there is barely a city in Italy that is not ornate with many very noble buildings. In fact villas, even more, very noble sites with delightful gardens, have been built by modern men and these give as much a truer sense of their Magnificence as, beyond answering to the needs of pleasure and necessity, they answer to a certain family honour.57

Here, the representation of the body of Venetian governance and its embodiment in Venetian architecture of the house becomes complete: to be named as a citizen is to be a contributor to its governance just as the single house is a contributor to urban order. Parutas two conceptual shifts, transferring the concept of the body and expanding the symbolic value of the Venetian casa, appropriated Vitruvian concepts, manipulating them to reinforce his defence of Venice, a modern republic with its progress ensured as a natural organism.

It is notable that in this return to the rhetoric of Venices architecture, the term villa is used rather than palazzo. Paruta, having been nominated to the Savio di Terraferma in the mid1570s, was only too aware of the impact of the new developments on Venices mainland territories and their classical architecture.58 The term villa was included here by Paruta to explicitly exclude the Roman palazzo type. The villa specifically developed a temple front that enabled the display of the salone passante on the fac ade. Separating the casa and the villa as Venetian, Paruta makes no allusion to the Roman classical influences on the island. This absence reinforces the perceived inconsistency that the new palazzi brings to his argument. Paruta considers the notion of family honour, the concept that was to emerge later in the century as the necessity to live nobly, as tied instead to the humble casa.59 Foglietta is then questioned by the other participants, who wonder if, in building this way, modern men may be introduced to a lifestyle

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full of vanity and delight for its own sake. The distinction is then made between vain magnificence and true magnificence of the spirit that informs a certain way of acting, and contributes to an appropriate level of personal decorum. In cases where a private citizen should want to build with a magnificence to rival the princes or the most powerful citizen, Foglietta suggests that we may consider him more a vain and injudicious resident. Foglietta concludes:
In fact even much richer men, and the Princes themselves, must have a high degree of consideration in their expenditure so that their works will bring ornament to the city, will be of public and private convenience and that will bring them certain splendor and certain praise from the common judgment of men.60

This confirms Daniele Barbaros comments on magnificence earlier in the dialogue where he had said:
[Magnificence] is used only on rare occasions, such as in those feasts, weddings, and constructions (fabriche), where it is appropriate to spend without considering expense, but [thinking] only of the greatness and the beauty of the work because those occasions where we can spend on such things are rare. And under those more general ones we can add others, like festivals, public games, costumes, the building of temples, palaces and other public or private buildings. These things, if they are great and are made with noble preparation, and with the appropriate decorum, make man truly worthy of being named magnificent.61

Thus visibility and expenditure were valued, whether private or public, provided the city gained in reputation by being imbued with a collective magnificence. Parutas positioning of Daniele Barbaro to frame his dialogue was fundamental to his development of a rigorous metaphor for governance of the Venetian Republic. While Aretinos assertion about the face/character link may have been common reiteration or customary knowledge, what Paruta had gained from Barbaros Vitruvian commentary was the guiding

framework of the concept of the family for architectural composition as well as for urban order. Paruta had focused on Barbaros explanation of architectural composition where the concept of the family was dominant. This is found in Daniele Barbaros proemio of chapter II of Book I of the Vitruvian commentary, where he equates order in architecture with the order found in the social formations of the family and community.62 The family was a social organism whereby each relationship was fixed, interdependent, known and comprehensible. These relationships were also explicitly hierarchical. Following Aristotle in this belief, Barbaro had determined that although the types of interrelated exchange in the family and the household were multivalent, they were also strictly ordered and coded, whereby each member of a household knew within each social activity their roles dependence on others of the family organism: master to wife, father to son, and master to slave.63 Barbaro saw this type of order extending throughout social formations, in the relationship between the greatness of a maestro over his disciple, and the associations of friend with friend, and the deriving by comparison either equal or hierarchical and dependent interrelations. This interdependency of relationships had immediate accord with Parutas encapsulation of Venetian structures of governance and the implications they had for the social organism of the Republic. As with the ordered family, Barbaro stated that architectural order was embedded through qualitative (commensurable) as well as quantitative (dispositional) sets of relationships modica commoditas whereby these relationships defined a network of interdependencies. Barbaro had presented this idea not only in text but also in illustration in which the principle of architecture was portrayed as head of a family tree.64 This is not to say that each component element or set of individual relationships could not be comprehended. Instead, like the family, composition for architecture was apprehended through the intellect as a reflection of natural (biological human being) and social order (the family). Parutas reading of Barbaros representation of the family and its relation to the residences on the

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Grand Canal avoided reconciling apparent differences in propositions about architecture scattered throughout Barbaros commentary. Barbaro had supported the new Roman classical principles evident in the work of Andrea Palladio, and, to the layperson, these were attitudes seemingly consistent with the Roman classical designs of Jacopo Sansovino and Michele Sanmicheli, but when Paruta accepts Barbaros ideas on the family he does not feel obliged to reconcile these differences. While Barbaros attitude to the family supported Parutas political propositions, further inquiry into the nature of architecture would have taken Paruta closer to a lengthier and necessary discussion on the differences between the traditions of Venice and new forms of Roman classicism with their visual representation of propapalist attitudes. Over-emphasizing an architectural focus would have the potential to undermine Parutas aims for his political discourse. A more extensive use of Barbaros explanation of architecture may also have been problematic to Parutas explanation of Venice. In his proemio to Book I of Vitruvius, Barbaro demanded that the architects intellect could recognize meaning but also refine this to a point where in architectural composition order was equivalent to a rational truth.65 For Barbaro, the elements that made up architectural form could not be open to the relativism of interpretation.66 In this notion of truth, each element of the composition would be co-dependent and proportionally exact. It was only in 1554, three years prior to the publication of Barbaros commentaries, that Andrea Palladio had built Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese. It has been suggested that this villa is the first example where strict co-dependence of compositional proportions is achieved: the order and proportion of the elevation being mathematically and proportionally consistent with interior divisions of the rooms.67 Barbaro believed that architectural design, and the rational thoughts of the architect to resolve competing interests, could result in correct solutions. His antagonism to the relativity of interpretation of meaning in architecture, and the changes to design required by idiosyncrasies of building sites and patrons desires, suggests a clear determinism for architecture and the activities of the architect.68 This suggests that Barbaros public criticism of those Roman classical palazzi of Jacopo Sansovino and Michele Sanmicheli may have been due to their lack of perfection in proportion and measure rather than the classical per se. For Paruta to engage with these more abstract and mathematically precise approaches to architecture would have left him defending his stance on Venetian identity. Instead, to communicate his approach, Paruta emphasized that importance lay in the symbiosis between the family, the body of architecture recognized through its face or fac ade as the embodiment of values, and those values emanating from Venetian governance. With the generalization of his metaphor of the Venetian casa, Paruta was able to present an image of governance devoted to the city and its representation as much as it was to a formulation of its laws and social organization. Having different approaches to the design of case on the canals of Venice enabled Paruta to avoid the difficulties of debates surrounding the Roman classical palazzi. Venice had continuously struggled to distinguish itself from Romes papal politics. Venices identity delivered by Paruta through Barbaros attitudes to the family, and a more expansive understanding of classicism and antiquity, could be comprehended in the new approaches of urban palazzi, including Palazzo Coccina Tiepolo, Palazzo Mocenigo Casa Nuova and the Mocenigo compound, Palazzo Emo, Palazzo Malipiero and Palazzo Giustinian Lolin on the Grand Canal. Paruta could ignore the more distinctive forms of Roman classical palazzi when absorbing the case of the Grand Canal into a metaphor of good governance in Venices Republic. The subtleties of differentiation between the fac ades of the casa, and Barbaros opinions of these, were sublimated in Parutas use of Barbaro as interlocutor of a dialogue in which only those of Barbaros own opinions that supported what Paruta was arguing were presented: that, through the concept of the family, Venices case were its selfrepresentation. The political discourse aroused by Parutas dialogue determined an attitude to Venices modernity that was both classically framed

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and humanist. However, it did not attempt any reconciliation of conflicting narratives that might distort clarity in representing Venice as an ideal yet modern Republic. While it had been important to commentators such as Francesco Sansovino to claim new modernity for Venice in its architecture, Paruta showed that the same architecture could form a claim for continuity of values. His approach subtly forges a link between the radicalism of the renovatio programmes of Doge Andrea Gritti with the need, at a time when its giovani were taking power, for a return to emphasis on the specifics that create a Venetian identity. Parutas craft at opening this political discourse emphasized humanism, without moving to Roman classicism. It saw the social organism of Venice intertwined within its laws and in its architecture, permitting the self-presentation of its values. Pietro Aretinos assertion for the face and the facciata or fac ade understood as a re-presentation of character alerts us to alternative readings of architecture. As the basis for recognition of social meaning the face/fac ade provided a powerful metaphor in the figuration of state that Venice was undergoing during the late sixteenth century. This was a time when defining the discipline of architecture coincided with its selfreferentiality through classical structures of order, analysis and critique. However, these changing emphases were reducing the discipline of architectures engagement with other discourses. Rigorous control of the discipline through the predominantly Roman classical has meant that reception of texts such as Parutas has been limited, and considered not relevant in architectural discourses. However, the bringing together of the face with comprehension of its inner human character and the fac ade with comprehension of its social meaning potentially reformulates an understanding of architecture of the late Renaissance. The concepts that Parutas dialogues and the debates they subsequently engendered have for architecture, and Aretinos assertions, suggest a different engagement between notions of the urban, the political practices of the social, and the discipline of architecture.

notes
I would like to thank Bianca Arrivabene for allowing me to examine the interior of her house, Palazzo Coccina Tiepolo Papadopoli, now known as Palazzo Papadopoli. Also, the granting of access to palazzi by Manuela Romei Pasetti, La Presidente della Corte, Corte dAppello di Venezia, housed in Palazzo Grimani at S. Luca, Alessandro Porcaro, Banca dItalia, housed in Palazzo Dolfin Manin, and Pezzin Luciano, Il Segretario General facente funzioni of the Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale per il Veneto, housed in Palazzo Gussoni. I would also like to thank Dr Flavia Marcello for her assistance with translation of the Italian texts. Photographs were taken by Leo Campbell and Desley Luscombe. Analytical drawings are by the author. 1 Pietro Aretino, Letterre sullarte di Pietro Aretino, eds. F. Pertile and C. Cordie (Milan: Milione, 1957^ 60) 1, 125. Letter to Andrea Odoni, Venice, 30 August 1538, LXXIX (II, 78, car. 50 r.). Ma chi vuol vedere in che modo il suo animo e ' netto e candido miri di lui la fronte e labitazione, e mirile dico, e vedra ' quanto di sereno e di vago si puo ' bramare in una abitazione e in una fronte. Translated in John Onians, Bearers of Meaning (Princeton: Princeton UP,1988) 299^304. 2 Vitruvius was the late first-century BC text that was valued as the antique authority on architecture. For further discussion see Laura Marcucci, Giovanni Sulpicio e la prima edizione del De Architectura di Vitruvio in 2000 Anni di Vitruvio, eds. Luigi Vagnetti et al. (Florence: Cattedra di composizione architettonica I A di Firenze, 1978) published in a special issue of Studi e Documenti di Architettura 8 (1978): 185^95. Numerous manuscripts dated prior to the sixteenth century can be found in Carol Krinsky, Seventy-Eight Vitruvius Manuscripts, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967): 36 ^70. 3 Paolo Paruta, Della perfettione della vita politica di M. Paolo Paruta nobile vinetiani. Libri tre. Con privilegio (c.1579), 2nd ed. (Venice: Domenico Nicolini, 1599) 329^30. 4 See Contarinis summation of Venetian ideality through its laws in Gasparo Contarini, De magistratibus et republica Venetoruim libri quinque (Parisiis: printed ex officio M.Vascosani,1543). 5 See Patricia Fortini Browns discussion of the maintenance of family wealth, marriage and

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fraternity: Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven: Yale UP, 2004) 63. See also Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice (New Haven:Yale UP,1975) 123^24. 6 Brown 63. 7 For description of the Daulo law and the concept of mediocritas see Manfredo Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, trans. J. Levine (Cambridge, MA: MIT P,1995) 3^ 8. 8 Brown 24. 9 Although Brown sees a debt to the Roman villa type and Deborah Howard draws attention to the possible influence of the Arabic funduq tradition alluded to by Giorgia Scattolin, it is the specific use of the sequencing of the spatial organism of the house through the communal area to the private apartment that is unique. See Brown, Venice & Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven:Yale UP, 1996) 19; Deborah Howard, Venice & the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1 100^1500 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000) 134. 10 Tafuri 3. 11 The terminology derives from ManfredoTafuri, Venetian Epilogue in Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects, by Manfredo Tafuri, trans. D. Sherer (New Haven:Yale UP, 2006) 240 ^ 41. 12 See Howard, Venice & the East esp. chapter 5. 13 Daniele Barbaro in M.Vitruvi Pollionis de architectura libri decem, cum commentariis Danielis Barbari, Electi Patriarchae Aquileiensis . . . (Venice: Marcolini, 1567) VI.XI, 299, quod nostri in aere fabricare uocant. See Margaret DEvelyn, Venice as Vitruviuss City in Daniele Barbaros Commentaries, Studi Venezani XXXII (1996): 83^104. 14 See, for instance, the use of these on Jacopo deBarberis woodcut Venetie MD. 15 See Browns descriptions and Aretinos comments on painted fac ades in Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice 44. She sources Paul Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1250^1550 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1999) 68 ^79. 16 See Aretinos comments on the painted fac ade in Mark Roskill, Dolces Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (Toronto: Toronto UP, 2000) 115^17 . 17 Francesco Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima, et singolare, descritta in XIIII libri, c.1581, Venice 1663 (Farnborough: Gregg, 1968 (reprint)) 385. All future page numbers relate to the 1968 reprint edition. 18 See Manuela Morresi, Le due edizioni dei Commentari di Daniele Barbaro in Vitruvius, I dieci libri dellarchitettura tradotti e commentati da Daniele Barbaro, 1567 (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1987) xlvff. See also Daniele Barbaros commentary in Vitruvius, I deci libri dellarchitettura di M.Vitruvio tradutti et commentati da monsignor Barbaro eletto Patriarca dAquileggia, trans. and commentary D. Barbaro (Venice: Marcolini,1556) VI: 179ff. 19 During the 1540s Daniele Barbaro had worked for the Venetian Senate to establish the botanic gardens in Padua. He acted as official historian to the Venetian Senate from 1546 to 1549, and between 1548 and 1550 had acted as the Venetian ambassador to England, where he had come into contact with mathematician John Dee. In the highly political environment of disputes between the Church in Rome and the Venetian Senate, Daniele Barbaro was nominated in 1550 to be Patriarch-Elect of Aquileia by Patriarch Giovanni Grimani. He died prior to Grimani and hence never became patriarch. For an outline of the life of Daniele Barbaro see Peter Laven, Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch Elect of Aquileia: With Special Reference to his Circle of Scholars and to his Literary Achievement, Ph.D. diss. submitted to Courtauld Institutes, University of London,1957 . 20 For the impact that Marcantonio Barbaro was to have see Deborah Howard, Venice between East and West: MarcAntonio Barbaro and Palladios Church of the Redentore, JSAH 62.3 (2003): 306 ^25. 21 For the impact of the classical notion see Quentin Skinner, Vision of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 6, 28, esp. fn.121. 22 Paruta 461^ 69. 23 Daniele Barbaro had died in 1570, nine years prior to Parutas final publication. 24 Non e ' certo, soggiunse quivi Monsignor Mocenigo, da prezzar poco lhavere in cio ' havuto il giudicio di persona, chabbia con

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lese mpio confermato quanto ci ha ' detto con le parole, come fatto ha ' Monsignor Barbaro: il quale impiegando le sue fatiche in parte, ove riuscir possano di gran beneficio a ' gli studiosi, & di honore a ' questa nostra lingua, & a ' questa eta ' , nella quale ella tuttavia cresce, & si va facendo piu ' bella; sha pigliato a ' scrivere di quelle cose nelle quali ci furono molto scarsi gli studij de gli antichi; & desse scrittone in tal maniera, che si puo ' dire, che egli habbia non pur recato loro maggior chiarezza, ma di morte, chelle erano prima, ritornatele a ' nuova, & miglior vita: che non e ' alcuno, che legga hora Vitruvio dal latino nel nostro volgar idioma da lui portato, e in molte parti dianzi oscurissimo illustrato, & dichiarato; che non conosca tutto quel frutto, che da tale opera al presente si tragge, dalla molta diligenza, & dallaccorto giuditio dello ispositore doversi in gran parte riconoscere. (Paruta 40 ^ 41) 25 See DEvelyn. 26 For a study of each of the main houses of Venice see Elena Bassi, Palazzi di Venezia (Venice: Stamperia,1976). 27 Both images are currently hung in the Museo Correr,Venice. 28 Paolo Maretto, Ledilizia gotica Veneziana (Venice: Filippi,1978) 48 ^ 49. 29 See Tafuris comments on their inaccuracies. Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance 240. Tafuris critical reading of the houses explains that many manifest Venetian characteristics of both Palazzo Dolfin and Palazzo Cornaro may have derived from the interference of the patrons. On the explanation of taxis, see Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefraivre, Classical Architecture: The Poetics of Order (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1986) chapter 1. The issue of whether the crossing of the grid should be centred on the column or on its boundaries is unclear. There seems to be general variation in buildings. 30 Seen clearly in the Arzenti painting. 31 See Maretto for plans. 32 This may have been the cause of Daniele Barbaros criticism of Jacopo Sansovino. See also Tafuris comments in Interpreting the Renaissance 234. 33 ManfredoTafuri has an extended discussion on the dates of design and construction, questioning those proposed by Deborah Howard. See Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance 232^33; Howard, Venice & the East 138 ^39. 34 Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance 220. 35 Ibid.113. 36 See William Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley: U of California P, 1968) esp. chapter IV. It must be clarified that Bouwsma does not always accurately attribute sources with regard to Paruta. See also Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance 219^58. 37 See Schmitter,Falling through the Cracks in The Built Surface: Architecture and Pictures from Antiquity to the Millennium, eds. C. Anderson and K. Koehler (London: Ashgate, 2002) 130 ^ 61. 38 Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance 122. See also Aretino, Lettre sullarte di Pietro Aretino III, 292, 416. The buildings attribution has been discussed in Tracy Cooper, Palladios Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005) 53. See Wolfgang Wolters for his account, in Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting,1460^1590, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago: U of Chicago P,1990) 126 ^28.The case for Barbaro having designed this schema is strengthened when the unique design of the Ionic column of the loggia at the rear is compared with Barbaros manuscript Manoscritti preparatory delledizione vitruviana, in Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Venezia, Cod. It. IV, 52(5106), 83r. 39 Seen in Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice 47 . 40 For discussions of Venices figurata of state see David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2001). 41 Wolfgang Wolters draws attention to Veit von Dornbergs address to Maximilian II (1569) in which he criticized Giangiacomo de Grigi as a practitioner without theoretical knowledge. Huse and Wolters, Art of Renaissance Venice 66. 42 See Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, trans. and eds. V. Hart and P. Hicks, vol. I (New Haven:Yale UP,1996) 311.

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43 Nor e ' Citta ' in Europa, che habbia piu ' Palazzi & di gran circuito: cosi sul Canal grande come fra terra, di Venetia, i quali noi chiamiamo case per modestia, non havendo nome di Palazzo, altro che quello del Doge. Et certo che se si discorre per le Citta ' principali dItalia come e ' Roma, Napoli, Milano, Genova, Fiorenza, Bologna, Padua, Verona, & Pavia, non si Trovera che habbiano piu ' di quattro o ' sei casamenti per una, che meritino titolo di Palazzi. Ma in questa se ne contano poco meno di cento, & tutti, cosi antichi come moderni, magnifichi & grandi, cosi nella compositura, come ne gli ornamenti, ne partimenti, & ne luoghi utili per habitare. Et nel vero, che non si veggono in parte alcuna edifici, ne piu ' raccolti, ne piu ' acconci per lo uso humano di questi. (Sansovino 381) 44 This examination of the Arzenti painting builds on discussions in Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice 28. 45 Notable amongst the historians who rely primarily on Francesco Sansovinos opinions are Wolfgang Wolters and Patricia Fortini Brown. 46 Sansovino 381. 47 Paruta. 48 Contarini has used this tradition in De magistratibus 1543. 49 Paolo Paruta was said to have been close by when the talks were held and had had them recounted by a friend. Peter Laven suggests that this type of meeting reflects the growth in academies in Venice. Unlike the Florentine equivalents, Venices academies were usually less formal in their makeup, often taking the form of a series of meetings focusing discussion on particular texts. See Laven 30 ^31. 50 Et perche il ben nostro particolare congiunto si sta ' con quello della famiglia, & della citta ' non vivendo lhuomo civile in solitudine a ' se stesso, ma ben in compagnia di altri huomini a ' gli amici, & alla patria: pero ' non pur e ' sollecito il prudente di procacciare a se ' medesimo tali beni, ma degli stessi anchora cerca di ornare la sua casa, & la sua Citta ' : anzi che, come il bene de molti e ' piu ' eccellente, e piu ' 54 Ma chi non scorge in noi tale mescolamento dimperio? Se noi guardiamo al corpo, un cuore nobilissimo tra gli altri membri tiene il principato: ma questo in tal modo essercita, che a ' gli altri anchora e ' dato alcun particolare ufficio . . . ma tutti mirano ad un stesso fine, cioe ' alla salute del tutto. Tale maniera di governo osservare si puo ' anchora nellanima: peroche vi e ' la ragione; laquale, quasi regina dellaltre potenze, fede nel capo, come in forte rocca; ove soprasta ', & comanda allaltre . . . partecipe anchella di questa picciola Republica . . . Listesso nella casa avvenir si vede: ove limperio del padre sopra i figliuoli; & per lauttorita ' , che tiene sopra di loro: & per la pie ' ta, con laquale gli governa, e ' certa somiglianza duna regia amministratione onde si puo ' dire, che il padre di famiglia sia, quasi un picciol Re ' , nella sua casa si come il Re ' e ' , quasi un gran padre di famiglia, nella Citta '. (Paruta 464) There is also possibly here an allusion to both Plato and to Alberti. The analogy in Platos perfetto, che quello dun solo non e ' ; cosi la prudenza deve stimarsi piu ' nobile, & piu vera virtu ' persone ella ' , quando a ' pro ' di piu si adopra, che quando tutta si occupa della cura di noi stessi. (Paruta 210) 51 This also responds to Aristotles attitudes to the state in Aristotle, Politics I, 3,1253a ^ b. 52 Pero ' lhuomo, che e ' posto al governo della sua casa; segli sa ' ben ammaestrare i figliuoli, tenere i servi nel loro ufficio, conservare, & accrescere le ricchezze, & la dignita ' della famiglia; merita maggior lode, che quellaltro non fa, che alle bisogne di se solo, benche ottimamente, provede. (Paruta 210) 53 La Citta ' suole con assai convenevole sembianza al nostro corpo rassomigliarsi, nel quale, come sono molte membra a ' varie operationi per la salute di lui ordinate, & disposte; cosi nella Citta ' devono essere molti cittadini differenti di grado, & dufficio, che tutti pero ' attendino ad un stesso fine, cioe ' al ben publico. (Ibid. 440)

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Republic concerns an understanding of order. In works by Plato and by the Stoics, the city is used as a metaphor of order of the soul: Socrates sees the polis as being a soul writ large in Part Two of the Republic.The right ordering of the polis is dependent upon the right ordering of the soul (Republic 2.2.1.368e). Plato writes: the city is like some large house, and the house is in turn like some small city (I, 9, 23). In Alberts discussion of beauty in Book 9, Parts 5 and 6 of De re aedificatoria Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by concinnitas, the absolute and fundamental rule of Nature. This is the main object of the art of building, and the source of her dignity, charm, authority, and worth. (Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert, N. Leach and R. Tavenor (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1988) 309). 55 Ma nella Republica de gli ottimati si stima il consiglio nato da molti savi . . . in essa il temperamento dellauttorita ' dellun magistrato col potere dellaltro: & non men di questo, perche sia un stato di mezo tral regno, & lo stato popolare . . . A questa e la nostra Republica molto simile, conciosia cosa che vi si vegga chiaramente espressa una certa sembianza di tutti i governi migliori. Rappresenta il Doge la regna maesta ' : come quello, la cui dignita ' e ' perpetua, & in somma veneratione presso a ' tutti gli ordini deCittadini: pero ' in nome di lui sono publicate tutte le piu ' importanti deliberationi, scritte, & ricevute le lettere publiche, come di capo, che tutta la Republica rappresenti. Ma il Senato, il consiglio deDieci, il Collegio, che altro sono, che veri, & propri magistrati della Republica de gli ottimati?: Et daltra parte lauttorita ' riserbata al consiglio maggiore, ove convengono tutti i Cittadini. (Paruta 461^ 69) 56 As Paul Grendler has explained, historians such as Uberto Foglietta believed that history taught concrete lessons for the present, and that works of history must produce human utility. See Paul F. Grendler, Francesco Sansovino and Italian Popular History 1560 ^1600, Studies in the Renaissance 16 (1969): 139^ 80. 57 Nellaquale non e ' quasi alcuna Citta ' dItalia, che di molti nobilissimi palaggi ornate non sia: anzi pur, che nelle ville anchora diverse nobilissimi fabriche con deliciosi giardini damoderni fondate, ne danno tanto piu ' vero segno della loro Magnificenza; quanto che queste servono, anzi al piacere, & ad una certa honoreuolezza delle famiglie, che alla necessita ' . (Paruta 287) 58 The Savio di Terraferma was a board consisting of five members, the savio alla scrittura or minister of war, the savio cassier or treasurer, the savio alle ordinanze or minister of native militia in cities on ' or minister the mainland, the savio aid a mo for urgent matters, and the savio ai ceremoniale or minister of state ceremonies. See Horatio Brown, Venetian Studies (London: Kegan Paul,1887) 187ff. 59 Brown explores the distinctive attributes of Venetian concepts of living nobly; see Private Lives in Renaissance Venice chapter 3. 60 Paruta 288. 61 ma in quelle cose solamente si adopera, le quali rare volte si fanno; come sono i conviti, le nozze, le fabriche; ove conviensi spendere senza havere consideratione alla spesa, ma solamente alla grandezza, & alla bellezza dellopra: peroche di rado ci viene occasione di spendere in cosi fatte cose. Et sotto a ' quelle che io dissi piu ' generali, ponno ridursi tutte laltre anchora, come feste, giuochi publici, livree, edificiationi detempi, depalazzi, o daltri edifici privati o ' publici: le quali cose, se hanno del grande, & se fatte sono con nobile apparecchio, & con decoro conveniente, rendono lhuomo veramente degno del nome di magnifico. (Paruta 282) 62 Barbaro, inVitruvius, I deci libri dellarchitettura I, II, proemio. 63 See Aristotle, Politics I, 2^3. 64 Barbaro, inVitruvius, I deci libri dellarchitettura I, II, XVIII. A version of this illustration also appears in his earlier manuscript cod. It.IV.37(5133)2v, held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,Venice.

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65 Barbaro, inVitruvius, I deci libri dellarchitettura I, proemio. 66 Its origins are in Themistius Parapharasis; see Branko Mitrovic, Aesthetic Formalism in Renaissance Architectural Theory, Zeitschrift fu r Kunstgeschichte 66 (2003): 321^ 40. 67 Branko Mitrovic, Andrea Palladio Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese (New York: Acanthus, 2006). 68 See Barbaro, in Vitruvius, I deci libri dellarchitettura VI,10, 303ff. See discussion in James Ackerman, Origins, Imitation, Conventions: Representation and the Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2002) 221, 223.

Desley Luscombe Dean Faculty of Design Architecture and Building University of Technology Sydney PO Box 123 Broadway, NSW 2007 Australia E-mail: d.luscombe@uts.edu.au

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