1K NEDERLANDS F KUNSTHISTORISCH Z JAARBOEK 1972 i DEEL 23 OPGEDRAGEN AAN PROF. DR H. GERSON an der VALK BOUMAN: "The origins |M. VLLEGENTHART-v. FIBULA + VAN DISHOECK + BUSSUM Kubi B 486 4 kL.The origins of the Imperial Staircase JM. Viiegenthartvan der Valk Bouman The ch the introduction to the archite jor divisions of buildin rural section of Vasati's Vite de pitt eccelle ti pittori, seultori ed architetti comuains the following passage on the st ant to climb and as wi sway !: “The stairs should be easy and ple spacious as the proportions of the su i areas allow. They st also be decorated and amply illuminaced, with at least several windows other lighting at every landing. Every part of the staircase should make @ princely appearance, since most visitors see no more of a house than thy staircase. You could compare the stairs 10 the limbs of a body, The risers should be one guint high and the steps two Zerze wide, so that even old men, and children can climb it without breaking their legs. The stairway i most difficule part of a building to place, It is in constant use, yet we are often forced to give it short shrife in order so accomodate other rooms Staircase architecture had become an important. problem by Vasari’ time ‘The ideal was a distinguished, monumental form like that applied ~ for the 9 il Giovane in the rst time, as is now believed ~ by Antonio da Sang: Palazzo Farnese in Rome (1534) Looking into Pevsner’s survey of the history of architecture, we find that while, howeve he has this to say about the imperial staircase: ‘Mea Spain had introduced yet another type, the grandest of all, and here also, it seems. Inthe case of this on the sole precedent of unexecuted Italian drawings type, known as the imperial staircase, Leonardo sketches are the patter An imperial staircase is one which nuns ina large oblong cage, starting with one straight arm and then, after the landing, turning by 180 degrees and leading up to the upper floor with two arms to the left and right of, an parallel with, the first arm (or starting with two and finishing with one This type appears to my knowledge for the first time in Juan Bautista de Toledo's and Juan de Herrera’s Escorial (156384) ...’. Here 1 would like to go into the nature of these “unexecuted Italian drawings’ and de monstrate, with reference to the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, that Pevsnet’s assumption about Spain having introduced the imperial staircase should be taken with a grain of salt Escorial Tr is a well-known fact that Italian architecture exerted an unusually dom 43 ah1 Leonardo da Vine, Shicbes of a groundplan fr staircase Paris, Intue de France, Ms Bi fol 220" 2 Leonerdo da Vinci, Sketcbes of prowndplan, facade end portico de France, VLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN fluence on Spain in the first half of the sixteenth century. No Spaniard hope to earn a respectable reputation as an architect, in around 1550, without having made a trip to Rome Juan Batista de Toledo was in Naples when Philip II summoned him to the court in Madrid in 1559.3 De Toledo had just finished a period of intensive study in Italy. He was friendly with such outstanding Italian architects as Baldassare Peruzzi, Jacopo Sansovino and Andrea Palladio and had worked under Michelangelo on the construction of Ssint Peter's in Rome. In Naples he was in the service of the Spanish vice regent. Back in “Madrid he was appointed court architect and was commissioned to build the Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial de la Vietoria, When he died in 1567 only the south facade and the adjoining Court of the Evangelists was ready. The staircase beside it was not yet begun. For the time being the supervision of the project was placed in the hands of the Italian Giovanni Battista Castello of Bergamo, who filled the post for two years, until 1569. He may have taken up the building of the imperial staircase # on the west wing of the Court of the Evangelists. This is the staircase Pevsner regards Je that light could be shed on this point if one could study the project drawings for the Escorial, which are unfor as the first of its kind. It is po: tunately not made available to scholars. Unexecuted Italien project drawings Of the design of the imperial stairease in the Escorial, Pevsner says that it seems to have come into being ‘on the sole precedent of unexecuted Italian drawings’ and that ‘Leonardo sketches are the pattern’. The sketches he is referring to are on fol. 220 recto and verso of manuscript B in the Institut 444Interior of the Col Florence, Gabiuetto Di of te U Antonio Dosio, VLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN oy a fairly accurate record of how the Colosseum looked at the time. In the upper left are two staircases flanking an opening of the same width as each of the staircases. It seems not unlikely that the central bay of the three also contained a staircase ~ a descending one. In that case the stairs in this part of the Colosseum amount to an imperial staircase. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Rome was the meeting place of the Renaissance architects, who all, like Leonardo, spent a lot of time taking the measurements of the city’s ancient monuments and studying them, In 1515 work was begun on Raphael's grandly ambitious plan to systematically map and draw all the remains of the ancient city. One of the most produc tive architects involved in this project was Antonio de Sangallo il Giovane Most of his drawings of ancient Rome have been preserved in the Gabi netto Disegni of the Uffizi in Florence * Among them is a sheet with half the groundplan of the Terme Antoniane, or the Baths of Caracalla, with its dimensions ‘a braccia fiorentina’, as Antonio himself noted (fig. 5)." To the left of the inscription is an isolated structure whose groundplan looks a lot like the one Leonardo sketched in Manuscript B. We can see from its 446VLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN sonia da Sanello it Giovane Groundplan ofthe rain of fe temple of Mars U Florence, Gabinetto Disegn placing that the structure was not part of the baths complex proper but was attached to the surrounding wal. If we compare Serlio’s reconstruction of the Baths of Caracalla in his Third Book (Venice 1540) 19, we discover that the wall had two stories ~ a covered walk halfway up the wall and an un: covered one on top of it ~ and that there were staircases at the corners leading to them. In view of the fact that these corner pavilions contained staircases with more steps on the lateral flights than the central one, I think {vis fair to regard them as the ancient prototypes of the Renaissance imperial 448\VLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN | staircase, In the absence of any indication as to the direction in which the stairways run, it is impossible to say whether the central arm or the two side arms begin on the ground. || Uffizi drawing nr. UA 1393, a groundplan of the amphitheater in Verona by ‘G, B. da Sangallo’, contains an even more explicit proof of 1e antique corigins of the imperial staircase (fig. 6). In the upper left are the rows of seats and in the upper right the stairs that give access to them.1! The stairs are of particular interest, since their direction is clearly indicated: ‘one straight arm and then, after the landing, turning by 180 degrees and leading up to the upper floor with wo arms to the let and right of, and parallel with, the first arm’ (Pevsner). The dimensions of the breadth of the left and middle arms are also noted, A staircase ike this as the entrance 0 an ancient theater cannot have failed to attract the notice of Renaissance at- chitets An unexecuted project drawing with these characteristics is Uffizi drawing | nr, 1529 recto, This sheet by Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane has been iden | tified by Giovannoni as part of a yroundplan for a palace for the Medici in Rome (fig, 7).!2 Giovannoni describes it thus: ‘A spacious vestibule with three bays gives onto two elongated courtyards separated from each other by a colonnade built along the central axis of the building. The colonnade | ends in a forked stairase (‘sala a tenaglia', with an entrance to the garden in the center’. The groundplan of the palace is sketched roughly and is partially covered here and there by designs for gates. The finished project, ‘would have been immense, and the imperial staircase in the main axis would hhave taken up a very imposing position." | 450EES "eT 3 Leona ofthe Kings, Preliminary Ge da Vini, Adoration The origins of the Imperial Staircase de France in Paris. Fol. 220 verso (fig, 1) contains eight sketches of eroundplans, three of them unmistakably fora staircase with three parallel arms, ‘a txiplice rampa’. In the accompanying text, in the left margin beside the sketch in the lower left, Leonardo explains the letters penned in the sketch in mirror writing. They indicate the path one is to take through the onstruction: “Per asi saplic in r, esi volta in g, e siriesce in m a, overo si volta in pe siriesce in ma. Ancora si p fare in contratio, cio’ entrare in a ¢ voltare in » 0 in m,€ andare in a m pra overo in an gra’. On the recto (fig, 2) i 4 sketch of the facade and part of the Portico and terrae; in the lower left sa loggin with four arches and a pable nt wall of a house, with roof, The groundplan beside it takes up most of the sheet. In the midldle axis of the building whose form it lays down is an imposing three-armed d anything to do with It is difficult to judge whether or not the sketches h & real project. Manuscript B was originally intended by Leonardo to serve %s # means for him to clarify his thinking about certain problems. Part of it Contains plans for an ideal city, the necessity for which was impressed upon Teonardo by the plague of 1484—85 and the tragic consequences of oven Population, poor hygiene, inadequate water supply, etc. Leonardo already displayed keen interest in the spatial and decorative forms of the staircase in the background of the eatly Adoration of the Kings. Even more cleatly than in the painting, the wo wellknown peel ininary studies in the Louvre and the Uffizi show two parallel stairways in ‘ruin possibly inspired by the remains of ancient theaters (fig. 3) ‘We find @ similar situation in one of the drawings of Giovanni Antonio Peso (fg. 4), representing the interior of the Colosseum." The drawing is 445\VLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN 4 Gionant Antonio Desi, a fairly accurate record of how the Colosseum looked at the time. In pirat Rane upper left are two staircases flanking an opening of the same width as each of the Uist cof the staircases, It seems not unlikely that the central bay of the three also contained a staircase ~ a descending one. In that case the stairs in this part of the Colosseum amount to an imperial staircase At the beginning of the sixteenth century Rome was the meeting place of the Renaissance architects, who all, like Leonardo, spent a lot of time taking the measurements of the city’s ancient monuments and studying them. In 1515 work was begun on Raphael’s grandly ambitious plan to systematically map and draw all the remains of the ancient city. One of the most produc tive architects involved in this project was Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane. Most of his drawings of ancient Rome have been preserved in the Gabi- netto Disegni of the Uffizi in Florence. Among them is a sheet with half the groundplan of the Terme Antoniane, or the Baths of Caracalla, with its dimensions ‘a braccia fiorentina’, as Antonio himself noted (fig. 3).® To the left of the inscription is an isolated structure whose groundplan looks a lot like the one Leonardo sketched in Manuscript B. We can sce from its 446OO EEE ee The origins of the Imperial StaircaseVLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN 8 Antonio de Sango i Groundpln of the rant of Wan icts the temple of Mars Ultor. Coe he of the U placing that the structure was not part of the baths complex proper but was attached to the surrounding wall. If we compare Serlio's reconstruction of the Baths of Caracalla in his Third Book (Venice 1540) #9, we discover that the wall had two stories ~ a covered walk halfway up the wall and an un- covered one on top of it - and that there were staircases at the corners leading to them. In view of the fact that these corner pavilions contained staircases with more steps on the lateral flights than the central one, I think it is fair to regard them as the ancient prototypes of the Renaissance imperial 4483 FVLIEGENTHART | VAN DER VALK BOUMAN stairease. In the absence of any indication as to the direction in which the stairways nun, it is impossible to say whether the central arm or the £0 side arms begin on the ground. Uffisi drawing nt, UA 1393, a groundplan of the amphitheater in Verona by origins of the imperial staiease (fig. 6). In the upper left are the rows of 5. B, da Sangallo', contains an even more explicit proof of the antique a PSY | | wall ats and in the upper right the stairs that give access to them.!! The stairs heir direction is clearly indicated: “one of particular interest, sin ding, turning by 180 degrees and leading ht arm and then, after the la ight of, and parallel up to the upper floor with two arms to the left and ‘with, the first arm’ (Pevsner). The dimensions of the breadth of the lef id middle arms are also noted. A staircase like this as the entrance to an fancient theater cannot have failed to attract the notice of Renaissance ar An unexecuted project drawing with these characteristics is Uffizi drawing has been ider sr, 1529 recto. This sheet by Antonio da Sangallo il Giov tified by Giovannoni as part of a groundplan for « palace for the Medici Rome (fig. 7).!2 Giovannoni describes it thus: “A spacious vestibule with three bays gives onto two elongated courtyards scparated from each other by a colonnade built along the central axis of the building. The colonnade ‘with an entrance to the garden cends in a forked staircase (‘scala a tenagl Jan of the palace partially covered here and there by dé is sketched roughly an The finished project ‘vould have been immense, and the imperial staircase in the main axis would in the center’. The grounc 8 for have taken up a very imposing position.) 450The origins of the Imperial Staircase rawing by Sangallo that is interesting in this context is Uffizi drawing ne. UA 1283 fig. 8), a groundplan of the ruins of the temple of Mars Ulor with the semicircular southern edge of the Forum of Augustus Drawn over itis the groundplan of an imperial staircase, worked out further in two of the three sketches on the lower part of the sheet. Th deal with a situation in which @ small building was to arise in the middle of the forum, abutting on the ruins of the temple.! Baldassare Peruzzis sketch Uffizi nr. UA 462 is some: (ia. 9). Bai Valle” ricordo di vaso marmoreo, Sul reste della pagina schizz in pianta e in toli describes it in these words: ‘Vaso del Cardinale della alzato di una casa. Sull'alta pagina la nota ta da Salustio “templulm| Pantheon ed altre piante” '. The two sketches of staircases are not mentioned by Bartoli. And yet the drawing on the left in particular is not without interest, showing as it does a staircase with three parallel arms. The middle arm is bordered on either side by three lines, which may have been the draftsman's manner of indicating a difference in level between it and the ‘two outer arms.15 Finally, we must mention the Citta Ideale of Ammannati, a vast fantasy described in detail with drawings and groundplans. The largest part of the 451VLIEGENTHART / VAN DER VALK BOUMAN work must have been created during the first years of Ammannati’s Roman period, which lasted from 1550 to 1560. This means that itis several deca des later than the drawings discussed above. The fragments are preserved in an album in the Uffizi, numbered UA 3382—3464, Drawing UA 3415 (fig, 10) shows the groundplan of a dwelling with a very elaborate imperial star case in the major axis. The middle arm of the staircase, which is broader than the lateral arms, has a small square portal before it with a few stairs leading to it from either side, placed perpendicularly to the imperil stair case itself. Flanking the staircase are two courtyards with colonnades sur rounded by a large number of rooms. The groundplan is perfectly sym: metrical ‘To my mind Uffiei drawing nr, UA 4514 also belongs to Ammannati's Citta sale (fig. 11), It is a plan for three cortiles separated by two imperial staircases. The cortiles are hemmed in by rooms in the same manner as those ‘on UA 3415, and the staircases in the two drawings are virtually identical The only difference is that in UA 4514 all the arms of the staircase are equal in breadth, This is a rare example of a transverse groundplan in which the staircases do mote to delimit the various spaces than contribute to the unity of the whole.'® A Palladio drawing in the RIBA, London (vol. 16. fol. 5v), a sketch of an imperial staircase (fig. 12) approached by two small lateral stairways, seems never to have been executed.!7 Scuola di San Rocco ‘The imperial staircase was first carried out not in Spain but in Venice, in the Scuola di San Rocco (fig. 13). In order to fix the chronology firmly, it is first necessary to review the building history of the Scuola, Fortunately for those of us who would have a hard time with the illegible handwriting of the sixteenth century Venetians, Paoletti di Osvaldo has dealt extensively with the letters, bills and other documents of the Scuola in his Liarchiter: tra eta scultura del Rinascimento in Venezia, Venice 1893 ‘Until the end of the fifteenth century there was a confratemity of San Roe co in the immediate neighborhood of the Church of the Frari. The con: frateli busied themselves with aiding the sick, plague victims, less fortunate members of the dub and the poor at large. Their charitable works were rewarded by Pope Pits VI, who elevated them 10 the rank of an Archicon fraternita. Charitable as their services were, they were nonetheless not totally gratis, and thanks to the frequent recurrence of the plague in Venice around the tum of the sixteenth century the confraternity found itself in such prosperous circumstances that the abbot of San Rocco decided it was time to move to larger quarters. The new building arose on a piece of land ditectly behind the Frari Church. The construction of the new Scuola was entrusted to Bartolomeo Bon, proto of San Marco, in 1516, He worked at the job until 1524, by which 452SIS’ 'T- The origins of the Imperial Staircase time the foundations had been laid, the downstairs hall was bul and the lover order of the fagade had been erected. Bon's successor was Sanne Leg ofa bardo, who was dismissed from the post on March 20,1527 aa nen sucdlen decline in the fortunes of the confraternity, Much of the ctracure remained to be built, including two thirds of the fasade on the piasea the facade on the rio and the Albergo. On October 6, 1527 Antonio Sean Freune Was appointed to the job, and it was let to him to finish the Sewoly The question of the staircase was settled in principle as carly as 1523, hen & wooden model by a certain Zuane Celesto of Tuscany wis approves, Bor on June 21, 1545 the brotherhood met to consider plans for a comelereh ew staircase project. The prior, M, explaining the difficultcs, ‘heteas the existing statcase lcks the proportions we would oes tonio Rizzo, delivered a speech d fortunately it has been large preserved: it to have in view of the splendor of the building, the Scusla cool be cpnbared f0 precious stone set in lead... the necessaty lan woe nit thle in the empty lot on the Campo di Castelforte, besfa th Scuola, All that would have to be done isto fi in to the s he!.1* The others Sere and it was decided to buld a new staircase on the ground vo th Fa os the Seuols. Construction on the new staircase lasted for at lens five yeas. Bills dated June 1549 and March 1550 have be on With the project. In any case we are certain that work was begun in 1545 ~ 22 years before the catlest possible date when te staircase of the Escorial could have been designed Comparing the stirs of the Scuola di San Rocco with tho the most obvious difference is that the two nantow Leet of Scuola staircase are cach covered with a separa bere! vay whereas in the Escorial there are no walls between the three arms and she hole st i San pe BY # stale roof. I is not impossible thatthe barrel vaate in San Rosco were derived directly from the stairwave antique cf, the above mentioned drawing by Giovanni Amvonie Dove (ig. 4). Tm the Escorial the absence of separate roofs foreach bay of she case led to vi pata! unity. And in Venice the fact thatthe saicace wes aided at an arbitrar location ought tobe taken into acount; inthe Escorial fice all it was placed on the central ais, and forms one of the ng in accents of the building. * Nias Le wie de’ ib ecclent ptr, seatri ed ercbtetori, od Gactano Milanesi, Fitenge 1878, 1, 147 2G an An atte of Exopean echietre, Harmondawerth 1963, 82278 * G: Kabler, A. Soci, Art and architecture in Spar ee American dominions 1500-1800, London 1959, 11 * Gort, A. Sorin op oi. 3: ‘Aber’ Toksh’s deh, not Haerera bot Glorsoni atte Clo of Berpana ad Geten wat in hag ee oe eenVLIEGENTHART | VAN DER VALK BOUMAN he Imperial Staircase in the West range of the Evangelists’ costes i his Geichicbre des Barock in Spanien, Essingen aN 1908, 53: .. Die Tiaupeteppe seurde erst spiter nach Pfinen des aus Berpumo in Talien Ha ata: ta a Gin. Bata Cs, Pore Sere i Ce oes at well On the th ad these # rb Rem Son by Po JJ Tern 1p Amano Peta ctl A a poe de EL Excl Nadel 1952, O78, ee target Coe ha etn 0 do wth estes | ca ae Dara 1952 On pe 89 6 a pasaarh fending} te Sem cee ile ramp’ retin, Bf, 20. A sik ate ol 9 le Ee aren | Nona i Si senna 163), Leonnlo Arce « Urbai mesh Sei USD, eo ae mines | TT vlc Lend da Vi, Ba 195 8: | tia Gain ei Ds ‘ua 52 Cis ai reve, Roma 1947. Ua ti), Bari fe. 324 ‘ian irae meh ria fen’ ae Ae in pom ic cora, | so SF I eur poiption, Uibo term, 91. Neves | vai drawing in Ferrata’, Mitteilungen des Kunstbistorichen 12 (1966), 245, The drawing as first published in 1966 by in passing withoot deaving Burns. “A Pen Flo. sen pho mentions the jndications of the saiway 5 any conclusions from thet 2G Giovannoni, Antonia da Sanallo i Giorane, Roma 1999, T. 42 Cicnanant op cit, 239, publishes a schematic reconstruction of the + he bane of the method of squaring applied by da Sangallo himself cit, vol THT, pl CCLXVIL, fig 4 oo Baral tes wl. IL pl. LVL, fig, 380; sce ho HL Wore: Der Fee Bato Orie Colowne, Berlin 1965, 140 and fg. 24, 1 am indebeed vo Dr I. Fromme, fr calling these sketches to my attention. ae EVele, Studien. sum arcbitektonichen Werk des Bartolomeo, Amanat Zivich 942, 97 apd note aan avg is reproduced inthe Gernsbcim photograph series undet_ ne the Villa Poiana in Poiana Maggiore fodplan of the villa into coo- 25463 Av where itis called a project for This seems unlikely 10 me, taking the present grou 1 Pe prateti di Osvaldo, Llachitetura ¢ ls senltare del Rinascimento in Venec Roeeeiso5. 11, 289, This project wae Kindly pointed out 10 me by Prof J: J Fr Pacten! di Osvaldo, op. cit, Tl, 126, nt 167: ‘1349, 5 giugno... Credit sprobat como jus et real. a mis, Ante Scharpugn (Fo neste prov) ISshae dag! 16} gi 9. mfo vent." de Extori mu lexandeo agai was apparently deceased) reel 2 ef 72, mi piero di Lorenzo tai plera L. 290 2. 1. 8 m= wana hcea L161 5.13. mPo domenegn di baldiserattaia pza Ls 1219 8-19 a1} meggio Revest fo domenio di baldser tai piera .. dues quarants dos soos cimgus peas do per manianara di sechini di la scala prada et di le sele Fo nae se cho da padoa tala pita sctssl per suo nome per non sper | 454