Review

Reviewed Work(s): Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture 1580-1630 by Howard

Hibbard, Anthony Blunt and Rudolf Wittkower
Review by: Gerda Panofsky-Soergel
Source: The Art Bulletin , Sep., 1974, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 450-452
Published by: CAA

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 450 THE ART BULLETIN

the evaluations, often in direct opposition to Schulz'srefrain well from

docu- remarking on their mystifying "system" of numbering
mented ones.8 But these are two distinct methodologies, (surely and
the publisher's and not the author's responsibility): the
Cassini's work is not to be judged less positively. Above 266all it is to
photographs are laid out on 131 pages, yet by an odd calcu-
be commended for the publisher's good contribution which lation, the last illustration number becomes 104 b. For sometimes
permits the values of the many plans to be properly judged, and the recto and verso of a page have the same plate number, dis-
for the addition of some ten completely unpublished plans and tinguished by a, b, c, etc., and sometimes opposite pages - though
the same number of lithographs. The list of topynyms at the end, their subjects have apparently nothing to do with each other (see
that is, the list of all locality names appearing in more important plate iI a-c) - share one and the same plate number. Occasionally
plans, is also careful and certainly useful. the same monument is counted separately from page to page
Students cannot but rejoice in so much interest in the appear- (plates 20-25). It seems futile to search for the purpose behind
ance of old Venice. And indeed the enormous updating of docu- these capricci (on plate 27 the a-d numbering even goes counter-
ments and the virtually faultless precision of Schulz's work, and clockwise). As an avis au lecteur: plate 55, referred to on page 2o0,
Cassini's lively presentation were utilized in the interesting shows neither Maderno's fountain in "its present position" nor
exhibition Ritratto di Venezia which took place in the summer of Bernini's counterpart.
1973. It included some fifty plans listed by the two scholars, and Except for a few, and rather recent, investigations of single
conveyed a stimulating and up-to-date impression of the changing buildings, Hibbard's long-awaited study is the first comprehensive
imagery produced by the artists to whom we owe the construction monograph on the architect Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) since
of one of the special cities in the world. the now outdated, and not too thorough, book by Nina Caflisch
TERISIO PIGNATTI written four decades ago. At the height of his career, around i6o8,
Museo Correr Maderno was judged by his contemporaries as "uno dei piti
valenti Architetti de' nostri tempi" (page 17o; cf. pages I19, 53).
When he died in I629, his epitaph in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini
HOWARD HIBBARD, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture (page 97, plate 104 b) listed but three works: his assistance in
158o-i63o (Studies in Architecture, ed. Anthony Blunt and erecting the obelisk before Saint Peter's, his completion of Saint
Rudolf Wittkower, x), University Park and London, Peter's, and the transportation of the last monolithic column from
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972. Pp.xvi + 404; the Maxentius Basilica to Santa Maria Maggiore. It is worthwhile
II text figs., 266 ills. $39.50 to read through Hibbard's extensive catalogue in order to find out
what else - not mentioned on the epitaph - we really do know of
This monograph can roughly be divided into three parts: text, Maderno's activities. Despite the wealth of archival material
catalogue, and plates. Of these, the author considers the cata- unearthed by Hibbard, unfortunately not too many buildings are
logue "the heart (perhaps not the soul) of this work" (page 2), well documented for Maderno, and some of those are no longer
from which we may conclude that the soul is in the text proper. standing. The author conscientiously traces any hint given by
Two appendixes deal with "Maderno's Life and Family," illus- Baglione (1642) or other sources. He provides us with the full
trated by four different family trees - showing Maderno's fore- history, including the decoration, of any building ever attributed
bears and distant relatives, though not his offspring - as well as to Maderno - a most valuable reference volume of Roman Architec-
"The Inventory of Maderno's Household Effects of 2 March ture 1580-i63o, even though Maderno's participation becomes
1629," that is, at his death. The last pages contain such reference doubtful in quite a few instances.
lists as a glossary, archival and bibliographical abbreviations, If we limit ourselves to the significant buildings for which there is
bibliography, and index. positive Maderno evidence (discounting the architect's occasional
To start from the end: the index gives s. v. "Roma" an im- signing of a misura, or payment as perito), and if we enumerate only
those structures which are still extant, the catalogue will be
pressive topography of Roma Barocca, and our curiosity is aroused
by such entries as "beggars" and "Carnival," "crime" and drastically reduced to more or less the following monuments:
"cuisine," "famine" and "floods," "Jews" and "Jubilee," "mor- 1593ff., Santa Susanna, Rome;
tality," "preaching" and "prostitution." 1598ff., Palazzo Mattei di Giove, Rome;
The bibliography displays nearly four hundred titles (page 382, 1603 - 16 i o, Villa Belvedere, Frascati;
right column, line 4: read "Ragguagli" instead of "Raggauagli"). 1 596ff., Santa Lucia in Selci, Rome;
The glossary (page 377) poses the question for whom the mono- 16o8 - 16i18, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome;
graph is intended. I suppose it is for historians of architecture, 1i6o8 - 1628, Sant' Andrea della Valle, Rome;
particularly Roman Baroque architecture. But for the experts 1605 - 1629, Basilica of Saint Peter's, Rome;
(or would-be experts) in this area, was it really necessary to ex- 1613ff., Quirinal Palace, Rome;
plain that cortile means a courtyard, giardino a garden, palazzo a before 1612, Villa Lante, Bagnaia;
palace? The same applies to the translation offalegname, muratore, 162 i1, San Domenico, Perugia;
scarpellino, stuccatore - all the more so as these appellations are dealt 1604- 1629, Palazzo del Monte di Pieth, Rome;
with in the text on page 32f. And if palazzo, cortile, and giardino are 1625 - 1629, Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
identified for the ignoranti of the secular vocabulary, why not add The catalogue concludes with a selection of "Mistaken or
chiesa, cappella, tribuna, etc. ? The technical term avviso is taken care Dubious Attributions to Maderno" (page 237f.). It is not clear to
of twice, in the preface, page 3, and in the glossary. The definition me why these dozen entries were listed separately. Half of them,
of a monte is found only in Chapter I, page 12; baiocco should have having been discussed before, receive nothing but a cross-refe-
been inserted on page 377 with a cross-reference to scudo, whereas rence. And since the bulk of the catalogue contains so many
one remains at a loss how much three or seven or twenty-four oncie unfounded attributions that are rejected by Hibbard, the seven
of water were (usually the twelfth part of a pound or a thumb's additional entries of the other half might better have been inserted
length) - most officially granted to illustrious Cardinals (pages 123, wherever they chronologically belonged.
133, 226). Perhaps inginocchiati (page 377) should more correctly To repeat: the above-listed buildings are the only ones from
readfnestra inginocchiata (not necessarily a "basement window"!). which Maderno's style can be deduced and against which attribu-
As to the plates: nothing can be said against their beautiful tions can be checked. However, with the sole exception of the
quality (except for plate 23 a, which is blurred), but I cannot Palazzo Mattei (published by myself in 1967-68), Maderno either
reshaped an essentially Early Christian or Gothic structure, or
else entered the fabbrica at a very advanced stage, so that his
8 In evaluating the Coronelli plan of 1693, Schulz finds it a "somewhat design had little choice but to follow the work of his predecessors.
coarsened copy of Merian's plan" (cat. 74, page 65) while Cassini holds For this narrow basis, Hibbard cannot be blamed. On the con-
that the same plan, in its second state of 1696, "opens the new way for trary, the perseverance with which he struggled through all these
Venetian Topography" (page 21). muddled traditions and marred buildings - where the criteria of

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 BOOK REVIEWS 451

an artist's personality are extremely hard to grasp - is to be ad- redesigned the ceiling shortly before (cf. page i 2f.), but - as can
mired.
be easily detected from the brickwork on the outside - its height
To make things worse, Maderno had the misfortune to be had not been raised then. For the sake of a unified interior, the
born between two generations of giants: Michelangelo, who began new fagade window was to conform with the windows of the side
his architectural career in ca. 1520 and who devoted himself more walls. Thus, it could neither be raised, nor could the fagade-
and more to architecture towards the end of his life (d. 1564); and stories be lowered, since they in turn had to meet the height of the
Bernini (b. I598) as well as Borromini (b. 1599) - the latter adjoining monastery and parish house.
Maderno's relative, pupil, and loyal friend. Beginning with Bag- Hibbard declares that Maderno "throughout his career.., was
lione (1642), one may observe the dilemma whether to interpret a master of camouflage" (page 72) - incidentally, one of the few,
Maderno as one of the last Renaissance architects, or to celebrate though not very flattering compliments the architect receives from
him as "the first Baroque architect" (cf. page 2). Now it would be his latest biographer. In secular architecture, the "disparity
mistaken to assume that it was Hibbard's ambition to bring between outside and in" is called "a commonplace of Maderno's
Maderno and his period to full honors. Maderno's few surviving practice." For example, at the Palazzo Mattei "Maderno made
drawings (cf. below) are called "dull and mechanical" (page 85), exterior and interior wholly separate in the service of an exterior
his style "somewhat pedantic" (page 87). He is denied "much harmony and an interior continuity, that smacks somewhat of
spatial imagination" (page 88), and as to his late palace fagades. Borromini's ingenuity" (page 47), and Maderno's influence is
of the 1620's, one "conservative, even boring" project served for similarly detected in the Palazzo Barberini, because its "fagades
several of them, Maderno supposedly having been "an unimagi- .. . have very little to do with the spaces behind" (page 83). But
native and traditional designer" (pages 78, 214). Viewed in such was the example not set two generations before with the Palazzo
negative light, we do not expect Hibbard to have Maderno Farnese (cf. pages 82, 86)? Did the "fundamental break" with the
"direct Roman architecture into entirely new channels," as Albertian requirement of corrispondenza not already occur around
Wittkower (Pelican History of Art, xvI, 2nd rev. ed., I965, page 73) 1530?
had more favorably concluded. The same periodization seems to apply to the approach to color.
Hibbard ties Maderno to the cinquecento tradition, labeling Hibbard suggests that the white and cool interiors of Maderno's
him "rather reactionary" (page 26) and a "conservative mind" original naves and vaults (cf. page 25) "must have given Borro-
(pages 44, 86f.). Maderno's glorious masterpiece, the fagade of mini his taste for unadorned architectural mouldings and sur-
Santa Susanna (1597-1603), exemplifies "a conscious return to faces" (page 55f.). High Renaissance chapels, emulating the
the past" (page 42) by harking back to the earlier Gesti fagade splendor of antiquity, had been lavishly adorned with precious
- to be sure not to Giacomo della Porta's extant work, but to materials (cf. J. Shearman, "The Chigi Chapel in S. Maria del
Vignola's design, already rejected in 1570 as too old-fashioned Popolo," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxiv, 1961,
(cf. page I54). Next, the Palazzo Mattei, I598ff., "the secular I29ff., esp. I54). On the other hand, Raphael's Sant'Eligio
counterpart to Santa Susanna" (page 44), deserves our special degli Orefici "in its pure whiteness, its austerity of forms," long
interest as "the only significant building wholly planned, begun, cited as the expression par excellence of High Renaissance religious
and finished by Maderno" (page 43). But the reader is told right feelings (cf. page 55 and the author's tribute to R. Wittkower,
away that "it is no such masterpiece as Santa Susanna, . . . in- Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 1949ff.), has turned
finitely less novel and adventurous" on its exterior where "the out to owe its present aspect to Flaminio Ponzio from 1602-04
fagade could be by almost anybody" (page 44f.). One wonders (cf. Frommel, page 74f.). The whiteness of the church interiors
whether the frustrated author at some point began to hate his seems to have been introduced as a response "on the part of the
hero. Besides Santa Susanna and the Palazzo Mattei, another architects to the new austerity following the Sack of Rome in
of Maderno's "greatest achievements" (page 86) remains the 1527" - this is the development outlined by Milton J. Lewine
dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle, I620-22, but alas, "Maderno's ("The Roman Church Interior, 1527- 158o," Ph.D. diss., Columbia
dome for Sant'Andrea is almost as much the end of an era as was University, 1960, 2f. and passim), to which Wolfgang Lotz has
his fagade for Santa Susanna twenty-five years earlier . . . Here called my attention, and which is strangely enough not quoted by
too, Maderno stands at the end of an era" (page 58). Hibbard.

Which era? If we follow Hibbard, "it was not generally an Rarely does the present author mention such idiosyncr
imaginative or experimental time" (page 27); "it was an era of features as Maderno's fondness for columns (pages 41, 6of., 78
simplification and imitation, with only a few morphological his vault penetrations "different from most Italian church
details to differentiate one decade from another... [it was] chiefly windows" (page I64), or his "practice of treating the strips
memorable for technical achievements" (page 34). Indeed it order on a wall, leaving the corner exposed" (pages i45,
seems to us that Maderno was even more deeply committed to though I have been told by C. L. Frommel that such was
the architectural innovations of the 1530's (rather than preparing Peruzzi's practice). What are "the concentration and stren
the "fundamental break" of the I630's, cf. page 92) than is associate with Maderno" (page 55), his "relatively diffuse
stressed by the author. pictorial" designs (page 56), "his own sensitivity and style
We do not quite agree with Hibbard that "other architects in 68) paired with a "rather cramped and inflexible manner of
other times [which architects? which times?] have been con- thinking" (page 91) ? At times, when Hibbard is pressed for a
cerned with an integration of exterior and interior and even with decision, he revokes a statement as soon as he has pronounced one,
expressing the character of the spatial structure of the building for example, "Maderno's participation may be almost meaning-
on the outside," and that only "for Volterra and Maderno such less or he may actually have been the designer" (page i I5), or
ideas hardly existed" (page 41). Towards 1520, Michelangelo's "the final element in the complex that can be attributed to Mader-
fagade of San Lorenzo, if built, would hardly have reflected no with any assurance is the palace itself, although its bare walls
Brunelleschi's nave, and the exterior of Michelangelo's Medici
Chapel by no means betrays the interior elevation. There too and unprepossessing
The evasiveness and exteriors
the lackdo
ofnot invite attribution"
unmistakably (page 194).
Madernesque
(as in Michelangelo's projects for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini characteristics make themselves most painfully felt in the needed
and for Saint Peter's; cf. C. L. Frommel, in Stil und Uberlieferung clarification of the Palazzo Barberini, and in the discussion of the
in der Kunst des Abendlandes, Berlin, 1967, iI, 41ff., esp. 52f.) barely thirty drawings under consideration. As to the latter, the
the outside windows barely overlap the inner frames, as in the author himself admits that "attributing... is somewhat difficult"
upper story of Maderno's fagade of Santa Susanna. While Michel- (page 85). Very few drawings carry Maderno's handwriting, let
angelo very likely planned the incongruous windows in order to alone a date (see plates IO a, i i a-b, 33 a [though here the sup-
channel the light into the lower areas of the Medici Chapel, posed "measurements... in Maderno's hand" are not visible on the
Maderno's "drastic mis-match" at Santa Susanna was - as we see reproduction], 46 b, 5i b [where of Maderno's handwriting re-
it- a rather ingenious compromise between the old and new parts mained but five letters]). To these could be added the ground
of the church: It will be remembered that Maderno himself had plan of two houses on Piazza Serlupi, done in I6 i for Asdrubale

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452 THE ART BULLETIN

Vlieghe's
Mattei (see my article in R6misches Jahrbuch fiur Kunstgeschichte, xi, book is the result of many years of study
1967-68, 124, and n. 68). All the other drawings, reproduced with a Ghent doctoral dissertation finished in 1966. Si
or not by Hibbard, are attributions, and several of them seem author has published several articles, each one with
to stem from H. Thelen's surplus of Borromini findings: just historical contributions. He found new documentar
because they are not really Borrominesque, they are by elimi- about the artist; he established him as the author of
nation called Madernesque. Three drawings in the Uffizi (plate previously attributed (though hardly ever with much
49 c, 50, 5I b) show projects for Saint Peter's, two of them (Uff. A to Rubens as well as Van Dyck; and he discussed at
ioo, Uff. A 264) belonging to the category of so-called presenta- Crayer's activity as a painter of portraits. These st
tion drawings and probably meant to be engraved. One wonders mented by new material in all categories, form the
therefore whether they were not supplied by different participants present book. There can be no question that Vlieghe a
in the competition. According to Hibbard, all three drawings fully what he set out to do. If the result is disappointin
"appear to document projects by Maderno" (page 158), and he it seems to me, is not the author's. We are badly let d
thinks that particularly Uff. A 264 might reflect Maderno's artist to whom this enormous effort has been dedicated.
wooden model of I607 - which is, however, lost, so that the De Crayer, as Vlieghe stresses at the outset, was held in high
attribution becomes a circular argument. Speaking of Saint esteem from the seventeenth century almost down to our own
Peter's: should the anonymous Wolfenbiuttel drawing (plate 53b), time. During his lifetime, he was much in demand, as a purveyor
where the fagade has barely reached the lintels of the portals, of large canvases with religious subjects. At a time when, under
not antedate the time of "about i6i i," to wit January through the influence of the Counter-Reformation, the veneration of even
April ? For on May 12 of 16 11 the Benediction Loggia was func- obscure saints was encouraged by the Church, a good many of
tioning - and it might even be questioned whether it was "still De Crayer's paintings glorify their lives, and particularly their
uncovered" then just because some awnings (tenda) had to be deaths. (It is one of Vlieghe's great merits to have identified all
arranged up there (cf. page I73). The author himself describes in these saints, explained the actions involved, and cited the sources
glowing terms how during benediction ceremonies the pope was for their legends.) By and large, De Crayer's pictures fetched good
"displayed above colourful tapestries" (page 70). Moreover, as to prices. The very fact that a number of his works (though rarely
the date of this drawing, in October of the preceding year the his larger ones) could have been given in later records to some of
stuccoing of the portico had begun, which seems to indicate that the most illustrious names in Flemish art may be taken as testi-
construction work was finished at least as far as the ground floor mony to their artistic merit - unless one inclines to the more
was concerned. One of the last drawings attached to Maderno's cynical view that these errors only prove the lack of discrimination
name, which shows a project for the garden fagade of the Palazzo among the cognoscenti.
Barberini (plate 99 c), presumably - if by Maderno - done in Spread out in Vlieghe's book, De Crayer's oeuvre fails to keep
I625-29, induces the otherwise restrained author to almost what this enduring fame would seem to promise. I cannot help
emotional praise: " . . . although the hand is uncertain, the feeling that Vlieghe was aware of this fact. Whatever may have
drawing is so close to Maderno's style and spirit that it must be prompted his original decision, when still a student, to collect
given to him personally no matter who drew it - it is pure Mader- and study the works of De Crayer, it is obvious that his growing
no... " (page 83). But which is the spirit of the "pure Maderno"? familiarity with the master hardly bred anything approaching
Though all the available evidence - sources as well as monu- affection. In vain does one look for a statement reflecting sym-
ments - has been masterfully and painstakingly assembled in this pathy with, let alone admiration for the artist's work. Everything
monograph, Maderno's artistic personality still remains ambi- is there - documentary evidence, physical data, provenances,
guous. Maderno apparently never quite coped with Michel- literature, iconographical analysis, stylistic derivations and
angelo's overpowering legacy. Though he revered him, he did not chronological fixing of all, or most, of the works by the master -
borrow more than small motifs from him (cf. pages 68f., i6if.). but it all adds up to no more than a dutiful performance by a
Equally indistinct is Maderno's attitude towards the oval as an conscientious scholar, disenchanted, after years of work, with the
architectural form (cf. page 27), and Hibbard goes so far as to figure to whom he had devoted so much labor. In view of the near
interpret the oval chapels of Saint Peter's as mere leftover spaces total absence of laudatory comments, the several negative ones
(pages 7 If., 92). The foremost trend of the years I580 - I630 in weigh the more heavily. Speaking of one of De Crayer's attempts
Rome was certainly not the rediscovery of antiquity (cf. page 34, at depicting a dramatic subject (the Conversion of St. Paul at Opwijk,
which would be an unfair comparison with the High Renaissance), 1631) Vlieghe states that "the gestures are affected if not down-
but the strong inclination towards Early Christian revival, upon right clumsy" . . . "the composition appears to be awry" (de
which the author touches here and there (cf. pages 19, 40, 60, 73, guingois). In De Crayer's later work he sees a growing reliance
I 12, 166), but about which we would have liked to hear more. on routinely rendered traits such as "a pining glance, flabby
May we, at the end, remind the studioso of the "soul" of the outlines of the mouth and chin, and an annoying play of hands."
book: the introductory text. Aside from the somewhat repetitive Vlieghe is particularly severe as regards De Crayer's artistic
and toilsome analysis of the elusive Maderno, the history of Rome originality. With unrelenting energy he searched in De Crayer's
and Roman patronage - modeled on such classics as J. Burck- paintings for borrowings from other masters, pointing out any
hardt or L. von Pastor - is most delightful and fascinating to read. number of heads or entire figures derived from Rubens, Van
GERDA PANOFSKY-SOERGEL Dyck, or, occasionally, even minor figures such as Gerard Zegers
or Theodor van Loon. He also discovered imitations of details
Temple University
and compositional patterns De Crayer found in works of Titi
Veronese, and even Duirer. (In view of the literalness of som
these borrowings it is no more than an understandable euphemi
HANS VLIEGHE, Gaspar de Crayer, sa vie et ses oeuvres
(Monographies du Nationaal Centrum voor deplastischewhen Vlieghe
Kunsten generally
van states that the artist was "inspired"
de XVIde en XVIIde Eeuw, IV), 2 vols., Brussels, these models.)1972.
Arcade, Nor does Vlieghe fail to point out how often
Vol. I: pp. 334; Vol. I, 251 pls. 365 N.F. Crayer used the same figure in different contexts, or that he w
not above disguising the copy of one his own designs by repeat
As it must to even minor masters of the past, the it in reverse.
glory It hardly comes as a surprise when in his conclus
of a mono-
graph has come to Gaspar de Crayer (1584-1669). the author stresses the painter's "eclecticism" and the absen
Dr. Vlieghe's
even
book on the Flemish painter contains a survey of his in the
life, best of
a study ofhis works, of a true creative imagination. I
his development, a detailed catalogue raisonn6 faintof all praise, indeed, when Vlieghe gives De Crayer credit for t
his works,
accompanied by 251 reproductions, a bibliography skilfulandinsertion
several in his own works of the elements appropria
from other artists;
elaborate indexes. Wholly admirable in its thoroughness and for the careful execution of his canvases; a
overall reliability, impeccable in its presentation in
ofhis early works,
factual data, for the opulence of his colors. "I1 serait
juste," he concludes, after denying to De Crayer any "individ
the work, nevertheless, raises a number of questions.

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