The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture

Nicholas Temple, Andrzej Piotrowski, Juan Manuel Heredia, Nicholas Temple, Andrzej Piotrowski, Juan Manuel Heredia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351693851
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical architecture in different regions of the world. Exploring the impact of colonialism, trade, slavery, religious missions, political ideology and intellectual/artistic exchange, the authors demonstrate how classical principles and ideas were disseminated and received across the globe. By addressing a number of contentious or unresolved issues highlighted in some historical surveys of architecture, the chapters presented in this volume question long-held assumptions about the notion of a universally accepted 'classical tradition' and its broadly Euro-centric perspective.

Featuring thirty-two chapters written by international scholars from China, Europe, Turkey, North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the book is divided into four sections: 1) Transmission and re-conceptualisation of classical architecture; 2) Classical influence through colonialism, political ideology and religious conversion; 3) Historiographical surveys of geographical regions; and 4) Visual and textual discourses. This fourfold arrangement of chapters provides a coherent structure to accommodate different perspectives of classical reception across the world, and their geographical, ethnographic, ideological, symbolic, social and cultural contexts. Essays cover a wide geography and include studies in Italy, France, England, Scotland, the Nordic countries, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, China, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Other essays in the volume focus on thematic issues or topics pertaining to classical architecture, such as ornament, spolia, humanism, nature, moderation, decorum, heresy and taste.

An essential reference guide, The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture makes a major contribution to the study of architectural history in a new global context.

1 Introduction

A ‘world’ reception of classical architecture

Nicholas Temple, Andrzej Piotrowski and Juan Manuel Heredia

Outline

The topic of a ‘world’ reception of classical architecture, which is the scope of this edited book, is both daunting and unavoidably charged. It brings into focus assumptions that many scholars have long taken for granted; notably, the one-sided (European) perspective of some scholarly studies concerning authority and difference. To start with, what is the prevalent understanding today of the classical tradition in architecture and its historical function? How has that tradition been redefined and replicated? Modes of reception imply giving, but is the giver also in one sense a receiver in this process? Did the Visigoths, Lombards or Franks, for example, simply receive the classical tradition, or did they destroy it, steal it and radically appropriate it? More generally, what forms of dissemination of classical principles were deployed in different parts of the world, and what distinguishing practices and features can be identified in each region?

Such questions also inevitably bring into focus discussions about the historiographic constitution of this concept, and how Europeans received/inherited classical architecture from the Greeks and Romans and reinterpreted/assimilated it within their own geographies and cultures.¹ Once rediscovered and adapted to these different regions over time, this ‘tradition’ was then given to (or forced upon) others beyond the continent of Europe in the early modern world, through the channels of missionary work, trade, colonisation and war. It is at this point that questions of a common or ‘shared’ classical heritage – its status, ownership and identity – become subject to much scholarly dispute, as this book will illuminate.

Given the significant cultural, social, political and religious ramifications of these developments throughout history, which have only recently been recognised, the title of this book inevitably provokes a critical re-evaluation of recent scholarship. It disguises, beneath its veil of an overarching topic (‘classical reception’), a significant body of unresolved and contentious issues concerning the definition and meaning of classical architecture, and the need to interrogate the somewhat nebulous term ‘classical tradition’ when seen in a trans-European and international context.

Accordingly, the study attempts to disentangle many of these issues by taking an essentially dual-track approach: firstly, by chronicling and interpreting the design and construction of buildings and the influence of printed matter (treatises, manuals, building-codes, etc.) in these processes, and secondly, by adopting a more theoretical/thematic position on specific topics that both inform and challenge conventional hegemonic views of classical architecture. For the former approach, attention to the construction and siting of buildings in different regions of the world provides a useful vantage point for determining how the importation and acculturation of classical idioms was received ‘on the ground’ and ultimately accommodated within existing social, religious and political milieu. Some chapters consider these practices in the context of the influence of the Vitruvian corpus and its later adaptations, which quickly became an organising system of architectural knowledge from the Renaissance onwards and could be readily translated, revisited or absorbed whenever the West (or those non-Western outposts that consciously drew influence from Europe) sought to influence or dominate others. This authority, moreover, was later reinforced by Hegelian teleological principles which gave this classical authority a sense of inevitability or unavoidability from the perspective of any imperial worldview, whether in the USA, Europe or even Japan.

In the case of the latter approach, an examination of theoretical issues that lie beneath the terrain of design processes, building practices and their particular local stylistic idioms, through the lenses of etymology, ornament, antiquarianism, aesthetics, propriety, nature and humanism/scholasticism, brings into sharp focus new ways of understanding the translation and transmission of knowledge of classical architecture in different cultural and historical contexts. Many of the studies in this volume challenge conventional definitions of architectural ‘styles,’ their periodisation and geographical centres of influence (for example, Mannerism, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Renaissance and Modernism), and at the same time provoke a rethink about the influence of classical architecture on other related forms of visual representation, from the filmic to festival and public spectacle.

A key factor in all these chapters is the way architecture, grounded in (or derived from) the Greco-Roman tradition, variously represents or embodies certain power relations – by advancing positions of authority, servility, mutual consensus and conflict – in places in Europe (or other regions in the world that consciously emulated or drew influence from European models) by attempting to redefine themselves and dominate or influence others. Such perspectives highlight familiar Euro-centric epistemological and hermeneutical approaches to classical culture, mediated through notions of built heritage, language, literature and the visual arts. Examining the reception history of classicism in Europe is sometimes predicated on the principle (or assumption) of a ‘latent continuity,’ conceived for example in what Erwin Panofsky identified as “renascences in western art,” in which the revival of classical culture found artistic, architectural and intellectual expression during different periods; Carolingian and French (Chartrain) Gothic culminating in the renovatio of the Italian Renaissance.² In one sense, Panofsky’s relativisation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as just another Renaissance offered a new perspective, since it implies the gradual appropriation of classical culture by an ‘other,’ thereby questioning the standard idea of an all-of-a-sudden ‘rebirth’ of a dormant legacy. However, the key question that emerges from Panofsky’s treatment of ‘renascences’ is: Why did the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries become the ‘official’ Renaissance? One could argue that the answer to this question cannot be found inside Europe but outside it; the official Renaissance was propelled – and to a large extent made possible – thanks to the termination of Europe’s marginal geopolitical situation that was the result of the outlet that a newly ‘discovered’ continent afforded it.³

In addition, the religious conflicts that contributed to the notorious Thirty Years War in Europe in the seventeenth century, which helped sow the seeds of political and religious divisions in the newly formed and later nation-states of Europe, were momentarily ameliorated by an understanding of classical culture as a legacy shared by the Protestant north and the Catholic south, a self-understanding that was ultimately rooted in Latin-Germanic Christianity’s confrontation with Islam.⁴ Such an understanding would also serve as fertile intellectual and artistic territory for cultivating the literary exchanges of the Republic of Letters across Europe and beyond. It was, however, the influence of the Grand Tour to Italy (and later to Greece), and its cultural off-shoots in artistic and ephemeral architectural production (such as the Roman festas), which saw perhaps the most visible demonstration of a shared pan-European view of classical culture and heritage that would gradually extend to the continents of America and later Australia. When understood as advantageous for nation-building, the classical inheritance was actively appropriated and promoted, for example, by German philosophers, philologists, antiquarians, artists and architects during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It embodied the politically charged – seemingly superior – model of humanism and its civilising mission.⁵

Although not comprehensive, the documentation of epistemological and ideological consequences of such developments in the reception of classical architecture through history was an important factor in establishing a coherent editorial strategy for this investigation. Such enquiries inevitably involve not only post-colonial perspectives, but also ‘de-colonial’ ones as well. Theories of de-colonisation largely focus on Latin-American regions, addressing issues of modernity by responding to the social, political and cultural domination of Europe. Post-colonial scholarship, on the other hand, has tended to draw upon Indian, Arabic and African situations.⁶ Some of the chapters in this volume explore these different contexts as they relate to reinterpreting and appropriating versions of classical architecture and culture.

In attempting to undertake a ‘survey,’ we were conscious that the reception of the so-called classical tradition is a relatively new field of enquiry in architectural history. Hence, it would be both presumptuous and naïve to claim that we have successfully identified in this volume the full scope, and global reach, of such a vast subject. Instead, our hope is that the chapters presented in this volume provide an initial body of scholarship that will inspire further (more extensive) lines of enquiry in future publications.

Scope of the investigation

The two most urgent questions that inevitably arise when undertaking such an ambitious study are where and when to begin the survey. Should we consider, for example, Renaissance Europe not just as an arbiter of a revived – renewed – classical tradition, but also as a potential recipient/inheritor of a pre-existing classical culture derived from the legacy of the preceding mediaeval/Romanesque traditions? By questioning the premise of a latent continuity, referred to earlier, the notion of classical architecture as both a practice and a tradition must be treated as equally problematic in the European context as in Arab or Chinese cultures. Peter Burke, one of the leading authorities on the Renaissance, even contends that there was never really a distinct European identity prior to colonialism, and therefore any claims of a single ‘European’ classical heritage must be questioned.⁷

Given the complexity of undertaking such a study of a ‘world’ perspective of classical reception in architecture, we have deliberately limited coverage of the subject to a timeframe from the end of the so-called Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Whilst earlier periods, such as those of the Visigoths, Lombards or Franks referred to at the beginning of this introduction, reveal potentially important (and original) findings about the adaptation and reinterpretation of classical architecture in pre-modern Europe and the Levant, the challenges of documenting such a lengthy chronology (from late antiquity to the modern age) simply exceeded the scope of this book. Moreover, some recent studies have already covered aspects of these earlier periods.⁸ Given that the dispersal of knowledge of classical architecture in different parts of the world occurred as a result of the colonising initiatives of the Portuguese, Spanish and later Dutch and English, and through the missionary activities of the Franciscans and Jesuits, it seemed appropriate to take the so-called ‘Age of Discovery’ as a key historical point of reference. Such a strategy also contributes to initiating debates about the emergence of a geopolitical understanding of culture in the early modern world, and how the reception of classical architecture was partly implicated in this broadly ‘Western’ or European endeavour.

A ‘world’ perspective of classical architecture, moreover, must inevitably encompass situations and locations where classical modes of representation were, at least initially, alien to the prevailing culture (even allowing for the presence of a built legacy of Greek and Roman culture in different parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East). We see this, for example, in the introduction of Neoclassicism to the new nation state of Greece in the nineteenth century, evidenced in both building and urban planning, which was largely imported from western Europe as an expression of modernising sensibilities. Beyond Europe, moreover, examples of the powers of colonial rule, and the persuasive actions of missionary work in the New World and Asia, sought to assimilate different classical paradigms and practices. The shortcomings of ‘Western’ historiography of architecture in addressing such problematic relationships have already been identified in recent publications.⁹

One of the guiding issues in editing this compendium of scholarly investigations has been the popular associations of the word ‘global,’ and indeed the problematic notion of a ‘global history’ when applied to artistic or cultural work. In common parlance, the term ‘global’ shares many of the perspectives that this book seeks to challenge; namely, the tendency towards generalised or overarching precepts rather than specifics (or localised situations) concerning the values associated with notions of heritage, tradition and culture in different parts of the world, and the assumption that Western models form the only viable basis for making such judgements. Recent attempts, however, to formulate global constructs of architectural practices have reverted to themed knowledge as a means of avoiding such generalised epistemological structures.¹⁰ David Summers, among others, admonishes the use of the term ‘global’ in such contexts, arguing that a global history of art is “both undesirable and impossible.”¹¹ Implicit, therefore, in the contents of this volume is a tacit scepticism of such perspectives. This is reflected in the manner in which chapters attempt to identify how ways of questioning the reception of Western architectural traditions may help to problematise, rather than reinforce or affirm, a Euro-centric history of architecture. Recognising the pitfalls of taking a broadly modern globalising approach to this subject, we have reverted to adopting the term ‘world’ as more appropriate and conducive to such historiographical and theoretical enquiry. This choice was made partly in recognition of the perceptions and representations of the world at the beginning of the European expansion (before 1492), which were remarkably similar across different regions and embodied in the principle of Orbis Terrarum, or ‘island of earth,’ surrounded by water.¹² Presenting a ‘world’ reception of classical architecture inevitably prompts us to frame our investigations in the context of changing perspectives of geography.¹³ This is highlighted through representations of the so-called ‘Four Continents’ (before Australasia was ‘discovered’) during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Jesuit iconographical treatments of the world are the most illuminating examples, as we see in the ceiling frescoes of St Ignazio in Rome and the Wurzburg Residenz in Bavaria, each framed by monumental architectural elements to underscore the hegemony of this broadly Euro-centric perspective. European responses to the different receptions of classical architecture in the world were, in part, judged by the hierarchical arrangement of these four continents (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 (a) Andrea Pozzo, Apotheosis of S. Ignatius. Ceiling fresco in St. Ignazio, Rome (1685–1694); (b) Joachim Bormeester (1685) Map of the World – Geographicus, Terrarum Orbis, Bormeester.

Such a hierarchical structuring of the civilised/barbarian world relates, moreover, to the organising systems of quadrature and their particular spatial/architectural arrangements and orientation.¹⁴ This, in many ways, underscores the capacity of Baroque architecture (identified by some as the first ‘international’ architectural style...