Architectura Moderna

Fifteenth-century Florence is generally considered the cradle of the modern architect. There for the first time since Antiquity the Vitruvian concept which distinguishes between builder and designer was recognised in architectural theory causing a fundamental rupture in architectural practice. In this well-established narrative Northern Europe only followed a century later when along with the diffusion of Italian treatises and the introduction of the all’antic style a new type of architect began to replace traditional gothic masters. However historiography has largely overlooked the important transformations in building organisation that laid the foundations for our modern architectural production such as the advent of affluent contractors public tenders and specialised architectural designers all of which happened in fifteenth-century Northern Europe. Drawing on a wealth of new source material from the Low Countries this book offers a new approach to the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period by providing an alternative interpretation to the predominantly Italo-centric perspective of the current literature and its concomitant focus on style and on Vitruvian theory.

Since the time of Vitruvius architects have been expected to have a broad knowledge of the arts and sciences. The need for good skills in sketching and working up drawings even led from the sixteenth century onwards to fierce debates on the meaning and status of ‘disegno’. While Italy saw the emergence of famous painters who excelled as architects also in the Southern Netherlands the notion that an architect must also have a mastery of the painter’s art became widespread owing in part to the dissemination of publications by Sebastiano Serlio and Pieter Coecke van Aelst. In the seventeenth century Peter Paul Rubens was able to make his own contribution to this discussion as a consequence of his sojourns in Italy (1601-1608). Bringing together distinguished art and architecture historians from Europe and North America this interdisciplinary approach will shed light on the interrelationship of architecture and painting in the Southern Netherlands.

Piet Lombaerde is professor in theory and history of architecture and urbanism at the University of Antwerp faculty of design sciences. His research interests cover the history of fortifications (1500-1900) urban history and the history of hydraulics. He is co-editor with Krista De Jonge (KU Leuven) of the series Architectura Moderna (Brepols Publisher) and author of several books on the history and theory of architecture and urban planning.

From the late sixteenth century until around 1800 new ideas and practices of urban planning and the implementation of public buildings water works and fortifications from the Low Countries were disseminated across Europe and America. Engineers mathematicians and other scientists in the Low Countries applied methods of design and land surveying that were gradually assimilated and often modified following exchanges within local practice. In some cases models were projected onto the existing situation. This phenomenon of disseminating and exchanging theoretical models and practical methods between the Low Countries Europe and its colonies during this period developed into a new Early Modern Urbanism movement within the Western World.

Grid-like plans figured prominently in these processes of dissemination and exchange. In the Low Countries grid-like structures allowed a comprehensive approach to a multitude of complex problems in urban planning (for example the connection of canals streets and fortifications) in parts of existing towns as well as in city extensions and ex novo cities. Moreover the experimental approaches in Antwerp and other urban laboratories resulted in new theories on town planning and fortification as well. Given the distinct cultures of the Catholic Spanish Southern Netherlands and the Republican Dutch Calvinist Northern Netherlands the Low Countries provide an excellent case for studying the identity of urban forms. Both engaged in enormous expansion overseas and the simultaneous exchange of practices between the southern and northern parts of the Low Countries lead to the combination of identities. In this new volume in the Architectura Moderna series various scholars examine the dissemination of practical methods and theoretical models of urban planning from the Northern and Southern Low Countries in addition to exchanges with local practices in Northern and Central Europe and in the New World.

Piet Lombaerde is professor in history and theory of architecture urbanism and fortification at the Faculty of Design Sciences of the University College of Antwerp (UA).

Charles van den Heuvel is Head Research of History of Science at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nicodemus Tessin the Elder was an architect gentleman and founder of the artistic dynasty that was immensely influential at the Swedish court in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was architect to the crown to the nobility and to the city of Stockholm and he supplied buildings for a wide range of functions from palaces to banks courthouses and fortifications. His unusually extensive travels in the Netherlands Italy France and Germany provided him with a comprehensive picture of contemporary European architecture which he drew on as he synthesized a new group of buildings that would attract international attention as models for princely architecture. His productivity required a new approach to architecture and he was part of the first generation of architects in northern Europe to develop the architectural studio distinguishing the design process from the business of building and in the process recreating himself as the modern architect.

Kristoffer Neville is assistant professor of early modern art and architecture in the department of art history at the University of California Riverside.

This study focuses on change and continuity within the architecture of the Southern and Northern Low Countries from 1530 to 1700. Instead of looking at both regions separately and stressing the stylistic differences between the classicist North and the baroque South the book establishes a new common history of architecture for both parts of the Low Countries during the seventeenth century. Their reception of Antiquity in the guise of the Italian Renaissance first introduced in Court circles in the early sixteenth century constituted the common heritage on which they built after the political separation. The book also reassesses the position of Netherlandish architecture in the international debate on the Renaissance north of the Alps.

Krista De Jonge is professor of history of architecture at the Catholic University of Leuven.

Konrad Ottenheym is professor of history of architecture at Utrecht University.

In this publication attention is devoted to the technical aspects in the work of Hans Vredeman de Vries. Throughout his long career he has perfected his skills as a painter architect fortification engineer and hydraulic engineer. Those technical aspects are considered not so much as discrete characteristics but rather as a particular way in which this late sixteenth- century artist from the Low Countries typically dealt with a number of disciplines of the technical and applied arts. Indeed from a predominantly traditional approach to his work too much emphasis has until now been placed on his highly personal contribution to the dissemination of ornamental elements whereby typical Renaissance characteristics such as technical innovation and engineering are relegated to the background.

During Hans Vredeman de Vries's lifetime attempts began to be made to define the arts and the sciences. Defining the demarcation criteria of the sciences would continue to gain in importance especially at the beginning of the seventeenth century. With his work Vredeman de Vries raised Architectura together with all its technical acquisitions to the level of both the Artes and the Scienciae. Attempts were even made to establish some kind of hierarchy. Yet the artist never strictly separated fine and applied arts nor did he explicitly distinguish between theory and practice. It was the intention of Vredeman de Vries to aim towards an equilibrium between the sciences and the arts. A team of thirteen distinguished art and architectural historians from North America Germany the Netherlands and Belgium focus upon Vredeman de Vries's diverse manifestations of knowledge: urbanism fortification works hydraulics interior decoration architecture (its practical and technical aspects) inlay work and furniture tapestry and the use of scientific instruments. One author points out that the similarity between such 'technical' practices and the structure of for example sixteenth-century rhetorical practices forces us to consider Vredeman de Vries not simply as an architect an engineer or a designer but above all as an experimenter in multiple disciplines and various fields.

Rubens' book 'Palazzi di Genova' was well diffused in European countries as England the Netherlands France Germany and Italy thanks to the numerous contacts the famous painter and diplomat maintained in humanistic artistic and political circles. From 1622 on this book containing two volumes was edited at several times during the 17th and 18th Century. But the direct influences of the numerous façades plans cross-sections staircases and building details on modern architecture look rather limited especially in his own country. In this study several scholars in architectural history analyse how the examples of Genoese palazzi and churches as presented by Rubens were accepted in different European countries. Much attention is given to the question if these examples inspired a new architectural typology in which the inner court of the houses was substituted by a 'salone in mezzo'. An attempt is made to situate Rubens' book among the late 16th and early 17th Century treatises and model books. The way in which Rubens presented the new Genoese architecture of villa's palaces and churches and the introduction he wrote as a 'painter-architect' to this book were so modern at that time that the reception of this prestigious edition in folio had more to do with changes in considering architectural theory and practice as with the propagation of a late renaissance style influenced by Antique examples.