How Do You Imitate a Building That You Have Never Seen?

Printed Images, Ancient Models, and

Handmade Drawings in Renaissance Architectural Theory
Author(s): Mario Carpo
Source: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 64. Bd., H. 2 (2001), pp. 223-233
Published by: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen Berlin
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 MARIO CARPO
How do you imitatea buildingthatyou have neverseen?
Printedimages,ancientmodels, and handmadedrawingsin
Renaissancearchitecturaltheory'"
In his Life of Brunelleschi, Vasari recounts an
anecdote that must have struck the imagination
of the Florentines at the beginning of the fif-
teenth century - to the point that the memory of
it was still alive in town when Vasari recorded it
in writing, more than one century later. Some-
where in Florence, Donatello had praised the
beauty of a sarcophagus that he had seen in
Cortona. Moved by his words, a Florentine artist
went to Cortona to see it with his own eyes; he
made a drawing, and when he came back, he
showed it around.' This story may seem un-
eventful today - much as it must have seemed at
the time of Vasari. However, it would have been
exceptional at the time when it supposedly took
place. If Vasari's story is true, and one might
have some doubts, here we have a situation in
which - in Florence, at the time of Brunelleschi
and Donatello, and at the dawn of the humanistic
rediscovery of classical antiquity - visual infor-
mation on a work of art was being recorded and
communicated to the general public in a visual
format.2
Elated by Donatello's recital, his follower
went out of his way to draw a picture of the far-
away sarcophagus. Back in Florence, instead of
climbing on a stool in the middle of a busy
- A preliminary version of this article was presented at
the fourth meeting of the InternationalSociety for the
Classical Tradition, held in Tiibingen from July 29 to
August 2, I998. I am indebted to Professor Wolfgang G.
Haase for numerous comments and for his careful read-
ing of the original draft, and to Myra Nan Rosenfeld,
who kindly provided many useful data and references
(furtheracknowledgedin the footnotes).
I Vasari, Vite, (55o0', I5682), in Le opere di Giorgio
Vasari,con nuove note e commenti di Gaetano Mila-
nesi, Florence: Sansoni, I878-85, vol. II, I878,
339-40.
2 Vasari'spassage is cited and discussed, with regardto
the early modern transition from orality to visual
media, by Arnold Nesselrath, ,I libri di disegni di
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE 64. Band / 2001
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marketplaceto tout the glories of what he had
seen, he showed his drawing. This speechless art
of describing, unusual as it must have seemed in
the famously vocal Florentine environment, was
the harbinger of a major cultural change. For
centuries in the West, images of works of art
and of mirabilia of different kinds, seen or ima-
gined, had been transmitted primarily by word
of mouth, orality and memory having been
occasionally superseded or complemented by
alphabetical writing. Drawings did not partici-
pate in this process, and ample evidence proves
that when they did, it was by accident: as every-
one knew at the time, drawings could not, and
should not, be relied upon. In a word, they did
not matter. Visual forms were to be described by
words, not by pictures.3
As daily experience can prove, the translation
of images into words may at times turn out to be
a daunting or even an impossible task. Many
technical and scientific writers of antiquity, the
Middle-Ages, and the early Renaissance, were
confronted with a similar impediment, which in
many cases effectively hampered or barred the
way to the communication of essential visual
information. The problem of the transmission of
artistic models in the Middle Ages was formula-
antichiti: tentativo di una tipologia<, in SalvatoreSet-
tis, ed., Memoria dell'antico nell'arte italiana, vol.
III, Dalla tradizione all'archeologia,Turin: Einaudi,
I986, 89- I53: 99 and footnotes 28, 29 (?Qui manife-
stamente alla descrizione verbale viene contrapposta
quella visuale, effettuatacol mezzo figurativo<).
3 See Mario Carpo, L'architetturadell'eta della stampa.
Oralita, scrittura,libro stampato e riproduzionemec-
canica dell'immaginenella storia delle teorie architet-
toniche, Milan:Jaca Book, I998; (English translation,
Architecturein the Age of Printing, Cambridge,MA:
The MIT Press, 2001); Id., >The Making of the
Typographical Architect<, in Vaughan Hart, Peter
Hicks, eds., Paper Palaces. The Rise of the Renais-
sance Architectural Treatise, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 998, I 58 - I70.
223
ted almost a century ago by Julius von Schlosser,
but no convincing answer to Schlosser's questions
has been suggested to this day.4The peculiarities
of the medieval notion of imitation were outlined
by Richard Krautheimer in a pioneering essay of
I942:5 as Krautheimer remarked elsewhere, the
medieval vision of antiquity was >almost empha-
tically nonvisual<.6 Indeed, medieval models,
whether ancient or modern, were neither visual
nor visualised. Instead, they were verbal, and ora-
lized. Medieval artisans, builders, and even pain-
ters, were almost always working from models
that they had never seen. They imitated models
that they knew only through hearsay.
The ancient and medieval aversion to the
transmission of drawings was more than justified
by some inevitable material conditions. Likewise,
ekphrasis - traditionally one of the hardest exer-
cises of classical rhetoric - was as much a display
of literary virtuosity as the logical cultural
adjustment to a specific technical environment.
Before the invention of printed images, drawings
were not easily reproducible. Hence they were
not used when and where easy reproducibility
was required. The written word was much
more easily transmissible than pictures: a safer,
cheaper, more reliable medium to convey, trans-
mit, disseminate and, so to speak, broad-cast
information in space and time. Hence, when
transmission and transmissibility were relevant,
4 Juliusvon Schlosser,?ZurKenntnisder kiinstlerischen
Ueberlieferungim spatenMittelalter?,in ahrbuchder
kunsthistorischenSammlungendes allerhdchstenKai-
serhauses, XIX, I902, 279-286, 318-326. For a survey
of the currentstate of researchon this celebratedques-
tion see Robert W. Scheller,Exemplum.Model Book
Drawings and the Practiceof Artistic Transmissionin
the Middle-Ages, ca. 900 - ca. I470, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, I995, 7- o, 48-87. See
also Ernst Kitzinger,>The Role of MiniaturePainting
in Mural Decoration?, in Kurt Weitzmann,ed., The
Place of Book Illumination in Byzantine Art, Prince-
ton: Art Museum, Princeton University, and Prince-
ton University Press, I975, 99-143; Id., Illustrations
in Roll and Codex.A Study of the Origin and Method
of Text Illustration, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1947 (revised ed., Princeton:PrincetonUniver-
sity Press, I9702); Id., Ancient Book Illumination,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, I959,
chapterI, -Scientificand Didactic Treatises?,5-3 I.
224
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pictures were often translated into words. For
centuries, the alphabet was the standard code for
information interchange.
The advantages of the alphabet over other
competing media were staggering, and unques-
tionable. The alphabet is a machine for the digital
recording of spoken words. The same machine, if
available, enables readers distant in space and
time from the original writer to recreate the same
sounds, or almost the same, which in most cases
may also bring back to life the original meaning
that was meant by the original words. This
machine is based on a code of some dozens of
standardized graphic signs. Literacy is relatively
easy to master, and, to this day, it still performs
well. In a modern classroom, as well as in a
medieval scriptorium, a reader dictates a passage,
twenty scribes - or pupils - write it down, and at
the end of the day we have a multiplication of
almost identical texts. They look different, but
when replayed, that is, read aloud, they still con-
tain a fair share of the content of the original
text. Alphabetical text can be dictated, written
down, and transmitted verbatim. Pictures cannot
be transmitted verbatim, for the good reason
that they cannot be broken down into verba, let
alone into letters. Copying a drawing is a risky
venture. It demands training and talent, and as a
rule, the similarity between the archetype and its
copy is never to be taken for granted. It depends
5 Richard Krautheimer,-Introduction to an >Iconogra-
phy of Medieval Architecture<<,in Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, v, I942, I-33;
revised ed. in Id., Studies in Early Christian, Medie-
val, and Renaissance Art, New York: New York
University Press, 1969, I 15 - 150.
6 Richard Krautheimerand Trude Krautheimer-Hess,
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, I956, 294 (>To Petrarch [...] it mattered little
whether or not a site was commemoratedby a monu-
ment, or merely haunted by memories. His approach
was entirely literary, almost emphatically non-
visual.?)This passageis cited and discussed in a simi-
lar context by Fran5oiseChoay, L'allegoriedu patri-
moine, Paris: Seuil, 1992, 39 and footnote 31.
7 Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy:The Technologiz-
ing of the Word, (I982), London and New York:
Routledge, I9955.See in particularchapterIV,?Writ-
ing is a Technology<,81-83.
8 See William M. Ivins, Prints and Visual Communica-
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE 64.Band/ 2001
on the talent of the copyist, his or her moti-
vations and mood, the weather, the time at his or
her disposal, and last but not least on the com-
plexity of the drawing.
Pictures cannot be dictated, and in the graphic
domain, fidelity to the archetype is an elusive
notion. There is no such thing as a spelling
mistake in drawing. Today we would say that the
transmission of alphabetical text is digital, the
manual copy of images is analogical. As Walter
Ong wrote some years ago, the alphabet was the
first technologizing of the word.7 Until the
invention of xylography, no comparable techno-
logy was available for the transmission of
images.8 Images could be drawn; but drawings
could not be transmitted in any controllable and
verifiable way. Hence, in many cases, drawings
were avoided right from the start. Vitruvius
thought better of burdening his text with a
complex iconography, because he knew that after
the first copy such an iconography would have
been abandoned - manipulated, or hopelessly
deformed. Renaissance authors, as well as more
recent ones, have looked high and low for the
lost illustrations of Vitruvius, and have invented
the most bizarre theories to account for their
disappearance. But the illustrations of Vitruvius
never existed, with the exception of nine or elev-
en elementary geometrical diagrams, mentioned
in the text and first itemized by Philandrier in
tion, (I953), Cambridge,MA, and London: The MIT
Press, I978. Ivins, who minted the formula ?exactly
repeatablepictorialstatements<(23), discussed the far
reachingimplicationsof this notion for the history of
science, technique,philosophy, and the fine arts.
9 Carpo, ?The Making of the Typographical Archi-
tect< (see note 3 above), 163-64 and footnote 5, with
furtherbibliography.
io Id., L'architetturadell'eta della stampa (see note 3
above), 155-56, with further bibliography. Some
decades after the rise of a new visual environment
based on ubiquitous and reliable printed images,
Pliny's suppression of illustrations was bitterly
lamented by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo (>More-
over, how much light would we glean from inter-
preting the passages of writers, principally Pliny, if
we had in sight those things that he told only with
words?: Federigo Borromeo, Musaeum, I625; see
Arlene Quint, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo as a
Patron and Critic of the Arts and his Museum of
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I544.9 Pliny and Galen had already warned the
authors of scientific texts not to use any sort of
illustrations. Pliny is categorical: the destiny of
an image in a manuscript is unpredictable. No
one can tell how the next copyist may distort it.'o
Faced with even more sensitive visual data,
classical geographers resorted to some original
scanning methods to translate their pictures into
sequences of letters and numbers: in Ptolemy's
own words, this was necessary to reduce or
circumvent the distortions and errors generated
by the manual drawing and copying of maps."
Many centuries later, Leon Battista Alberti, while
advocating the use of drawings for architectural
designs, insists and reiterates that his architectur-
al treatise is not, and should never be, illustrated.
Copyists can already make a mess when copying
simple letters and Roman numerals, Alberti com-
plains; quite understandably, he decided to avoid
illustrations altogether. Alberti himself had, if we
believe his word, profusely drawn buildings old
and new, and he certainly had some interest for different from
the medium of drawing, and some newfangled what one is
used to;
technologies related to it. But when he conceived objectionably
new
of a treatise that was to be transmitted to posteri-
ty, and possibly to eternity, he deliberately chose
to rely on that good, old, reliable medium of all
(historical) times - the alphabet. Alberti's archi-
tectural theories were to travel in space and time
encapsulated in a digital file: verbis solis.12
1625, New York: Garland, I986, 233; Paula Findlen,
>TheMuseum: Its Classical Etymology and Renais-
sance Genealogy-, in Journal of the History of
Collections, i, I989 (i), 59-78: 65, and 75, note 46).
Apparently, in I625 Pliny's arguments against
the manuscript transmission of scientific drawings
alreadyfell on deaf ears.
1 Ivi, 56- 7; Mario Carpo, ?DescriptioUrbis Romae.
Ekfrasisgeograficae culturavisuale all'albadella rivo-
luzione tipografica<,in Albertiana, (Florence:Leo S.
Olschki Editore), I, I, 1998, III- I42: 126-134, with
further bibliography. See now also Leon Battista
Alberti, Descriptio Urbis Romae. Edition critique,
traduction et commentaire par Martine Furno et
Mario Carpo, Geneva: Droz, 2000, 64-96.
12 On Alberti'sexplicit and reiteratedrefusalto illustrate
his manuscripttreatise on architecture,De re aedifi-
catoria, see Franqoise Choay, La regle et le modele.
Sur la theorie de l'architecture et de l'urbanisme,
(I980), Paris: Seuil, I9962, I36-I40 (English transl.,
225
 However, this anti-visual scenario had already
begun to change, and change certainly was al-
ready in the air, at the time of Alberti's writing.
Scholars have recorded a surge in the number of
drawn model books, or pattern books for paint-
ers and artisans, from the end of the fourteenth
century.'3 In a most celebrated case, the book
of drawings of Giovannino de' Grassi, model
animals seem to have been one of the most
frequently copied items,'4 and one could remark
that fidelity in the copying of a drawing of a dog
is less vital for, say, sailors than fidelity in the
copying of a geographical map. And of course
the modes and practices of circulation, diffusion,
and use, private or public, of these books of
drawings have not yet been completely eluci-
dated. Several techniques for producing identical
copies of a drawing were in use at the time -
witness Cennini's well-known account.'5 Cennini
also describes, in another chapter of his treatise,
the techniques already in use at his time for the
printing of images - on cloth and textiles.'6
When Alberti concluded, around I450, that his
manuscript treatise on architecture should not
be illustrated, printed images were already a rela-
ed. D. Bratton,Cambridge,MA: The MIT Press,
I997);Ead., ?Le De Re Aedificatoriacommetexte
inaugural?,in JeanGuillaume,ed., Les traitesd'ar-
chitecturede la Renaissance,actes du colloque de
Tours,I-Ii juillet1981,Paris:Picard,I988, 85-90;
Ead., La regolae il modello,revisedtransl.,transl.
E. d'Alfonso, Rome: Officina, 1986, I4I, footnote
134; M. Carpo, Metodo e ordini nella teoria architet-
tonica dei primi moderni, Geneva: Droz, 1993,
I3-24; Id., L'architettura dell'eta della stampa (see
note 3 above), I27-I32. Even more strikingly, and
presumably for the same reasons, Alberti adopted a
system of polar coordinates to convert into a string
of letters and numbersthe drawing of a map of Rome
that he had himself surveyed, carefully measured,and
drawn to scale: see Carpo, Descriptio Urbis Romae,
and Alberti, 2000 (works cited above note I I).
13 Scheller (see note 4 above), i -7, with further biblio-
graphy.
14 Circa 1380-98. See Scheller (cited note 4 above), 287.
15 Cennino Cennini, II libro dell'Arte, (circa I400), eds.
Carloand GaetanoMilanesi,Firenze:Le Monnier,1859,
chapters 23 - 26. Passages cited and discussed in Schel-
ler (see note 3 above), 38, 72 - 74 and footnote 203.
I6 Cennini, I859, chapter 173: see Scheller (cited note 3
above), 75; Arthur Mayger Hind, An Introductionto
226
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tively pervasive and multivarious component of
daily life in most European cities. We cannot
blame Alberti and most of his contemporaries
for failing to recognize in this marginal techno-
logy what would soon become a major agent of
cultural and social change. After all, not so long
as ten years ago many intellectuals of our own
day were persuaded that virtual images would
remain confined to a niche market of home
video-games, and that the Internet - witness the
destiny of its unlucky French precursor, the
Minitel - would basically develop into a global
arena for electronic dating.
The destiny of the Internet will be better
evaluated ten years from now. The destiny of
printed images in the Renaissance can now be
evaluated with some historical distance. To make
a long story short, printed images soon crossed
paths with the new invention of printing with
moveable types; printed books were almost
immediately illustrated with woodcut images,
and fairly soon copperplate engravings were
on the rise, too - either associated with printed
books or as independent prints or albums: pixel
rich copperplate engravings of architectural
a History of Woodcut, With a Detailed Survey of
WorkDone in the Fifteenth Century, London: Con-
stable and Co., 1935,vol. I, 4-6.
I7 See A. M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving. A critical
cataloguewith completereproductionsof all the prints
described. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1938-48: II,
V, (1948), 52-53, 268-269; Nesselrath (cited note 2
above), 126-27, footnote 18 with further bibliogra-
phy.
18 Myra Nan Rosenfeld, ?Sebastiano Serlio's Contri-
butions to the Creation of the Modern Illustrated
Architectural Manual<, in Christof Thoenes, ed.,
Sebastiano Serlio, Atti del Convegno, Vicenza
31 agosto - 4 settembre 1987, Milan: Electa, 1989,
I02- II. See also, Ead., Sebastiano Serlio on
Domestic Architecture:Different Dwellings From the
Meanest Hovel to the Most Ornate Palace. The Six-
teenth-Century Manuscriptof Book VI in the Avery
Library of Columbia University, New York: The
Architectural History Foundation, and Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1978, 37-41; Ead., Serlio on
Domestic Architecture,Mineola, New York: Dover
Paperback,1996, - 8.
I9 Carpo, L'architetturadell'eta della stampa;Id., -The
Making of the TypographicalArchitect< (both cited
note 3 above).
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE 64.Band/ 2001
details were already on the market as early as
I51 .17 As it has been recently pointed out,
particularly by Myra Nan Rosenfeld, the publi-
cation in Venice of Serlio's Fourth and Third
Book in 137 and 1540 marks the inauguration of
the modern, printed and illustrated architectural
manual - an invention that was to be successful,
influential, and long-lived.'8
Serlio's woodcut illustrations were printed
together with his typographical text. Serlio's
architectural discourse and his architectural
drawings, as published in his treatise, are closely
imbricated and deliberately complementary. For
the first time in history, a writer on architecture
could safely refer his readers to his own images.
Similarly, for the first time in history, words and
images could now compete on the same basis.
And since the outward and visible form of archi-
tecture can be much better described by a picture
than by a thousand words, images soon got the
upper hand to the detriment of traditional
ekphrastic mediation.
This shift from words to pictures had a deci-
sive effect on the whole process of architectural
design. Unlike their medieval predecessors,
20 And, indeed, this objection has been raised, and I am
grateful in particularto Myra Rosenfeld, Frederique
Lemerle, and Yves Pauwels for bringing the topic to
my attention. See Frederique Lemerle, review of
Carpo, L'Architettura dell'eta della stampa, in
Revue de l'art, 124, I999 (2), 85-86; and Yves Pau-
wels, another review of the same, in Journal of the
Society of ArchitecturalHistorians,59, 2000 (3),
385-386.
2I On the transmissionof artisticideas in the Middle
Ages,see note4, above.An equallyvastbibliography
is availableon Renaissance
modelbooksandsketch-
books,andalsomorespecificallyon the relationship
betweendrawnand printedmodelbooks in the fif-
teenth and in the sixteenthcentury:for the most
recentcontributions,see KonradOberhuber,>Intro-
duction<,in JayA. Levinson,KonradOberhuber,
JacquelynL. Sheehan,EarlyItalianEngravings from
the NationalGalleryof Art,Washington: TheNatio-
nal Galleryof Art, I973, xiii-xxvi;Joseph George
Rushton, Italian RenaissanceFigurative Sketch-
books, I450-I520, Ph. D. Dissertation, 1976, Ann
Arbor: University MicrofilmInternational,1981;
HubertusGiinther,Das Studiumder antikenArchi-
tektur in den Zeichnungender Hochrenaissance,
Tiibingen:Ernst Wasmuth(Veroffentlichungender
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Renaissance architects could now imitate models
that they had seen - and that, without embarking
on any long journey: in most cases, a visit to a
local bookshop would have been enough. As a
consequence, visual imitation became the object
of a heated theoretical debate. Finally, a new and
easy method aimed at fostering and simplifying
visual imitation of antiquity was elaborated. This
method was itself based on the awareness of the
identical reproducibility of printed images. Its
keystone, the system of the five Renaissance
orders, represents a watershed in the history of
European architecture.
Against this interpretation, which I have deve-
loped elsewhere,19at least one fundamental objec-
tion must be raised.20 According to a well estab-
lished and frequently cited theory, handmade
architectural drawings were the main vectors for
the transmission of architectural experience in
the Middle Ages as well as in the Renaissance:21
if surviving evidence of medieval model books is
scant, handmade architectural drawings, in gene-
ral, and drawings of antiquities, in particular,
were indeed largely circulated in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, copied and transmitted
Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rom), I988; Arnold Nessel-
rath (cited note 2 above); Id., ?I1 codice Escurialen-
se<, in Wolfram Prinz, Max Seidel, eds., Domenico
Ghirlandaio,1449- 494, Atti del Convegno, Firenze
1994, Florence: Centro Di, 1996, 75 - I99; Id., ?Das
Liller >Michelangelo-Skizzenbuch<-, in Kunstchronik,
36, 1983, 46-47; Id., >I1 libro di Michelangelo a
Lille<, in Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Archi-
tettura, (Rome: Bonsignori), n.s., 24, 1997, 283-322;
Myra Nan Rosenfeld, >From Drawn to Printed
Model Book: Jacques Androuet du Cerceau and the
Transmission of Ideas from Designer to Patron,
Master Mason and Architect in the Renaissance?,in
RACAR, XVI,2, 1989, I3I - 47; FrederiqueLemerle-
Pauwels, ?Le Codex italien du Musee des Beaux-Arts
de Lille: les modeles d'architecture antique et mo-
derne de Raffaello da Montelupo, I5o4-I566<, in
Revue du Louvre et des Musees de France, I997, 2,
47-57; Ead., ?Le livre de dessins de Michel-Ange<,
in Catalogue des dessinsitaliens. Collection du Palais
des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Paris and Lille: R6union des
Mus6es Nationaux and Palais des Beaux-Arts de
Lille, I997, 283-322; R. Caltarossa, >I1codice di
Oreste Vannocci Biringucci nel contesto dei codici
del Rinascimento?,in Annali di Architettura,8, 1997,
43 -6o.
227
from a limited number of archetypes, sometimes
even mass-produced in well-organized work-
shops; some scholars have suggested that these
books of drawings should then be considered as
the first and most important single factor for
the formation and diffusion of Renaissance anti-
quarian lore and of Renaissance architectural
theories - and this, before, during, and well after
the rise of printed and illustrated architectural
books and of printed architecturaldrawings.22
The main argument that speaks in favour of
this theory is chronology. The interest of the
humanists for visual documentation of antiquity
antedates Gutenberg's invention. The time when
mechanically reproduced images started to exert
any noticeable cultural or social influence is not
known for sure, and opinions on that matter
diverge. But the decisive turning point, the cross-
road where antiquarian interest, mechanical im-
ages, and architectural theory meet, and generate
a brand new and revolutionary architectural
environment can be precisely situated at some
point between I 515 and 1537. Taking this chron-
ology into account, some general considerations
come to mind that might help to conciliate two
apparently antagonistic interpretive theories.
Obviously, difficulties in the reproduction of
images would have discouraged the use of images
22 This thesiswas and still is to some extenttakenfor
grantedby severalart historians,and it has more
recentlybeenclearlyoutlinedin Nesselrath's essayof
I986 (see note 2 above). According to Nesselrath, the
printing of images and of illustrated treatises could
seldom compete with the copying and circulation of
handmadedrawings (artists' sketchbooks and drawn
model books) throughout most of the sixteenth cen-
tury, for reasons that will be discussed hereafter;only
towards the end of the century did the growing dif-
fusion of mechanically reproduced images bring
about a clear differentiationof media and contents: at
a given point in time, artists' drawings came to be
considered as an ?autonomous artistic expression<
(I44), but this turning point ?marks the transition
from the Renaissanceto Mannerismand the Baroque,
more than the transitionfrom the Middle Ages to the
Renaissance<(146, translationmine).
23 See above, note I5; Carpo, L'architettura dell'eta
della stampa (see note 3 above), 176- 77, with further
bibliography. Nonetheless, some technical drawings
specifically meant for the building site are also
known to have been printed. This is for example the
228
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only when reproduction was needed. Technical
architectural drawings, conceived as a means of
communication between architect, patron, and
building site, were not destined to unlimited
reproducibility. Sometimes even one original
could have been enough; in other cases existing
technologies (pouncing, tracing, stencils, tem-
plates, transparentpaper, and the like) could gua-
rantee the reliable reproduction of a limited
number of identical copies.23 As mentioned be-
fore, Alberti could obviously tell the difference
between documents that were destined to be
reproduced (hence, they should use words) and
documents that were not destined to be repro-
duced (hence, they could be drawn). He chose
different media for different messages. Some
existing corpora of Renaissance architectural
drawings are likely to include technical drawings
- drawings that were meant to be sent from the
architect's workshop to one or more of his build-
ing sites, associates, or patrons. Witness Alberti's
double standard, this point-to-point transmis-
sion of architectural designs is unrelated to the
problem of the communication of architectural
knowledge to an undifferentiated public of
unknown readers, far away in distant spaces and
future times. These disposable technical draw-
ings could be produced more or less profusely -
case with a number of project drawings for the
church of the Invalides in Paris, reproduced from
copperplateengravingsin order to be attachedto the
construction contracts of December 7, I690. The
copies in possession of the Centre Canadiend'Archi-
tecture, Montreal, are published and discussed in
L'Architectureet son image. Quatre siecles de repre-
sentation architecturale,ceuvres tirees des collections
du CCA,Editedby EveBlauandEdwardKaufman,
Montreal, CCA, 7 mai-7 aoft, I989, 164- 65, ill.
i66-167, 5.I-5.7. See also Patrick Reutesward, The
Two Churchesof the H6tel des Invalides, a history of
their design, Stockholm: Nation-museum, I965,
89-91, 27, and go, note I07. One may infer that
many identical drawings were needed here because
these sorts of construction contracts had to be, in a
sense, published in many identical copies, hence
prints, rather than drawings, would help. (This case
and the related sources were pointed out to me by
Myra Rosenfeld). In more recent times, blueprints,
or >whiteprint,(diazotype) copies destined for the
building site did not actually rank as printed draw-
ings, and as a rule were not considered as such.
ZEITSCHRIFTFUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE / 200
64.Band
according to the organization of an architect's
workshop - precisely because they were not
destined to reproducibility. They were meant to
be used once. Their occasional transmission, and
survival, happened by accident.
Similar arguments can be applied to the well-
known topic of architecturalsketchbooks. Archi-
tects and artists of all times have kept - many still
keep - more or less portable notebooks (on
tablets or paper or silicon chips) where they
record memories, comments, and drawings of
things seen or conceived. Journaux intimes are
occasionally meant for publication, but in most
cases they are not. Given the organization of
Renaissance and late-medieval artistic workshops,
some of these sketchbooks may in fact have been
designed with an eye to a semi-private (or semi-
public) circulation. They might have been used
collectively and freely within the same workshop,
and sometimes they actually were a workshop
product - a collective work supervised by one
master. How and to what extent these sketch-
books might have been circulated outside their
original workshop is anyone's guess, and no clear
pattern emerges from the diverse and conflicting
evidence at our disposal. At some time between
II55 and 1517 Michelangelo seems to have bor-
rowed (and copied) a book of architecturaldraw-
Today, computer generated images have created a
new hybrid medium, which blurs the traditional
borderlines between individual, handmade drawings
and reproducible but unalterable cliches. In this
context, the semantic drift of the very same words
>cliche<,>stereotype<<, >>bromide?, and the like, all of
them originally technical terms related to the repro-
duction of identical texts or images (or, in the case of
>qwerty?<, to typing), deserves a closer socio-linguis-
tical investigation. A computational analysis would
show that ?bromide?, now obsolete, is one of the
(negative) keywords in Ayn Rand's notorious novel
on architecture,The Fountainhead(1943).
24 A group of drawings of Roman antiquities and ar-
chitectural details, dated 15 5 - I7, attributed to Mi-
chelangelo or one of his assistants, and now divided
between the Casa Buonarroti in Florence and the
British Museum in London, are copies from the
Coner Codex or from a source common to both.
These were first identified by Ashby, 1904:see Giulio
Carlo Argan, Bruno Contardi, Michelangelo archi-
tetto, Milan: Electa, I990 (French transl., D.-A.
Canal, Milan and Paris: Gallimard-Electa, I99I, 154);
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ings from the workshop of Bernardo della Vol-
paia;24but then, the Coner Codex is no ordinary
book of drawings - actually it is a quite extraor-
dinary item. More than twenty years before,
Michelangelo, then a teenager, had tried to bor-
row what must have been a more standard model
book from the workshop of Domenico Ghirlan-
daio. In vain: Ghirlandaio had kept his book for
himself. Out of envy, suggests Michelangelo's
biographer, Ascanio Condivi, who must have
heard the story from Michelangelo himself.25And
in I389 a painter was tried and sentenced for lar-
ceny in Poitiers, France, for stealing a book of
drawings from the workshop of a colleague.26
There is, nevertheless, ample evidence of the
fact that some books of architectural drawings
were indeed circulated, transmitted and copied,
and sometimes copied again, in different loca-
tions, at different times, and by more than one
artist. Illuminated manuscripts had been handed
down for centuries in this way, and in some cases
the variance of their illustrations does not seem
to have been uncontrollable.27 One might be
reminded here of the most remarkable destiny of
Giuliano da Sangallo's personal sketchbook, now
known as the Barberini Codex, a collection of
architectural drawings that Sangallo had appar-
ently started in I465, at a rather precocious age.28
Nesselrath (see note 2 above), 136, footnote 12, with
furtherbibliography.
25 Nesselrath (see note 2 above), I29, and footnotes 8, 9,
with further bibliography. Nesselrath suggests that
this book of drawings could not have been the Co-
dex Escurialensis,which some authors, starting with
H. Egger, I905-o6, have attributed to Domenico
Ghirlandaio'sworkshop (against this attribution, see
Id., ivi, I30-134; Id., 1996, cited note 2I, I75-99).
26 Alfred de Champeneaux,Paul Gauchery,Les travaux
d'art executespour Jean de France,duc de Berry,avec
une etude biographiquesur les artistes employespar
ce prince, Paris: H. Champion, 1984, 205; passage
cited and discussed in Scheller (see note 4 above), 79
and footnote 21 7.
27 Ample evidence of that is given and discussed by
Weitzmann, 1947, I959, and I970 (works cited above,
note 4).
28 On the Barberini Codex see Nesselrath, 1986 (cited
note 2 above) 127-29, with further bibliography. The
date I465 features on the title page of the Codex,
probably a later addition since the author uses there
his toponym ?da Sangallo?(afterthe name of a district
229
A part of this album was copied in another
Codex, now known as Escurialensis, realized in
Florence or Rome between I490 and I o8, of
which different parts were differently attributed
to Domenico Ghirlandaio, to Giuliano da San-
gallo himself, to Filippino Lippi, to Baccio
d'Agnolo, or to one or more of the workshops of
any of these.29But the final version of the album
was put together at the request of a customer, a
Spanish nobleman, who, it has been suggested,
on the point of leaving Rome to go back to his
homeland, might have felt the urge to buy some
illustrated souvenir of the Eternal City. In fact,
don Diego de Mendoza was not - or possibly
not only - anticipating the standard behaviour of
many tourists yet to be born. As soon as he was
back in his native Sierra Nevada, he used the
rather diverse material collected in his Italian
album to have a new castle built there in the
Italian style. Even more surprisingly, some pages
of the album were actually sent back to Italy
again, to Genoa, as models for stonecutters and
sculptors who were to realize the decorations
that were eventually shipped to Spain and assem-
bled in the building.3? Here we have noticeable
evidence of how architectural visual motifs could
be passed on from paper (or parchment) to
paper, and even from paper to stone, in this case
crossing the Western Mediterranean three times
over an extended period of time. If the final
results at La Calahorra castle were not very
similar to the originals, as seen in Rome, one is
nonetheless led to believe that visual conformity,
in Florence),which he seemsto haveadoptedonly
aroundI483.Thedateof birthof GiulianodaSangallo above) I30-31, and Id., I996 (see note 21 above),
is not known for certain (perhaps 1443 or I445); 187-89.
Nesselrathsuggeststhatin I465,whenhe apparently 30 On the Codex Escurialensis, see Nesselrath, I986
startedcollectinghis own drawings,Sangallowould (cited note 2 above) I29-I34, and Id., I996 (cited
havebeen 13 yearsold. The Codexwas inheritedby
son, as a privateandpersonalbelongingof
Sangallo's
his father's(ivi, I29). Nevertheless,scholarshave iden-
tifiedscoresof director >parallel<
copiesof Sangallo's
drawingsin severalotherRenaissance booksof draw-
ings (most notablyin the Codex Escurialensis: see
hereafter):Nesselrath, I986, 130-31, and Id., I996 (see
note 2 above) I89 -90, with furtherbibliography.
29 Hulsen proved in I9Io that the third part of the
Codex Escurialensisis a directcopy of the oldest
part,called >Libropiccolo?,of Giulianoda Sangal-
230
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albeit not attained, must in this case have been
the purpose of the whole operation.
In the light of this evidence, it is worth re-
iterating that handmade copies and printed
copies of the same drawing differ in one basic,
essential, and in a sense ontological aspect. A
handmade copy, regardless of the disposition of
the copyist and of his or her motivation to stick
to the original or to change it, is always an act of
creative imitation. With few exceptions - that
shall be dealt with presently - handmade copies
are drawn without and outside the control of the
author of the original drawing. But if the draw-
ing is printed, this condition is reversed. Both the
author and the public know that the print is an
identical reproduction of its matrix. The medium
itself is the guarantee of the fidelity of the repro-
duction. At the two ends of the chain of commu-
nication, the maker and the user of the print
share this same persuasion: that the image is an
identical copy of its matrix, and that the original
matrix was destined to identical and theoretically
unlimited reproducibility. This mutual awareness
affects the status of the image, its authority, its
reliability, its trustworthiness, and in the end, the
use that can be made of it.
A growing need for precision in the transmis-
sion of visual information is the key factor in this
process. Of course printing does not guarantee
the precision of the original drawing. But it does
guarantee to the author and to its audience that
no middlemen will tamper with, or disrupt, the
chain of transmission - from the maker to the
lo's Codex Barberini:Nesselrath,I986 (see note 2
note21 above).Don Diego(or Rodrigo)de Mendoza
markedwith a crossthe modelsin the book that he
wantedexecutedfor his Spanishcastle,and to this
end he seemsto havesent his own originalcopy of
the Codexto the sculptorsin Genoa:see Nesselrath,
I986, 134, footnote 21, and Id., I996, I97, footnote
25, with further bibliography;FernandoMarias,
?Sobreel Castillode la Calahorray el CodexEscu-
rialensis<, in Saggi in onore di Renato Bonelli, I,
(Quadernidell'Istitutodi Storia dell'Architettura,
xv - XX, 1990-92), Rome, I992, 539-53.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE
64.Band/2001
user - of the image itself. What the printer sees is
identical with what every reader gets. As a conse-
quence, the general reliability of technical and
scientific images was greatly enhanced. The same
was true for drawings of architecture, and to a
more limited extent, and with different nuances,
also for the other two arts of drawing. In differ-
ent domains, people found out that they could
trust images as never before. They also found out
that they could buy more and more of them, at
the same time as offer diversified, quality im-
proved, and prices went down. In short, this is a
success story. The direct consequence of this
process was the rise of a new visual culture - a
culture in which knowledge could be recorded
and transmitted in a new visual format.
This success story does not imply that the
availability of printed images was the primary
cause for the rise of a new visual culture in the
Renaissance, no more than it implies the oppo-
site - that a new visual culture was the primary
cause for the rise of printed images in the Renais-
sance. In the case of such a sweeping cultural and
technical change, relations of cause and effect can
never be so clear cut. Indeed, the invention of
printed images can hardly be called an invention
at all. As has often been remarked, all that would
have been technically necessary for printing
images had always been available, from time
immemorial - everything, except the idea that
images should be printed. The aspirations of a
new visual culture, and the new technique that
would eventually fulfil those same aspirations,
31 Although focusing on visual rather than on textual
communication,some of these general argumentsare
inspired by, and heavily indebted to, the works of
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an
Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural
Transformationsin Early Modern Europe, London
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979,
and The PrintingRevolutionin EarlyModem Europe,
Cambridge (U. K.): Cambridge University Press,
I983.
32 ?Nota quod omnia quae in isto libro sunt menssurata
cum brachiis florentinis dividendo brachium in par-
tes sexaginta quas voco minuta et cum ipsis minutis
minutissime mensuratum est< (Bernardo della Vol-
paia, Coner Codex, f. ir.: London, Sir John Soane
Museum. Reproduced in Nesselrath, 1986, cited note
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must have come to maturity almost simultane-
ously. Without the new visual needs of Renais-
sance culture, printed images might have existed
- as they probably had existed for centuries - but
they would never have spread, as they did in the
fifteenth century. Without printed images, the
new visual needs of the Renaissance would soon
have petered out. As we know, they didn't. Start-
ing from the end of the fourteenth century, and
more particularly from the outset of Italian
humanistic antiquarianism, proximity and inter-
action between a new graphic medium and
the need for a new type of visual information
created a favourable environment for the tech-
nical and cultural revolution that would eventu-
ally materialize early in the sixteenth century,
when the decisive encounter between print and
visual thinking unleashed a new and apparently
unrestrainablewave of change.31
In this unprecedented environment, where
images could finally attain visual precision - and
where the users of images had come to expect
from images just that - it comes as no surprise
that some handmade images could start, perhaps
inadvertently, to imitate their more technological
clones, or at least to pursue the same objectives.
The Coner Codex, already mentioned, features
an amazing title page, where instructions are
given on the units of measurement that were
used in the drawings, and the author personally
guarantees that all the measurements in the book
are precise.32 Unlike the author of a printed
book, the author of the Coner Codex could not
2 above, fig. 121). On the Coner Codex and its many
copies, including Michelangelo's,see Nesselrath,
1986, 136-37, footnotes 12-13, with further biblio-
graphy.NesselrathdiscussesBernardodellaVolpaia's
(andothercontemporary artists')questfor precision,
and he concludesthat these requirements could not
be met by printedpictures,eitherxylographedor
engraved,but only by handmadedrawings,with the
possible exception of Serlio'sinfluentialwoodcut
illustrations in 1537 and I540 (ivi, I38-39). Nessel-
rathdoes not take into accountthe topic of repro-
duction,and this flaws some of his arguments:ad-
mittedly,one drawingon parchmentor papercanbe
moreprecisethan the samedrawingwhen cut in a
wood-blockor even engravedon a metalplate;but,
for betteror worse,a mechanicalmatrixcangenerate
2 3I
have extended his guarantee to any other copy
than his own - the original one, the only one that
he had himself licensed, signed, and sealed.
However, there is proof that in some Renais-
sance workshops more identical copies of the
same image were drawn, sometimes simul-
taneously, and sometimes by the same hand. As a
consequence, some scholars have suggested the
hypothesis of a mass-production of handmade
architectural drawings in the sixteenth century,
drawings that would have been fabricated in
well-organized workshops - the early-modern
equivalent of medieval scriptoria, now no longer
specialized in the production of alphabetic texts,
nor of rare and rich illuminated manuscripts, but
in the assembly and large scale reproduction of
handmade, but standardized, architectural draw-
ings.33Existing evidence is too scarce to evaluate
the scale of this phenomenon, and its possible
effects. One exception could be the workshop of
the French Huguenot architect, businessman,
printer, and wine merchant, Jacques Androuet du
Cerceau (ca. I520-ca. I586). It was recently
pointed out that Du Cerceau's house produced
and sold printed, as well as handmade, copies of
the same drawings.34It seems that in some cases
manyidenticalcopies- a drawingon papercannot.
It may be arguedthat, in quantitativeterms, the
amountof fidelityto the originaldrawingthatis lost
in the transferof imagesfrompaperor parchmentto
wood or metal plate is more than compensated by
the fidelityto the mechanical
archetypethatis gained
through the identical and unlimited reproduction of
it. Failure to consider these factors, and their role in
sixteenth century artisticculture, may tilt the balance
when assessing the close relationship that existed
between drawn and printed model books during the
Renaissance. Likewise, these premises are likely to
propitiate, perhaps inadvertently,some factual inac-
curacies: for example, Nesselrath emphasizes the
close complementarity between text and images in
Vitruvius's and Alberti's manuscript treatises (ivi,
I35), and he refers to a seamless unity of text and
illustrations as Alberti's goal, albeit one that Alberti
failed to achieve (ivi, io6). The cases of Francesco di
Giorgio's and Filarete's manuscript treatises, both
illustrated,may be misleading:I have discussed them
elsewhere (Carpo, L'architettura dell'eti della
stampa, see note 3 above, 132- 50).
232
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the handmade copies were not exactly identical,
and that deliberate and substantial variances were
introduced in some drawings; in other cases, the
manual copies seem ostensibly identical to each
other, and also identical to the printed version.35
Further investigations should elucidate to what
extent the publisher's choice between print and
drawing might have been related to the subject of
the image, to the public that was being targeted,
or both; which kind of variants were introduced
in the handmade items, and why. A careful colla-
tion between the printed and the manual version
of the same drawing should consider the mutual
influences between the two media, and might be
able to tell which of the two was setting the
trend. For example, while it is evident that early
prints imitated the graphic style of drawings, it
may also be inferred that some handmade draw-
ings in the sixteenth century tried to emulate the
graphic style of prints.36
No data are available on the pricing policy of
the Du Cerceau publishing house, and no com-
parison is possible between the number of
copies, either printed or handmade, that were
being produced of the same item. For all we
know, the phenomenon of handmade, custom-
33 Evidence cited by Nesselrath includes the sketch-
book of Raffaello da Montelupo now at Lille, and
another identical book of the same author, of which
only a fragment survives (Rugby School); the two
identical codices of the so-called Master C of I5I9
now at -Chatsworth and at the Albertina; the two
almostidenticalcodices,drawnby differentcopyists,
knownas the DestailleurB (Berlin)and Destailleur
(Vienna);also, two differentbut comparablecases,
GiovanniBattistaMontano'ssimultaneousproduc-
tion of handmade,andprinted,versionsof the same
drawings;and the workshop of Du Cerceau,of
whichhereafter: Nesselrath,I986 (see note 2 above),
I35-40, with furtherbibliography. Likewise,Myra
Nan Rosenfeldhasdiscusseda drawnmodelbookby
an anonymous Italian artist (circa I520-30), now at
the CentreCanadiend'Architecture. All but eleven
of the twenty-twodrawingsare identicalto those
foundon a sheetin the Uffizi (A 689),formerlyas-
cribedto SallustioPeruzzi,andf. 23r.,the depiction
of the LicinianGardenPavilion,wascopiedfromthe
drawingin the CodexConeron f. 15r.(seeRosenfeld,
I989,citednote i8 above,138andnote47).
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE 64. Band / 2001
ized drawings might have been limited to a very
small number of de luxe copies, in the same way
as handwritten and printed copies of the same
book coexisted for a time well after the rise and
the universal diffusion of the printing press.
They coexisted, but they did not really compete:
it is known that in Florence, in 1483, the price of
a manuscript copy of Ficino's translation of Pla-
to's Dialogues must have cost 300 to 400 times
the price of the printed version of the same.37If
such figures were to be confirmed with regard to
illustrated books and printed drawings in the six-
teenth century, it would be easy to conclude that
handmade architectural drawings must have
occupied a marginal, upper end, and, in fact,
ephemeral segment of a market that in the six-
teenth century was already driven and domina-
ted by their mechanical equivalent. As suggested
by Arnold Nesselrath, handmade architectural
drawings, and drawings from the antique, would
soon cease to be considered as viable means for
the transmission of factual information; instead,
at some point in time - probably early in the
seventeenth century - they received a new lease
on life as self-standing and autonomous artistic
expressions.38
Pending the digging out of new facts and
figures on the matter, it seems nevertheless safe
to conclude that the reproduction of identical
manual drawings in the sixteenth century should
be seen in the context of the new visual environ-
ment that was being created by the rise of
mechanically reproduced images. The diffusion
of printed images had fostered new and higher
standards of precision in the transmission of
visual information. People expected graphic doc-
uments to be accurate and reliable: reproduced
drawings had to be identical to their original, and
certified as such. In this context, evidence to be
further investigated would seem to suggest that
the sign of the print, rather than the signature of
any individual artist on his or her handmade
drawings, soon came to be considered as the
trademark of documentary trustworthiness. In
retrospect, this should come as no surprise:
modern history has proved, more than once
since the first technologizing of the printed page
in the Renaissance, that when we aim at identical
reproduction, machines can generally deliver it
better than we can.

34 On Du Cerceau'sdiversepublishingactivitiessee segnodi architettura,IV, 1993, 8, 10-17, does not

Janet Byrne (I977, et al.) and David Thomson (I988), providenewinformation.
citedanddiscussedby MyraNan Rosenfeld,>From 35 Rosenfeld(cited note 21 above), 138-39, footnote
Drawnto PrintedModelBook...<,1989,cited note 49, 136,andpassim.I referhereto oralcommunica-
21 above, 133 (?Du Cerceau directed a large work- tions from David Thomsonand MyraNan Rosen-
shop of designers, draughtsmen,and printers [...]. As feld.Rosenfeldsuggeststhatit is possibleto identify
Byrnehas noted, Du Cerceaumust have provided severaldifferentmastersin Du Cerceau'sworkshop,
the originaldesigns and had the membersof his accordingto supportused(vellumor paper),type of
workshopexecutethe books,drawings,andprints,in ink,anddrawingtechnique.This subjectwill be dis-
a mass-production fashion<).Basedon the study of cussedin her forthcomingbook:FromModelBook
two suites of engravingsby Du Cerceau,and of to Printed Treatise:Creatinga CommonBody of
several collections of drawingsattributedto Du Knowledgeabout Architecture,I400-i6oo.
Cerceau'sworkshopnow in the collectionsof the 36 MyraRosenfeldhasidentifiedseveralearlysixteenth-
CCA, Rosenfeldhas concludedthat Du Cerceau centuryarchitectural drawingsthat were drawnto
must have frequentlyused Italian drawn model look like prints.In a coupleof cases,the fakeis so
books as a source for his own publications(ivi, convincingthat it has indeedmisledsome eminent
137-38), and that Du Cerceau'sworkshop produced scholars.This subjectwill be furtherdiscussedin
bothdrawnandengravedversionsof the samedesign Rosenfeld'sforthcomingpublication(seenoteabove).
(ivi, I38). But see D. Thomson, >JacquesAndrouet 37 Eisenstein,1983(citednote31 above),17,withfurther
du Cerceau. An Album of Forty Architectural bibliography.
Drawings?, Old Master Drawings, London: Sothe- 38 Nesselrath,1986 (cited note 2 above), I44-46. See
by's, March 25, I982. Bruno Adorni, I1 problema above,note22.
dei disegni della bottega di Du Cerceau<, in II di-

ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE 64. Band / 2001 233

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