Tafuri's Renaissance: Architecture, Representation, Transgression

Author(s): Daniel Sherer

Source: Assemblage , Dec., 1995, No. 28 (Dec., 1995), pp. 34-45
Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171448

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1. Marcantonio Raimondi after
Giulio Romano, I Modi, 1524,
position 5

Daniel Sherer
Tafuri's Renaissance:
Architecture,
Representation,
Transgression

Daniel Sherer has just completed his In every era the attempt must be made to
mentality of sixteenth-century elites,
Ph.D., "The Curious Eye: Anamorphosiswrest tradition away from a conformismthese images contain "possible anticleri-
and the Beholder from Leonardo to that is about to overpower it. cal implications" and formulate aesthetic
Holbein," in the Department of Fine Arts Walter Benjamin, Theses on The alternatives to courtly modes of self-
at Harvard University. His translation ofPhilosophy of History, 1940 control.2 Indeed, the transgressive charge
and introduction to Manfredo Tafuri's of these prints does not derive from their
Ricerca del Rinascimento is forthcomingA theory does not totalize: it is an salacious content alone; it depends on
from Yale University Press. instrument for multiplication and it also the clash between their subject matter
multiplies itself. It is in the nature of and a refined, classicizing style. Instead
power to totalize and it is your position, of articulating an explicit refusal of the
humanist ideal of decorum - the "fit"
and one I fully agree with, that theory is
by nature opposed to power. of expressive means to expressed content
Michel Foucault in conversation with - this strategy of internal contradiction
Gilles Deleuze, 4 March 1972 exposes decorum to its limit. Giulio thus
adumbrates a figurative code that raises
infraction of received aesthetic values to
In his 1989 essay on Giulio Romano,
the level of an aesthetic principle.
Manfredo Tafuri compares the licenza of
Giulio's architecture to the "licentious- Tafuri inserts the prints within the stud-
ness" of the print series titled, with pro- ied equilibrium between norm and
vocative brevity, I Modi: portrayals of transgression that marks the boldest
multiple variations of sexual activity ex- moments of Giulio's architectural trajec-
ecuted by Marcantonio Raimondi after tory.3 In his discussion of Palazzo Te, he
original designs by Giulio.' Emphasizing stresses the balance struck in this edifice
Giulio's deliberate adoption of a classical between language and counterlanguage.
vocabulary of forms, Tafuri exposes a There, the ludic varietas of Giulio's
subtle discrepancy between the subject linguistic combinations (especially in
of I Modi and its figurative codes. This the garden faqade of the east wing,
divaricazione lends the prints a dimension whose serliane abruptly transform a
beyond the sexual: a pervasive irony that, series of columns into a series of pilas-
in the end, makes them "neither erotic ters) defies classical ratio by employing a
Assemblage 28: 34-45 @ 1996 by the nor pornographic," but indicators of a curious admixture of classical elements.4
Massachusetts Institute of Technology precise critical purpose. Documents of the Through the unashamed itinerary of I

35

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2. Giulio Romano, Palazzo Te, Mantua,
eastern wing, ca. 1532-35, detail of
facade
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assemblage 28
Modi and the meticulous "system of
violations" of Palazzo Te, Tafuri charts
the emergence of antinormative impulses
within a capricious all'antica style: one
that methodically unravels its own order
in a kind of ecstatic classicism.
Tafuri's analysis of Giulio provides a test
case for a more ample historical process
studied in the last book he wrote before
he died, Ricerca del Rinascimento:
Principi, citta', architetti.5 Its central
thesis is that in the Renaissance norms of
architectural representation were based
on license and transgression.6 Tafuri's
study elucidates the relationship be-
tween architecture and society through
an analysis of period mentalities, aes-
thetic forms, and the politics of patron-
age; exhibiting a wider cast of characters
and informed by a more ambitious
scope, it is like the Giulio article writ
large. As in his earlier investigations,
Tafuri discovers historical value in archi-
tecture by isolating its extra-architectural
affiliations: ideological imperatives,
moments of political resistance, diffuse
mental habits.' In this, Tafuri engages in
a mode of research characteristic of his
work. Indeed, it is typical of this histo-
rian to expose the discourse running just
beneath the surface of architectural
representation - a sort of architectural
"preconscious" - not by appealing to
the traditional apparatus of contextual
analysis but by adopting a critical proce-
dure that makes architecture the focal
point of "polycentric" investigations.8
For the reader, the multifarious (and at
times contradictory) directions of this
project might prove daunting, if not
bewildering. But Tafuri is sure to illumi-
nate the labyrinth he constructs with
bold clarifications that reveal its internal
structure. Because of these, the reader
becomes something like the ideal viewer
36
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of Piranesi's Carceri d'invenzione that
Tafuri analyzed in La sfera e il labrinto
(1980).9 For, just when the Piranesian
"voyage" seems to have ended nowhere,
disorienting the spectator who tries to view
the immense monument from an external
standpoint, an internal panorama suddenly
opens, revealing that one has not yet left
the architectural cosmos. At these points
what does one see? An infinite regress of
repressive instruments, a mise-en-abyme in
which architecture is absorbed within
institutions and practices as questionable
as they are pervasive. From this optic,
Tafuri's position becomes clear, and one
sees how political and social strategies do
not vitiate, but rather enhance, the power
of architecture to shape history.
Hence, it is not surprising that, in the
Ricerca, Tafuri opens the field of inquiry
- Renaissance architecture and its histo-
ries, from the Rome of Leo X to the
Venice of Andrea Gritti, from the Flo-
rence of Lorenzo the Magnificent to the
Spain of Charles V - to specific analyses
that expose the hidden implications of its
objects. This move refracts the Renais-
sance into a multiplicity of moments,
revealing the scope of conflict that ani-
mates the architectural field. Conceived
historically as well as critically, this field,
for Tafuri, comprises different cultural
contexts and ideological networks condi-
tioning architecture's genesis and recep-
tion. Thus Tafuri demonstrates that under
humanism, representation enjoyed its
greatest triumph, since its ambivalent
return to the classical legacy - one that
investigated the internal logic of the ob-
ject, while placing this inquiry at the
disposal of power - still has consequences
that shape and disturb the present.
In this, Tafuri pays close attention to the
interaction of longue duree and histoire
'venementielle, using the reciprocity of

continuity and discontinuity as an effective cally specific article "Discordant Har-
analytic instrument. In fact, in the last
phases of his research into the Renais-
sance, from L'armonia e i conflitti (1983)
onward,"' Tafuri drew equally on the
annales tradition - Lucien Febvre more
than Marc Bloch," and especially Carlo
Ginzburg and Jacques Le Goff 12 - and
on Foucault's notion of episteme, mediated
through the readings of his friend Massimo
Cacciari.13 Within these critical param-
eters Tafuri addressed the legacy of Rudolf
Wittkower." Tafuri thus recast the "archi-
tectural principles in the age of human-
ism" by inscribing in them the clash of
forms and ideologies, the collusion of
patrons and architects, the imbrication of
urban space and specific projects, with
reference to exchanges between "mean-
ing" and architecture. (Here one senses
not only Wittkower's presence, but
Panofsky's as well.)" Hence, Tafuri fused
analysis of the ideological motivations
behind the theories, typologies, and prac-
tices of architecture from the Quattrocento
to the Cinquecento with the Saussurean
paradigm of langue and parole. As a conse-
quence of this conjunction of critical
forces, the historian's word enters into
dialectical relationship with the architec-
tural languages of the past, making explicit
the structure of their codes.16
The problem of language had, of course,
informed his work on the Renaissance
from the mid-1960s onward, from
L'architettura del manierismo (1966) to
L'architettura dell'umanesimo (1969), as it
did when Tafuri took the entire complex
of architectural representation as his
subject in Teorie e storia d'architettura
(1968)." This study, which relies on a
structuralist Marxism reoriented by "op-
erative" positions articulated by Aldo
Rossi, is generally seen as Tafuri's most
important theoretical statement. Yet it is
not this text, but rather the more histori-
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Sherer
mony from Alberti to Zuccari" (1979) that
offers the most effective means of access
to the itinerary of the Ricerca. A critique
of Wittkower pervades the entire essay. 18
Rather than attempting to verify the prees-
tablished harmony between Renaissance
theories of proportion and architecture, as
Wittkower did, Tafuri focuses on ideologi-
cal tensions traversing an architectural
practice caught up in a restless struggle
with its own forms. These tensions caused
the period res aedificatoria to detach itself
gradually from institutional codes of
meaning. In this analysis, Tafuri is as
implicitly "musical" in his objectives as
he is explicitly linguistic in his methods.
His goal, then, as in the Ricerca, is to
isolate the gaps and silences peculiar to
architecture and to bring them to lan-
guage by combining historical and theo-
retical inquiry.19 But one can also discern
an important shift between the 1979 essay
and the subsequent study. Though Tafuri
continues to stress the importance of
formal experiment, in the Ricerca his
focus shifts from semantic ambiguities
engendered by such investigations to the
ways in which architectural signification
is mediated by institutional frameworks
and manifest in political strategies. Im-
plicit in this play of forces, Tafuri argues,
is a trenchant criticism of established
codes and languages. Thus architecture,
by constitution a mute art, is prompted
by the historian to speak of the conflicts
that attended its genesis by a process of
risignificazione - the deployment of
unprecedented modes of representation
able to imbue space (especially urban
space) with explosive political meanings.20
Tafuri's Renaissance is thus not a unitary
history, an imposing edifice to be visited
by reverent art pilgrims or blinkered
positivists. It is an ongoing hermeneutic, a
ricerca in the fullest sense of the term
37
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(which can be translated either as "in-
quiry" or "research"). For Cacciari, "it is
much more than an inquiry into the Re-
naissance; it is the vision of the Renais-
sance as inquiry.""21 Tafuri's understanding
of this pivotal period is motivated by his
conception of architecture as a paradoxical
project, entangled in its own antinomies.
An autonomous critical activity shaped by
the internal logic of ricerca, it is, at the
same time, a heteronomous instrument of
representation conditioned by external
political pressures.
To address the problem of architecture's
dual constitution as object of inquiry and
as social practice, Tafuri focuses on the
predicament of the Renaissance architect,
who was caught between the tasks of mak-
ing his project conform to a transcendent
idea and adapting the exigencies of his
work to those of power.22 Here Tafuri's key
concept, the idea of traditio, asserts itself
most forcefully in his text; for it is tradition
that mediates between the poles of repre-
sentation and transgression in the Ricerca:
"the idea - perfect music of the created
-cannot be reproduced. But it can be
represented: in this sense, the interpreta-
tions it receives, by definition imperfect,
are capable of giving rise to a 'chain' that is
virtually infinite. Though the idea per se is
unattainable, the architect can approach it
through a process of refraction, experi-
ment, and perpetual inquiry [ricerca]."23
Thus, for Tafuri, tradition, which bears
within itself the potential of betraying the
model (tradire) as well as that of transmit-
ting it to future generations (tradere),
provides the nodal point that draws repre-
sentation and transgression into architec-
ture. More precisely, Tafuri's concept of
Renaissance architecture as perpetual
exchange between order and metamor-
phosis, appropriation and resistance,
tradition and experiment, raises the prob-

lem of understanding the architectural
past through the cultural present (and
vice versa). Thus the critical study of
tradition directs inquiry to the receptions
of architectural legacies and articulates a
"dialogue with the [present] age of repre-
sentation." This approach "marshals the
weak force" of historical analysis against
those who understand the mneme of
architecture to be a linear progression or,
even worse, a stimulus for nostalgias (of
either the Right or the Left).24
For Tafuri, the application of what one has
learned from contemporary architecture to
the study of the past of the discipline is
essential to the progetto storico, the project
of historical comprehension itself.25 Criti-
cal analysis informed by the concerns of
the present is (as Benjamin knew so well)
the most effective means of resisting the
ideological abuse of the past.26 Only in
brushing history against the grain, in
scrutinizing the discontinuities, gaps, and
discrepancies habitually glossed over by
conventional narratives, can one compre-
hend architecture as a field of force com-
bining a plurality of temporal orders.
Brunelleschi provides a case in point. One
would think that this figure could lend the
Renaissance the status of an incontrovert-
ible cultural fact, a humanist intervention
separating the congeries of the medieval
city from the rationalized, perspectival
mise-en-schne of the Quattrocento. But
this is not so. Tafuri's Brunelleschi, like his
Renaissance generally, conflates the dy-
namics of social deception with those of
aesthetic representation, the claim to
autonomy for the architectural object with
the elaboration of this object within urban
space. For Tafuri, Brunelleschi's radical
innovation had a distinct condition of
possibility: a dialectical temporality super-
imposing return and novitas. Architectural
modernity followed from his critical actu-
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assemblage 28
alization of the antique lexicon. Hence, in
Teorie e storia, Brunelleschi attempts to
resist a linear historicism by articulating a
strategy of dehistoricization, which, for all
that, is not averse to historicist citations
all'antica, but is driven forward by them.27
Driven forward, yet inextricably bound to
Florence: in this paradoxical sense,
Brunelleschi's adherence to classical
language becomes crucial to any under-
standing of the explosive forces his archi-
tecture unleashed within the preexisting
urban fabric. By employing fragments of
antique syntax, this architect adumbrated
a future rationality while recalling a classi-
cal paradigm that had been largely erased
in the medieval period.
As Tomas Llorens has observed, Tafuri
read Brunelleschi through his own experi-
ence of Rossi, with whom he was closely
associated in the late 1960s in connection
with the metodologia della progettazione
staked out in the pages of Casabella.28 But
it is through Rossi's architectural produc-
tion, not only his theory of the city, that
Tafuri reinterpreted Brunelleschi. Like
Rossi, Tafuri's Brunelleschi intertwines
geometric anonymity and urban texture,
"autonomous and absolute architectural
objects" and a deeply ambivalent histori-
cist vision of modernity.29
Tafuri exposes the hidden implications of
Brunelleschi's use of the instruments of
representation by analyzing the roles the
architect assumed in a little-known
Quattrocento text, the Novella del Grasso
legnaiolo.30 In this text, Brunelleschi
deceives a carpenter named Grasso
with the help of a group of conniving
Florentine artists. Just as Brunelleschi the
inventor of linear perspective inaugurated
the credible representation of nonexistent
space, Brunelleschi the deceiver of Grasso
leads the carpenter to believe that he had
become a nonexistent person. In the first
38
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case, the perspectival mise-en-schne
defamiliarizes the planar object by imbuing
it with the illusion of depth, thereby unfold-
ing a "second reality" of representations
before the public; in the second, the public
plays along with the game of representation,
duping one of its members by granting him
a "second personality" familiar to everyone
except himself. In both instances, the social
uses of mimesis give rise to a duplicate that
challenges the existence of the original. By
forcing the hapless Grasso to recount the
story of his own alienation, and hence
relive it, the Brunelleschi of the Novella del
Grasso assumes the guise of someone who,
by adopting a calculating rationality, revels
in the absorption of the individual within a
bewildering play of replications.3' Implicit
in this reading is not only a daring analogy
between aesthetic representations and
strategies of social mimesis that function by
interiorizing delusions, but also a sort of
grudging admiration for a figure whose
position in the history of art and architec-
ture is so central that it is difficult to prop-
erly assess. In this analysis, one also can
detect a critique of power that has the abuse
of representation as its object: for Tafuri,
the transgressive force of Brunelleschi, his
ability to install new symbolic codes within
the space of the medieval city, is not with-
out sinister implications.
At the very least the Ricerca, like Teorie e
storia before, strives to capture the uncom-
promising modernity of Brunelleschi's
approach to the problem of forging a new
architectural language. Unlike Alberti, with
whom he is frequently associated as co-
inaugurator of the all'antica language,
Brunelleschi identifies architecture with the
object itself, not with a theoretical project
whose practical implications were inflected
in unexpected directions by local idioms.
Hence, for Tafuri, Brunelleschi's interven-
tion could reconfigure an entire urban

system more effectively than Alberti's, just
as in the Novella, Brunelleschi the capri-
cious trickster can pit the forces of society
against the individual, undermining his
autonomy.32 In both cases, as manipulator
of signs, Brunelleschi is relentless, leaving
nothing as it was before.
In the intellectual economy of the
Ricerca, the difference between these
figures plays a decisive role in the histori-
cal process Tafuri traces. This process
accords distinct functions to representa-
tion (one more critical, the other more
ideological) that derive from the different
stances these architects took toward the
architectural past. Whereas Tafuri high-
lights Brunelleschi's great engineering
feat, the cupolone of Santa Maria del
Fiore, and his machinations in connec-
tion with Grasso, it is Alberti's refusal to
participate in the reconstruction of Saint
Peter's that captures the historian's atten-
tion.33 If Alberti looked askance at papal
building programs (he felt they betrayed
the traditions of primitive Christianity,
which rejected magnificence), Brunel-
leschi did not hesitate to alter the entire cism was followed by a "lacerating crisis"
aspect of medieval Florence with his
cupola nor subject those who defied him
(at least according to the tale of Grasso)
to a mode of representation that annihi-
lates its referent.34 While Alberti stands
for the "'as if' of the disenchanted sub-
ject" who tries to resist the reduction of
ratio to techniques of social domination,
the same cannot be said for Brunel-
leschi.3" For this architect used his ratio-
nality to awe an entire city and to
"expropriate" another self.36 One might
even compare Filippo's strategy to the
architectural magnificence that Nicholas
V employed to "stupefy" the public when
he decided to rebuild St. Peter's.
Yet it is only with Bramante and, in his
wake, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Peruzzi, larly the Vitruvian) legacy. Far from it.
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Sherer
and Serlio, and, in the Veneto, with the
conflict over the administration of
Bramante's legacy between Palladio and
Sansovino, that the tension between the
new "figurative episteme" heralded by the
return to the antique and the emergence
of a capricious licenza reveals its full
implications.37 This license is not con-
fined to a period that has usually been
presented from the nebulous optic of
mannerism; it animates the length and
breadth of Renaissance architecture and
has crucial analogues in antiquity. At
best, these are partial models, not pure
sources, since the Renaissance figurative
episteme was based on the impossible 3. Baldassare Peruzzi, project for San
attempt to restore the architectural past to Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome, 1518-19,
a pristine condition. Albertian theory, plan
which fixed the ethical limits of techne
while disclosing its practical potentials for
architecture, obstructed its realization;
the liberties with regard to Vitruvian
precept taken by Bramante and Raphael,
and, most clamorously, by Peruzzi give
the lie to the conventional historiographi-
cal notion that a "golden age" of classi-
in codes of representation."8 The project
of exploring antiquity that appropriated
its surviving fragments, "alienated" its
architectural grammar, and placed its
components in new contexts, demon-
strates that humanist architecture per se
"expressed a refined and ardent equilib-
rium between a search for rules and the
experimental impulse."'9 Thus, in
Tafuri's scheme, the "heterodox spatial-
ity" that marks Peruzzi's project U 510 Ar
for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini embod-
ies a sprezzatura, a studied carelessness,
that abandoned classical rule in appear- 4. Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,
ance only. But this does not mean that study for an ordine unica to accompany a
commentary on Vitruvius, De
the inventive capacity of Cinquecento
Architectura, 1542
architects was diminished by theoretical
reflection on the classical (and particu-
39
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For instance, it is probable that in
connection with a planned Vitruvian
commentary, Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger invented a kind of ordine unica:
a Doric capital that suddenly becomes
Ionic then Corinthian. The accompany-
ing text explains: "As one can see here,
these capitals are generated out of each
other."'40 Rather than inhibiting linguistic
experimentation, then, the Vitruvian
legacy served to stimulate it.
The attention that Tafuri lavishes
throughout the Ricerca on exchanges
between architectural theory and practice
in the Renaissance is matched in its
constancy only by an approach with
which, more than any other, his name
has been associated: the history of the
theory of language as a critical paradigm
for analyzing architecture. In this respect,
it is not so much a turn to Barthes, the
nouvelle critique, or the structuralist or
post-structuralist climates of thought that
is at issue (though, of course, these cul-
tural presences were crucial for Tafuri, if
only as foils for his own historical criti-
cism).41 Of more immediate moment for
his conception of the Renaissance is
"period language theory." For Tafuri, the
citation of precise aesthetic parameters,
such as those laid down by Castiglione,
within a discussion of Giulio's sprez-
zatura is not as promising as a parallel
analysis of linguistic theory and the prac-
tice of architecture from 1515 to 1540.
(Implicit in both is the problem of mul-
tiple models.) In this connection, he cites
Sperone Speroni, whose "Dialogo della
lingua," written between 1538 and 1539,
advocated the thesis of a natural language
that spontaneously creates mimetic links
between things, while asserting the im-
possibility of its recuperation. Speroni
explicitly compares the lost perfection of
this language to the irretrievable
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assemblage 28
exemplum of classical architecture.42 By
adducing this kind of evidence, Tafuri
does not force comparisons between
cultural domains that had nothing to do
with each other. Instead, he tries to ex-
pose specific points of articulation be-
tween theories and practices within the
same linguistic and conceptual en-
semble.43 Here, too, his method is not
inspired by the discredited attempt to
trace "influences."44 In fact, he specifi-
cally warns against this naive historio-
graphical model: "instead, we can best
explore this terrain by using the concept
of diffuse mentalities as our guide:
metalanguages obliquely traversing the
spaces of architectural language, deter-
mining their organization and liberating
their potentials."41 In the case of the
transgressive impulses that inform
Giulio's architecture and prints, these,
too, might be affiliated with so many
"metalanguages" that traverse the space of
representation. Giulio, then, need not
have been "influenced" by Castiglione's
concept of sprezzatura or by the innova-
tive linguistic potentialities of abusione.
From this example it is clear that Tafuri's
"polycentric" analysis, which differenti-
ates the field of the figurative episteme by
isolating specific linguistic structures and
emancipatory moments that appear in
them, avoids an ingenuous, totalizing
Kulturgeschichte. For if Tafuri cites the
notion of a "syntax" of thought and action
informing different aspects of a given
culture, this recalls the concept of par-
ticular "mental habits" that Panofsky used
to connect Gothic architecture to scho-
lasticism,46 not the universalizing claims
of Hegel's philosophy of history.47
Moreover, affinities with the early
Panofsky, the Panofsky of "Perspective
as 'Symbolic Form"' (1925), are self-
evident.48 Tafuri's assimilation of this
40
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moment in Panofsky's intellectual trajec-
tory helped him grasp the decisive inter-
relationship between metaphysical ideas
in the Renaissance, specific techniques of
architectural representation, and ideo-
logical strategies impinging on both. In
the case of Peruzzi's approach to the
Pantheon as model, not to mention the
one formulated by Antonio da Sangallo
the Younger (in both cases, with refer-
ence to the project for San Giovanni
dei Fiorentini, the parish church for
Florentine nationals living in Rome),
the need to recuperate the antique as
eidos and the impulse to correct the
classical inheritance by recourse to sym-
bolic codes conditioned by metaphysical
constructs reinforce one another.49 In
1518-19 neither Peruzzi nor his rival
Antonio chose to subject the Pantheon to
the humanist rhetorical strategy of aemu-
latio. Quite the opposite: their approach
to the antique model implied a ruthless
critique. "The antique is assimilated as a
manifestation of a 'hidden' truth that is
concealed by imperfections that are
merely human. Not the antique, but the
eidos manifest through it, is, in the end,
the ideal model."'" In this sense, it is the
task of the "moderns" to "render the
antique perfectly Antique." This meant
not to imitate it slavishly, but to emend its
errors by using the absolute idea of classi-
cal architecture as their guide.
One might ask how architecture's politi-
cal dimension fits into this approach. In
fact, a close political analysis was implicit
from the outset, since Tafuri made sure
to point out that San Giovanni dei
Fiorentini played a decisive role in the
alliance Leo X forged between the figura-
tive cultures of Florence and Rome after
his elevation to the Papacy.51 Yet it is not
his focus on Medicean strategy, but his
new interpretation of Alberti that best
 Sherer

the Church militant. Similarly, and

exemplifies his discovery of the concealed
political implications of architecture. persuasively, Tafuri cites the statements
What is new about this interpretation is recorded in Giannozzo Manetti's biogra-
Alberti himself: indeed, Leon Battista phy of Nicholas. These recall the Pope's
becomes almost unrecognizable for those strategic objective in undertaking the
used to more conventional approaches tourban projects that he fostered: total
his achievement.52 One had always been social stupefaction. . Here ecclesiastical
aware of Alberti's pitiless irony, his mas- architecture, deployed as an instrument
sive erudition, his status and sensibility as
of social control, utilized pagan forms for
exile; but now one discovers that in De the same reason the Pope employed
Porcari coniuratione (1453), a text that humanists: to place the potentially dan-
Nicholas V commissioned from Alberti to gerous heritage of pagan antiquity at the
recount the revolt of Stefano Porcari, theservice of a Christian mass projection. In
humanist subtly undermines the "offi- this analysis, Tafuri's text bristles with
cial" version of the story.53 Emphasizing Nietzschean reminiscences, and one
Alberti's skillful use of indirect discourse,recalls his decisive encounter with
which ensured Porcari's heterodox politi- Foucault's leftist-Nietzschean critique of
cal ideas a place in the narrative, Tafuri Christianity and Cacciari's highly origi-
argues that by adopting this strategy Leonnal readings of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.56 5. Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,
Battista managed to express sympathy for project for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini,
Porcari (an extraordinary figure who Here, too, one is reminded of Tafuri's 1518-19, plan
attempted to overthrow the Papacy and own Nietzschean remarks on the use and
establish a secular republic in its place). abuse of history and on current misun-
Thus the speeches function as a gesture derstandings of the legacy of the Renais-
of solidarity with the vanquished revolu- sance. In Tafuri's reading of the present
tionary. Discovering half-effaced links situation, those who argue that the roots
between Cola di Rienzo's legacy, con- of culture have been excised, and that a
flicts between the Comune and the "mnemic therapy" is the ordre du jour,
Papacy under Nicholas, and Alberti's have missed the point: for this sort of
seething discontent, in Tafuri's text the forced anamnesis "often produces mon-
"silence" within which the humanist tages that emit ambiguous messages."5'
enveloped his real political intentions In an apt and courageous critique, Tafuri
suddenly releases its messages. In does not spare the conservatives, who
"Discordant Harmony from Alberti to yearn for an idealized past, nor the
Zuccari," Tafuri intimates that Leon equally misguided prophets of
Battista condemned architecture to si- postmodernity, who dehistoricize the
lence, and in so doing, secretly under- present. If the former exclude from his-
mined the relationship between practice tory everything that contradicts their
and theory for the rest of the Quattro- prejudices, the latter revel in the phe-
cento.54 Now, in the Ricerca, one finds a nomenon of representation as such,
political explanation for this silence: a enveloping the historical origins of the
tacit second-order discourse, replete with crises of contemporary culture in "clouds
republican memories and a pointed of anesthetic smoke."s8 Displacing these 6. Antonio Labacco, engraving after an
critique of the Papacy, that infiltrates the false answers, Tafuri offers new conjec- original design by Antonio da Sangallo
text written by the papal advisor who had tures based on careful readings of the the Younger, project for San Giovanni
been ordered to recount the triumph of political implications of cultural forms.
dei Fiorentini, 1552, facade

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In this he focuses on reversals of value
(sudden or gradual) intrinsic to their
receptions. This approach avoids the
aforementioned ideological tranquilizers,
exposing nostalgic illusions while turning
historiography into a critique of institu-
tions and the representations they utilize.
From this standpoint, the decline of the
auratic work of art, the logic of represen-
tation that annihilates the referent, and
the proliferation of mimesis derive (albeit
by different routes) from the impossible
dream of restoring the eidos of the an-
tique to architecture between 1450 and
1550. These different aspects of what
Robert Klein has called the "anguish of
reference" reflect a complex epistemo-
logical process that undermined as many
established techniques of representation
and as many uses and abuses of history as
they perpetuated.59
To be sure, no victory (least of all a par-
tial victory) is permanent. In an expressly
Benjaminian mode, Tafuri comments:
"Nor is it legitimate for the historian to
identify with the victors - a vice that
complements the apologia for present-day
conditions that is, lamentably, still quite
active. Nothing is given as past. The
temporal order of history is by its consti-
tution hybrid."60 Though the restless
search for new architectural forms is
linked to the exposure of ideological
pressures that inform representation, this
does not mean that the architect's un-
aided ricerca can consistently resist these
pressures.61 This task falls to the historian,
whose critical activity casts new light on
the landscape of past architecture, liberat-
ing its suppressed political valences.
(This emancipatory aspect of his work,
incidentally, gives the lie to the facile and
widespread misreading of Tafuri as a
pessimist who sees no hope for architec-
ture.) To these ends, Tafuri, like Carlo
Ginzburg, searches for evidence of ten-
61.220.116.140 on Sun, 05 Nov 2023 13:44:40 +00:00
assemblage 28
sion beneath the smooth surface of the
monument or the placid certainties of
supposedly "neutral" histories.62 Though
this evidence is not positivistically given,
it can be interpreted once the historian
isolates the codes of representation that
pertain to it.63 Certainly, this is a different
Renaissance than the one founded on
Wittkower's serene, transparent "prin-
ciples." Despite their elusiveness, these
principia claimed immediately to disclose
the philosophical implications of archi-
tecture to architects and historians in
1949 - the year the Architectural Prin-
ciples in the Age of Humanism appeared
- as they once did to Daniele Barbaro,
who "under a Renaissance dome ...
could experience a faint echo of the
inaudible music of the spheres."'64
As already seen, Tafuri's Renaissance
"edifice" resounds with other, more
conflictual echoes. Yet these, too, would
not have been possible without
Wittkower's harmonies. Like the Renais-
sance architects he studies, Tafuri subjects
his model to a dual strategy of tradere and
tradire. The Ricerca thus "betrays" the
Architectural Principles by actualizing its
critical potentials in salutary and unex-
pected ways. This is at least part of the
reason why the two historians offer radi-
cally different conclusions while moving
from inherently similar premises. Among
the latter, the most conspicuous is the
conviction that the history and theory of
architecture are methodologically insepa-
rable; a close second, that architecture,
though intimately connected to wider
processes of cultural signification, can
hardly be reduced to them. Given the
present situation, it seems fair to say that
these historiographical "principles" are as
necessary now as they were in 1949, if not
more so.
42
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Notes
My thanks to James Ackerman f
his criticisms; Howard Burns for
assistance at crucial points; Scott
Cohen for his analysis of Giulio
Romano and Antonio da Sangal
the Younger and for his painstak
reading of the first draft; Frances
dal Co for his stimulating insigh
into Tafuri's historiographical pr
ciples; Bart Thurber, for stressin
importance of Cacciari for Tafur
H1e'ne Lipstadt and Harvey
Mendelsohn for their stylistic ob
vations; and Paolo Berdini for hi
penetrating contributions to an o
going discorso Tafuriano. Mark
Rakatansky patiently edited this
say: to him the greatest measure
thanks are due.
1. M. Tafuri, "Giulio Romano:
Linguaggio, mentalitA, commite
in Giulio Romano (Milan, 1989)
15ff. On the genesis, reception,
suppression by Clement VII of I
Modi, see now I Modi: The Sixte
Pleasures: An Erotic Album of th
Italian Renaissance, ed. and tran
Lawner (Evanston, Ill., 1988), 3
On the question of whether such
"elite" images were deliberately
erotic in the Renaissance, and fo
penetrating interpretation of the
figurative codes, see C. Ginzburg
"Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Cen
Codes for Erotic Illustration," in
Clues, Myths, and the Historical
Method (Baltimore, 1989), 77-9
esp. 80.
2. Tafuri, "Giulio Romano," 15ff.
3. Ibid., 20ff., esp. 32, 58. Cf. idem,
L'architettura del manierismo (Bari,
1966), 49, 59, 79, and idem,
L'architettura dell'umanesimo
(Rome, 1969), 151ff.
4. Tafuri, "Giulio Romano," 20.
5. M. Tafuri, Ricerca del
Rinascimento: Principi, citt&r,
 Sherer

architetti (Turin, 1992). See the re-search into single rather than mul- Disegno," Design Book Review 34 History, ed. D. Porphyrios (London,
views by T. Marder in Art Bulletin tiple contexts, and, in a more gen- (1994): 38. 1981), 85ff.
77, no. 1 (March 1995): 137-39, eral sense, as a means of avoiding
12. See Tafuri, Ricerca, 14, 36. 18. M. Tafuri, "Discordant Har-
and J. Connors in L'Indice 8 (Sep- an exclusive focus on histoire
mony from Alberti to Zuccari," Ar-
tember 1992): 37-38, and R. evenementielle (in accordance with 13. See ibid., 15. Cf. Tafuri, "Cives
chitectural Design 21 (1979): 36ff.
Ingersoll, "Tafuri's Rome," Design the tradition of annales historiogra-esse non licere. The Rome of Nicho-
On Tafuri's reception of Wittkower,
Book Review 34 (1994): 29-31, phy). It is, of course, significant las V and Leon Battista Alberti:
see Connors, review of the Ricerca,
as well as the observations in J. that L'armonia e i conflitti ap- Elements Towards a Historical Re-
37, and the brief indications in A. A.
Ackerman, "Manfredo Tafuri peared in the Einaudi series vision," Harvard Architecture Re-
Payne, "Wittkower and Architec-
(1935-1994)," Journal of the Society Microstorie created and edited by view 6 (1987): 75 n. 45, in which he
tural Principles in the Age of Mod-
of Architectural Historians 9 (1994): Ginzburg himself. For an example explicitly alludes to the importance
ernism," Journal of the Society of
138. I was unable to consult the of his microhistory, see C. of The Use of Pleasure for his work.
Architectural Historians 53, no. 3
special double issue of Casabella Ginzburg, The Cheese and the I have been unable to consult the
(September 1994): n. 9.
619-620 (1995) dedicated to Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth- locus classicus of Tafuri's reception
Manfredo Tafuri, "I1 progetto Century Miller (Baltimore/Lon- of Foucault: M. Tafuri et al., eds. II 19. See Tafuri, "Discordant Har-
storico di Manfredo Tafuri," before don, 1980); translation of Il dispositivo Foucault (Venice, 1977); mony," 36, idem, Ricerca, 345-46,
the present article went to press. formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un see Tafuri, The Sphere and the and idem, interview with Irace, 28.

6. Tafuri, Ricerca, 7. For observa- mugnaio del '500 (Turin, 1976). Labyrinth, 3ff., 25ff. On Tafuri and 24. On the synthesis of historical and
For methodological indications, Cacciari, see P. Lombardo, "Intro- theoretical perspectives as historio-
tions on the political (and religious)
see idem, "Clues: Roots of an duction: The Philosophy of the graphical ideal, see A. Momigliano,
implications of the history of repre-
Evidential Paradigm," in Clues, City," in M. Cacciari, Architecture "Ancient History and the Antiquar-
sentation, see C. Ginzburg, "R6pre-
sentation: Le Mot, l'idee, la chose," Myths, and the Historical Method, and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of ian," in Studies in Historiography
Modem Architecture (New Haven, (London, 1966), 1-39, and idem,
Annales E. S. C. 46, no. 6 (Novem- 96-125, and idem, "Checking the "Friedrich Creuzer and Greek Histo-
ber-December 1991): 1291ff. Evidence: The Judge and the His- 1993), esp. li, and, in a more gen-
torian," in Questions of Evidence: eral sense, P. Morachiello, "The riography," in Contributo alla storia
7. I owe this insight to discussions Proof, Practice, and Persuasion Department of Architectural His- degli studi classici e del mondo antico
and shared readings of Tafuri's Across the Disciplines, ed. J. tory: A Detailed Description," (Rome, 1955), 255.
texts with my friend Preston Scott Chandler, A. I. Davidson, and H. Architectural Design 59 (1985): 20. On risignificazione, with refer-
Cohen. See, in particular, Tafuri, Harootunian (Chicago/London, 70-71.
ence to the political valences of
Ricerca, 24, and his magisterial 1994), 290-303 (originally pub- architecture, see Tafuri's acute
Venezia e il Rinascimento (Turin, lished in Critical Inquiry 18 [Au- 14. Tafuri, Ricerca, 5ff., esp. 15, 20.
analyses of Cola di Rienzo's use of
1985), esp. chap. 1. tumn 1981]). 15. Ibid., 15, 20, 156, 230. inscriptions and classical fragments,
8. For the emergence of this term 9. M. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Ricerca, 37-38; see, in a different
16. Tafuri, L'armonia e i conflitti,
in Tafuri's historiography, see A.Labyrinth (Cambridge, Mass., connection (with reference to the
6; cf. idem, Theories and History of
Foscari and M. Tafuri, L'armonia e1987), 25ff.; translation of La sfera ephemera constructed for the
Architecture (New York, 1980),
i conflitti (Turin, 1983), 8. Not sur- e il labrinto (Turin, 1980). Cf. Florentine entry of Leo X in 1515),
201; translation of Teorie e storia
prisingly, it was after Tafuri's con- idem, Architecture and Utopia: De- idem, "Raffaello, Jacopo Sansovino
d'architettura (Bari, 1968).
tact with Carlo Ginzburg that this sign and Capitalist Development e la facciata di San Lorenzo a
"polycentric" method first appeared(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 15ff.; 17. Tafuri, L'architettura del Firenze," Annali di architettura 2
in his work - one that is, more- translation of Progetto e utopia manierismo, 15, 31; idem, L'archi- (1990): 24.
over, consciously allied with the (Bari, 1973). tetettura dell'umanesimo, 82, 155;
21. M. Cacciari, Quid Tum:
aims of microhistory: "Non e and idem, Theories and History of
10. See Tafuri's interview with Orazione funebre per Manfredo
comunque necessariamente alla Architecture, chap. 3, "Architecture
Tafuri (Venice, 1994), 5. I would
ricerca dell'evento, che un'anaisis Fulvio Irace in Domus 653 (Sep- as Metalanguage," and chap. 5, "In- like to thank James Ackerman for
tember 1983): 29. struments of Criticism." For a de-
policentrica e microstorica e
bringing this text to my attention.
chiamata ad affinare i propri 11. Tafuri, Venezia e il Rinasci- tailed critique of this latter text and
strumenti." In this sense, Tafuri mento, xx, xxi, 9, 93, 103, 104, a discussion of its place in Tafuri's 22. See Tafuri, Ricerca, 39; e.g.,
Tafuri's remarks on Nicholas's strat-
(and Foscari) employed "polycen- 122, 220. On Tafuri's reception of intellectual trajectory, see T.
tric" analysis as critique of conven- Febvre, see D. Sherer, "Vasari as Llorens, "Manfredo Tafuri: Neo- egy of using architecture in order
tional distinctions between text and Architect: Urban Strategies, Artis- Avant Garde and History," in On "stupire per assoggettare."
context, based as they are on re- tic Theory, and the Language of the Methodology of Architectural 23. Ibid., 13, 20.

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 assemblage 28

24. Ibid., xix. See also Tafuri's in- 28. On Tafuri's interpretation ment with this interpretation, idem, History, 188-96; cf. idem, Ricerca, 7.
terview with R. Ingersoll, Design of Brunelleschi, see Lombardo, Ricerca, chap. 7. See also ibid., 23. Moreover, while Tafuri explicitly re-
Book Review 9 (Spring 1986): 11. "The Philosophy of the City," xl; fers to the discussion of the concept
38. Ibid., 8-9; see P. N. Pagliara,
There is a sense in which the entire on Tafuri's interpretation of
"Vitruvio da testo a canone," in Me- of eidos in Panofsky's Idea: A Concept
project of Progetto e utopia is moti- Brunelleschi via Rossi and his links in Art Theory (1924), he implicitly
moria dell'antico nell'arte italiana,
vated by an attempt to demystify the to Casabella in the mid-1960s, see uses this text in his discussion of the
ed. S. Settis (Turin, 1986), 42-43,
locus classicus of architectural nos- Llorens, "Manfredo Tafuri," 84 n. eidos of the Pantheon as it was under-
and also H. Burns, "Baldassare
talgia (utopia) by tracing it back to 11, 93 n. 12. For illuminating stood by the architects in the San
Peruzzi and Sixteenth-Century Ar-
the collective anguish of bourgeois critical observations on recent Giovanni dei Fiorentini competition:
chitectural Theory," in Les Traites
existence. Brunelleschi literature and current see Ricerca, 26 n. 27, 167.
d'architecture de la Renaissance, ed.
conceptions of the "first" Renais-
25. See the mordant observations J. Guillaume (Paris, 1988), 207ff. 47. One frequently comes across the
sance architect, see J. Ackerman,
on Tafuri's ability to project the cri- misconception that the early, Euro-
"The First Renaissance Buildings," 39. Tafuri, Ricerca, 9.
ses of present-day architecture (par- pean Panofsky was a Hegelian; in
Design Book Review 34 (1994): 23- 40. "Questi capitelli nascono l'uno fact, this is an unfounded claim. For
ticularly those theorized by Rossi) 27.
onto Borromini, in Llorens, dall'altro come si vede qui" (ibid., example, see the misleading discus-
"Manfredo Tafuri," 93 n. 2. For a 29. See Sherer, "The Politics of 236, referring to a drawing executed sion in M. Podro, The Critical Histo-
Formal Autonomy," 100; Tafuri, in 1542, U 826A). rians of Art (New Haven, 1982), 178,
stimulating corrective to this cri-
tique, see Tafuri, interview with Theories and History, 15. 41. See n. 13 above; for Tafuri's re- and the slightly more tempered, but
Irace, 28: "History causes a reversal 30. Tafuri, Ricerca, chap. 1, esp. ception of Barthes, see Theories and still misguided remarks in M. A.
of times . . . makes past problems 23. History, 107-8, 135, 176-67, 185, Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations
present, disrupts them, renews and The Sphere and the Labyrinth, of Art History (Ithaca, 1984), 30-35.
31. Ibid., 3-4, 21-22. In reality, Panofsky relied far more
them, suddenly diminishes enor- 5, 58.
mous distances, or, conversely, 32. Tafuri, Theories and History, on Kant and the Kantian Schopen-
42. Tafuri, Ricerca, 238-40.
pulls spaces that are very close to- 15. hauer than on Hegel; he even inter-
gether far apart," (translation al- 43. See J. Wirth, L'Image preted Riegl's Kunstwollen in a
33. Tafuri, Ricerca, 3-4, 22; idem,
tered). See idem, Theories and medievale (Paris, 1989), 22, whose neo-Kantian key.
Theories and History, 23.
History of Architecture, 105 (on the characterization of Panofsky's
48. On the general implications of
peculiar temporality of architec- 34. Tafuri, Ricerca, 22-23, 62ff. method I have applied to Tafuri's
Panofsky's concept of symbolic form
in the Ricerca.
tural experimentalism, which re- 35. Ibid., 67. for a reading of the uses of repre-
leases effects, like those of a time 44. Tafuri, Ricerca, 9. Cf. the sentation in the Renaissance, see
36. See ibid., 22, where Tafuri con-
bomb, only in the future). devastating critiques, inspired by Tafuri, Ricerca, 15, 20; on Tafuri's
trasts Alberti and Brunelleschi, re-
26. W. Benjamin, "Theses on the radically different intellectual per- reception of Panofsky's own use of
marking that "the gratuitous and
Philosophy of History," in Illumina- antinaturalistic character of spectives, of the concept of influ- Cassirer's symbolic form, see
tions (New York, 1968), 255. On ence in M. Baxandall, Patterns of Llorens, "Manfredo Tafuri," 85.
[Brunelleschi's] ruse is decidedly
Benjamin's unique historicism and un-Albertian." Intention (New Haven, 1985), 58-
49. Tafuri, Ricerca, 166-69, esp.
its antecedents (chief among which 62, and G. Canguilhem, Etudes 168.
37. See M. Tafuri, "Sansovino 'ver- d'historie et de philosophie des sci-
is Hermann Lotze), see the percep-
sus' Palladio," Bollettino C.I.S.A. 15 ences (Paris, 1983); see also idem, 50. Ibid., 166-69. See Tafuri, "An-
tive essay by H. D. Kittsteiner,
(1973): 149-65, and idem, Jacopo Ideologie et rationalite dans les sci- tonio da Sangallo il Giovane e
"Walter Benjamin's Historicism,"
Sansovino e l'architettura del '500 a ences de la vie (Paris, 1981), 13, 19. Jacopo Sansovino: Un conflitto
New German Critique 39 (Fall
Venezia (Padua, 1972), 13; but con- I thank Arnold I. Davidson for call- professionale nella Roma Medicea,"
1986): 179ff., and C. Ginzburg,
trast the indications toward a new in Antonio da Sangallo: La vita e
"Killing a Chinese Mandarin: The ing this aspect of Canguilhem to
reading of the relation between my attention. l'opera, ed. G. Spagnesi (Rome,
Moral Implications of Distance,"
these protagonists of the Venetian 1986), 79-100; Pagliara, "Vitruvio
Critical Inquiry 21 no. 1 (Autumn 45. Tafuri, Ricerca, 9.
Cinquecento in idem, "Venezia e da testo a canone," 52; T.
1994): 59-60.
la Roma della Rinascita. Palazzo 46. See E. Panofsky, Gothic Archi- Buddensieg, "Criticism and Praise
27. Tafuri, Theories and History ofDolfin a San Salvador: Un'opera tecture and Scholasticism (Latrobe, of the Pantheon in the Middle Ages
Architecture, 14-16; see D. Sherer,ibrida di Jacopo Sansovino," in Penn., 1951), 21. For a brilliant and Renaissance," in Classical Influ-
"The Politics of Formal Autonomy," Venezia e la Roma dei Papi reading of Panofsky's approach to ences on European Culture, A.D.
Assemblage 15 (1991): 100. (Venice, 1988), 106, and, in agree- the Gothic, see Tafuri, Theories and 500-1500 (Cambridge, 1971), 265-

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66, and its sequel, "Criticism of An-genealogies of Christian morality,
cient Architecture in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries," in
Classical Influences on European
Culture, A.D. 1500-1700 (Cam-
bridge, 1976), 342.
51. Tafuri, Ricerca, 159-60, 167; see
Tafuri, "Antonio da Sangallo il
Giovane e Jacopo Sansovino," 79-82. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,"
52. Tafuri, Ricerca, chap. 2, esp.
44-45, 51-62. This interpretation of
Alberti was first presented to an En-
glish-speaking public in the pages of
the Harvard Architecture Review in
1987, in a translation of Tafuri's
introduction to the Italian edition
(Rome, 1984) of C. W. Westfall, In
this Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti,
Nicholas V, and the Invention of
Conscious Urban Planning in Rome,
1447-1455 (University Park/Lon-
don, 1974); see n. 13 above. Chap. 2
of the Ricerca, an expanded version
of Tafuri's introduction, extends the
political interpretation of Alberti
into new areas. On Tafuri's ap-
proach to Alberti, see L. Le Faivre,
"Leon Battista Alberti: Some New
Facets of the Polyhedron," Design
Book Review 34 (1994): 13 (though
in general this article should be
used with caution); I have been un-
able to consult the contribution of
sixties (as was the entire group
Charles Burroughs, which criticizes around Contropiano). For Tafuri's
Tafuri's new conception of Alberti,
direct reception of Nietzsche, see
in Leon Battista Alberti, ed. J.
Rykwert and A. Engel (Turin, 1994).
53. Tafuri, Ricerca, 44.
54. Tafuri, "Discordant Harmony," 11; for Cacciari's reading of Thus
36. Spoke Zarathustra, see Cacciari,
55. Tafuri, Ricerca, 39; see also n.
22 above.
56. See, especially, the U. C. Berke-
ley seminar/interviews with Fou-
cault, perhaps his most effective
in Michel Foucault: Beyond Struc-
turalism and Hermeneutics, ed. H.
L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (Chi-
cago, 1983), 230ff. See also M.
Foucault, The Care of the Self
(New York, 1986), 43, 143-44,
235-37, and, of course, idem,
in Language, Counter-Memory,
Practice (Ithaca, 1977), 139-64. In
1987 Taftiri expressed his pro-
found indebtedness to the late
Foucault and his particular inter-
est in The Use of Pleasure. Need-
less to say, he had come into
extended contact with Foucault's
work much earlier. One should re-
call the effect on the Italian Left of
two lectures from 1976 published
in M. Foucault, Microfisica del
potere: Interventi politici (Turin,
1977), 163-94; an English version
can be found in M. Foucault,
Power/Knowledge: Selected Inter-
views and Other Writings, 1972-
1977 (New York, 1977), 78-108.
Moreover, as Francesco dal Co's
intervention at the Casabella con-
ference on Tafuri held at Colum-
bia University in April of 1995
made clear, Tafuri was an avid
reader of Foucault in the late
the memorable pages in The
Sphere and the Labyrinth, 4-7,
and his interview with Ingersoll,
Architecture and Nihilism, 24-26.
Foucault himself seems to have
had his first decisive encounter
with Nietzsche in 1954-55: see
the testimony of his close friend
Paul Veyne, in "Foucault
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Sherer
revolutionne l'histoire," in Com-
Figure Credits
ment on 6crit l'histoire (Paris, 1978),
228 n. 6. 1, 2. Manfredo Tafuri et al., eds.
Giulio Romano (Milan: Electa,
57. Tafuri, Ricerca, 24.
1989).
58. Ibid., xixff., esp. xxi. 3-6. Manfredo Tafuri, Ricerca del
59. R. Klein, "Peinture moderne et Rinascimento: Principi, cittat,
architetti (Turin: Einaudi, 1992).
phenomenologie," in La Forme et
l'intelligible (Paris, 1970), 413; cf.
Tafuri, Ricerca, xx. Note that Tafuri
subtly alters Klein's original expres-
sion, "lagonie de la reference" (for
Tafuri, "l'agonia del referente"),
thereby shifting the focus of this
process from signification to the
signified.
60. Tafuri, Ricerca, 24; cf. Ben-
jamin, "Theses on the Philosophy
of History," 256.
61. See Sherer, "Vasari as Archi-
tect," 37, and, for a different critical
perspective that derives from a dif-
ferent set of architectural circum-
stances, idem, "The Politics of
Formal Autonomy," esp. 99, 101-2.
62. See C. Ginzburg, "The In-
quisitor as Anthropologist," in
Clues, Myths, and the Historical
Method, 160-61; see also A. I.
Davidson, "Carlo Ginzburg and
the Renewal of Historiography," in
Questions of Evidence, esp. 318-19.
63. For a good overview of
Ginzburg's aims and methods, see
again Davidson, "Carlo Ginzburg,"
Ginzburg, "Clues," and idem, "Just
One Witness," in Probing the Lim-
its of Representation: Nazism and
the Final Solution, ed. S. Fried-
lander (Cambridge, Mass., 1992),
82-96.
64. R. Wittkower, Architectural
Principles in the Age of Humanism
(New York, 1988), 129.
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