Philibert de l'Orme and Spanish Stereotomy PDF

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Philibert de l’Orme and Spanish Stereotomy José Calvo López Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena In his classic Architecture a la française, Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos remarked the difficulty of assessing stereotomic exchanges between France and Spain in the 16th century. While admitting he did ...

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Philibert de l'Orme and Spanish Stereotomy José Calvo-López Fréderique Lemerle and Yves Pauwels, eds., "Philibert de l'Orme, un architecte dans l'histoire". Turnhout: Brepols, 2016, pp. 201-216

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Philibert de l’Orme and Spanish Stereotomy José Calvo López Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena In his classic Architecture a la française, Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos remarked the difficulty of assessing stereotomic exchanges between France and Spain in the 16th century. While admitting he did not know any direct quotation of Philibert’s treatises in Spain before Juan de Torija, in the mid-seventeenth century, he stressed those connections, placing them in the distant past, and more specifically in Languedocian Romanesque architecture1. More than thirty years later, a fair number of studies about French and Spanish stereotomy have been published, tackling the subject from four different points of view, at least: the philological study of manuscripts and treatises; the geometrical analysis of such sources; the study of built members through precise topographical and photogrammetric surveys; and the documentation and analysis of full-size stonecutting tracings, known as épures in French or monteas in Spanish2. It seems worthwhile to come 1

Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, L'Architecture a la française, Paris, Picard, 1982, p. 200-212, in particular p. 212. To quote only the most relevant to our issue, Sergio Luis Sanabria, The evolution and late transformations of the Gothic mensuration system, Ph. dissertation, University of Princeton, 1984, p. 183-262; Ph. Potié, « Le projet constructif de Philibert de l'Orme », in L'idee constructive en architecture, ed. by Xavier Malverti, Paris, Picard, 1984, p. 21-31; Antonio Bonet Correa, « Ginés Martínez de Aranda, arquitecto y tratadista de cerramientos y arte de montea », in Ginés Martínez de Aranda, Cerramientos y trazas de Montea, Madrid, Servicio Histórico Militar, 1986, p. 13-34; Sergio Luis Sanabria, « From Gothic to Renaissance Stereotomy », Technology and Culture, 1989, t. 30, 2, p. 266-299; Antonio Bonet Correa, « Los tratados de cortes de piedra españoles en los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII », Academia, 1989, t., 69, p. 29-62; Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, « Présentation des traités », in Philibert de L’Orme, Traités d'architecture, Paris, Leonce Laget, 1988, p. 3-22; José Carlos Palacios Gonzalo, Trazas y cortes de cantería en el Renacimiento Español, Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura, 1990; Fernando Marías, « Trazas, trazas, trazas. Tipos y funciones del diseño arquitectónico », in Juan de Herrera y su influencia, Santander, Universidad de Cantabria, 1992, p. 351-360; Dominique Bonnet Saint-Georges, Philibert de L'Orme, lyonnais Lyon, Archives municipales, 1993; Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1995, p. 179-239; Philippe Potié, Philibert de l'Orme. Figures de la pensée constructive, Marseille, Parenthèses, 1996; Joël Sakarovitch, Epures d'architecture, Basel-Boston-Berlin, Birkhäuser, 1997; Camillo Trevisan, « Le proporzioni nascoste nel trait della trompe di Anet », in Disegnare Idee Immagini, 1998, 16, p. 59-66; Laura Carlevaris, « Le volte di de L'Orme. Problemi di ricostruzione di alcuni Traits », in Il disegno e la pietra, ed. by R. Migliari, Roma, Gangemi, 2000, p. 8192; Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Philibert de l'Orme, architecte du roi, 1514-1570, Paris, Mengès, 2000; Enrique Rabasa Díaz, Forma y construcción en piedra. De la cantería medieval a la estereotomía del siglo XIX, Madrid, Akal, 2000; Giuseppe Fallacara, « The formal unity of aerial vaults texture: The 'trompes'... », in Proceedings of the First International Congress on Construction History, ed. by S. Huerta, Madrid, Instituto Juan de Herrera, 2003, p. 839-850; Miguel Taín Guzmán, « Fifteen Unedited Engraved Architectural Drawings Uncovered in Northwest Spain », in Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Construction History, ed. by M. Dunkeld et al., Cambridge, Construction History Society, 2006, p. 3011-3023; Martina Lenz, « The squinch of Anet », in Creating Shapes in Civil and Naval Architecture, ed. by H. Nowacki and W. Lefevre, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2009, p. 321-341; José Calvo López, « El manuscrito “Cerramientos y trazas de montea”, de Ginés Martínez de Aranda », Archivo Español de Arte, 2009, t. 82, 325, p. 1-18; Ana López Mozo, Bóvedas de piedra del Monasterio de El Escorial, tesis doctoral, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 2009. 2

back to the subject, analysing the similarities and differences between the sterotomic repertoires of De L’Orme and Spanish manuscripts and treatises, along with a comparison between built pieces in both countries.

Vocabulary and sources A good clue to reciprocal influences between France and Iberia is the specialised vocabulary of stonecutting. A fair number of stonemasons’ words in Spanish derive clearly from French, such as saltarregla, the stonecutters’ protractor, taken from the French sauterelle, grasshopper, since the instrument resembles the insect’s leg. The general terms montée and descente de cave give in Spanish the specialised ones montea and decenda de cava. The same thing happens with gauche, leading in Spanish to engauchido, probably through the Catalan engaxit. Also, according to the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, the French talus gives talud or talut in Spanish, the Old French volsoir gives both the French voussoir and the Spanish bolsor; the French doelle leads to the Catalan doella, which gives in turn dovela, meaning the intrados face of an arch or vault in the 16th century, and now ‘voussoir’. In other terms, such as adoucir and adulcir, or cerce and cercha, the direction of the influences is not so clear. An interesting couple is biais / viaje; according to Joan Corominas, both may derive from the Catalan/Occitan biaix, which suggests an origin in the ‘foyer meridional’, in Pérouse de Montclos’ words. Anyhow, the case of volsoir suggests that many of these connections between French and Iberian vocabulary may date from the 13th century. While the lack of direct quotations of De L’Orme in the Spanish architectural literature until 1661 may be true3, we should also take into account that the library of Juan de Herrera, the architect of the Escorial, included a copy of the Nouvelles Inventions; Juan de Ribero Rada, the architect of León Town Hall and a prominent figure in Castilian architecture at the end of the 16th century, included a ‘Filiberto en tabla’, that is, an infolio volume with Philibert’s works; and more important for our purposes, Francisco de

J.-M. Pérouse de Montclos, L’architecture a la française, op. cit, p. 212. See also A. Bonet, « Ginés Martínez de Aranda, ... », op. cit., p. 19 and Juan de Torija, Breve tratado de todo tipo de bóvedas así regulares como irregulares ... Madrid, Pablo de Val, 1661, f. 73 bis v.

3

Mora, the successor of Herrera as King’s Architect, was the owner of a copy of Philibert’s Architecture4. Also, there are a significant number of paraphrases of Philibert in the introduction to Ginés Martínez de Aranda’s Cerramientos y trazas de montea, one of the main sources of Spanish Early Modern stereotomy. For example, Philibert’s words stressing the need to know geometry and prepare small models in order to understand stonecutting methods are mirrored in Martínez de Aranda when he mentions three times in his short introduction the need to prepare models before writing about a particular stereotomic problem and makes clear the geometrical foundation of this lore5. Martínez de Aranda also takes his cue from the well-known passage where Philibert remarks that as far as he knew no author, either Ancient or Modern, had written about geometrical traits. In particular, Aranda states that many of the learned Ancient architects that wrote about the art of Architecture did not explain stonecutting tracings, but he also adds a puzzling explanation of this fact. Not willing to admit that Ancient architects did not master the lore of stonecutting, he assumes that the Ancients had not mentioned them on purpose, leaving them as an exercise to future architects6. The comparisons could go on and on, but I should remark a key fact. A number of Spanish stonecutting texts, in particular Alonso de Vandelvira’s « Libro de trazas de cortes de piedras

»

and Martínez de Aranda’s one, were quite probably written for

publication. Later on, Fray Laurencio de San Nicolás explained that Spanish architectural writers were laid back by the cost of plates for books, and this is why many manuscripts did not reach the presses; in particular he had seen a number of ingenuous works on stonecutting. He was probably thinking about Vandelvira, which he mentions in another section of his book7. Anyhow, this gives a peculiar quality to Spanish manuscripts. Confronted with French treatises, they are less academic, more akin to actual constructive practice. This is even more true in other shorter, less systematic manuscripts, such as the

4

Agustín Ruiz de Arcaute, Juan de Herrera, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1936, p. 159; Alfonso Rodríguez Gutierréz de Ceballos, « La librería del arquitecto Juan del Ribero Rada », Academia, 1986, 62, p. 121-154, in particular 130, 136; Agustín Bustamante and Fernando Marías, « El Escorial y la cultura arquitectónica de su tiempo », in El Escorial en la Biblioteca Nacional. IV centenario del Monasterio del Escorial. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1985, p. 214-215. 5 Philibert de L'Orme, Le premier tome de l'Architecture, Paris, Federic Morel, 1567, f. 78v; Ginés Martínez de Aranda, « Cerramientos y trazas de montea », c. 1600, Ms. in the library of Instituto de Cultura e Historia Militar, Madrid (Facs. ed. by J. Mañas and A. Bonet Correa, Madrid, Servicio Histórico del Ejército - CEHOPU, 1986, p. iii, v). 6 Ph. de L'Orme, Architecture, op. cit, f. 87v; G. Martínez de Aranda, op. cit., p. iii. 7 Alonso de Vandelvira, « Libro de trazas de cortes de piedras », c. 1585. Ms. in the library of the School of Architecture of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Facs ed. by Genèviève Barbé Coquelin de Lisle, Tratado de arquitectura de Alonso de Vandelvira. Albacete: Caja Provincial de Ahorros); G. Martínez de Aranda, op. cit.; Fray Laurencio de San Nicolás, Segunda parte del Arte y uso de Arquitectura, Madrid, s. n., 1663, p. 155, 217-218.

one by Hernán Ruiz, the master mason of Seville cathedral in the central decades of the 16th century, the one attributed to Alonso de Guardia and Ms. 12.686 in the National Library of Spain, which were not prepared for the press; we will see a number of examples from these notebooks along this paper8.

Members Up to this moment, both vocabulary and sources seem to attest a clear French influence in Spanish stonecutting and not the other way around. There is no counterpart in constructive literature to Diego de Sagredo’s Medidas del Romano, which enjoyed no less than six French editions. However, a quick look of constructive types both in France and Spain, in architectural literature and constructive practice, gives us a more nuanced picture.

Ribless and ribbed vaults Arturo Zaragozá and Mercedes Gómez-Ferrer have pointed out the remarkable similarity between the peculiar rib vaulting in the church of the Carmelite convent in Valencia, built around 1500, and a the drawing in f. 109v of Le premier tome de l’architecture. This is not the only connection between the Kingdom of Valencia and French stereotomy. Pérouse de Montclos pointed out that the vault in the funerary chapel of Gaillot de Genouillac, in Assier, is a late derivative of the rich school of ribless vaulting in Valencia, which reached its zenith in the mid-15th century Such vaults are an striking example of the transition between Gothic and Renaissance: a Gothic layout, with diagonals and tiercerons, is executed with groins in place of ribs9. The opposite concept is embodied in a particular technique of vault construction known in Spain as bóvedas por cruceros, quite frequent in Andalusia and even Spanish America in the 16th century. Apparently classical compartment vaults are built by means

8

Anonymous, « Manuscrito de cantería », c. 1545, Ms. 12.686, National Library of Spain, Madrid; Hernán Ruiz el Joven, « Libro de Arquitectura », c. 1550 c., Ms in the library of the in the library of the School of Architecture of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Facs ed. by A. Jiménez Martín, et. al., 1988, Sevilla, Fundación Sevillana de Electricidad); Alonso de Guardia, « Rasguños de arquitectura y cantería », c. 1600, ER/4196, National Library of Spain, Madrid. 9 Arturo Zaragozá Catalán and Mercedes Gómez-Ferrer, Pere Compte arquitecto, Valencia, Generalitat Valenciana, 2007, p. 128-130. J.-M. Pérouse de Montclos, L'Architecture a la française, op. cit., p. 211-212.

of a network of ribs filled with severies. However, the first examples of this technique are in the cloister of Saint-Martin in Tours or the castles of Blois and Chambord, dating from 1515 and 152510. The first instances in Spain are built a decade later, around 1530, such as the ones in the Town Hall in Seville by Diego de Riaño and the church of the Monastery of Saint Jerome in Granada by Diego de Siloé. Remarkably, this technique is completely absent from De L’Orme’ treatise, maybe because it had fallen out of fashion in France in the mid-16th century, while it is explained in detail in the oldest copy of Alonso de Vandelvira’s Libro de trazas de cortes de piedras, showing the complex geometrical operations performed in order to draw the templates used in the construction of this kind of vaults11. In fact, it vanishes suddenly in Spain at the end of this century and even Vandelvira, given the opportunity to build such a vault in the church of Santa María in Cadiz, resorted to whole pieces, making the decorative scheme independent from actual construction; quite significantly, all this is also absent from the copy of Vandelvira’s manuscript by Felipe Lázaro de Goiti, dating from 164612. Sail and spiral vaults The presence of sail vaults in Le premier tome de l’architecture is somewhat striking, since this kind of vaults are not frequent in 16th-century France, with the exception of the famous Pendentif de Valence, maybe designed by Philibert himself.13 In fact, this type comes from Italy, right from the start of the Renaissance: there are significant examples in the Hospital of the Innocents and the side aisles of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito in Florence, built in brick, of course. They arrive in Spain rather early; there is an idiosyncratic example in the first storey of the tower in the Llotja of Valencia, used as Merchants’ Jail, connected with the school of groined vaulting I have mentioned

10

See Flaminia Bardati, « Italian's 'forms' and local masonry in early French Renaissance: The stone coffered ceilings called “Voutes plates”, from the castle of Gaillon to the Bouton chapel in Beaune », in Proceedings of the First International Congress on Construction History, ed. by S. Huerta, Madrid, Instituto Juan de Herrera, 2003, p. 331324; id. « Voûtes plates dallées. Recherches architecturales entre flamboyant et Renaissance », in Le gothique de la Renaissance. Actes de la quatrième rencontres d'architecture européenne, ed. by M. Chatenet, K. De Jonge, M. Kavaler and N. Nussbaum, Paris, Picard, 2007, p. 279-296. 11 A. de Vandelvira, op. cit., f. 62v-64v, 70v-71r, 72v-73r, 74v-76v, 97v-102, 103v, 104v-105, 106v-107, 124v-125, and many others. 12 Felipe Lázaro de Goiti, « Libro de cortes de cantería de Alonso de Vandeelvira, arquitecto, sacado a la luz y aumentado por Philipe Lázaro de Goiti ... », 1646. Ms. 12.719 in the National Library of Spain. 13 See J.-M. Pérouse de Montclos, Philibert de l'Orme ..., op. cit., p. 117, 344-345.

before14. A more classical example appears in the sacristy of Murcia cathedral, built in 1525 by Jacopo Torni l’Indaco, a Florentine artist that had been apprenticed with Ghirlandaio and had worked with Pinturrichio in the Stanze Borgia and been summoned by Michelangelo to help him with the Sistine ceiling15. All this attests the Italian origin of this type, at least in Eastern Spain. Later on, a remarkable example is the lost crossing of the church of the convent of Saint Francis in Baeza, built by Andrés de Vandelvira, the father of Alonso, in the 1540, which was quite similar to the layout of the Pendentif de Valence16. In contrast with the large number of Spanish examples (fig. 1) and its scarcity in France, this constructive type appears for the first time in the literature in the Premier Tome de l’Architecture. However, Philibert presents two rather far-fetched variants of this kind of vaults, a square sail vault with vertical courses laid out in parallel with the diagonals of the area (fig. 2) and a rectangular one with the same design17. In contrast, Alonso de Vandelvira presents this repertoire in a didactical progression: first a simple dome, then a sail vault with horizontal courses, then a sail vault with vertical courses parallel to the side of the area, and only then a vault with vertical courses parallel to the diagonals of the area18. All this suggests that Philibert had an indirect knowledge of this kind of vaults, stemming directly or indirectly from Iberian sources. However, he made a fanciful addition to the repertoire, dividing the intrados of a sail vault with the projections of a typically English fan-vault; such an invention is mirrored in a typical Spanish workshop notebook, the one attributed to Alonso de Guardia19. Of course, all this attests the reception of De L’Orme in Spain and his mastery of this kind of vaults, despite the scarcity of French examples. This mastery does not extend, unfortunately, to spiral vaults. There are a number of built examples of this type in Spain, starting from the vault in the room leading to the sacristy of Murcia cathedral, built by Torni’s successor, Jerónimo Quijano, in 1531 (fig.

14

Pau Natividad Vivó, « La bóveda en la cárcel de comerciantes de la Lonja de Valencia », Revista P+C Proyecto y ciudad, 2012, 3, p. 71-86. 15 José Calvo López, « Jacopo Torni l'indaco vecchio and the emergence of Spanish classical stereotomy », in Teoria e Pratica del costruire: saperi, strumenti, modeli, Bologna-Ravenna, Università di Bologna - Fondazione Flaminia, 2005, p. 505-516. 16 Fernando Chueca Goitia, Andrés de Vandelvira, arquitecto, Jaén, Diputación de Jaén, 1971, p. 131-150. 17 Ph. de L'Orme, Architecture, op. cit, f. 111v-113; 114-115v. 18 A. de Vandelvira, op. cit., f. 61v-62v, 81v-85, 89v-91r. 19 Ph. de L'Orme, Architecture, op. cit, f. 113v-114; A. de Guardia, op. cit., f. 67v.

3, 4), and other smaller and later ones in Plasencia or León.20 The solution to this kind of vault offered by De L’Orme in his Architecture (fig. 5) is quite problematic, as Enrique Rabasa has remarked. Philibert draws first the spiral in plan; when projecting it into the actual vault in space, the first course is too high, so he is forced to divide it in two parts in the elevation. Remarkably, he does not divide it in plan, so the result is clearly inconsistent. By contrast, the solution by Alonso de Vandelvira is a sensible one: he starts dividing the section of the vault in evenly spaced courses, then projects them to the plan and finally, he prepares the templates for the voussoir. Although the Murcia vault is badly damaged by the movements of the massive to...