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The Patron's Role in the Production of Architecture: Bartolomeo Scala and the Scala Palace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Linda Pellecchia
Linda Pellecchia*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
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Extract

Architectural patronage in the late Quattrocento was a way of demonstrating status. In spite of the republican and unaristocratic rhetoric espoused by the Florentine ruling class, powerful families, like the Medici or Strozzi, sought to impress their compatriots with conspicuous displays of wealth. In the course of the fifteenth century, the attitude towards the manifestation of riches passed from a medieval and Christian contempt to a distinct appreciation of magnificence as a virtue and duty of the rich. This need to impress is nowhere more apparent than in the patronage of architecture—especially palace building.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , Summer 1989 , pp. 258 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1989

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References

1 Two versions of this article were given as talks in 1986: one at the College Art Association and the other at the Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. The genesis of the argument goes back to work done for my dissertation, “Observations on the Scala Palace: Giuliano da Sangallo and Antiquity,” Harvard, 1983. Numerous people gave generously of their time and expertise, and I would like to thank the following individuals: James Ackerman, Howard Burns, Caroline Elam, Brenda Preyer, Joanna Woods-Marsden, and Diane Zervas. Howard Saalman read the manuscript and offered several useful suggestions. Jim Cudlip drafted the plan of the reconstruction of the palace.

2 Jenkins, A. D. Fraser, “Cosimode’ Medici's Patronage of Architecture, “Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33 (1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 162-170.

3 Goldthwaite, R., “The Florentine Palace as Domestic Architecture,” The American Historical Review, 77(1972), 977-1012, andidem, The Building of Renaissance Florence. An Economic and Social History (Baltimore, 1980)Google Scholar.

4 On Scala, see Brown, Alison, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430-1497, Chancellor of Florence. The Humanist as Bureaucrat (Princeton,NJ, 1979)Google Scholar, and Manni, D., Bartholomaei Scalae vita (Florence, 1768)Google Scholar.

5 On the humanist atmosphere of Lorenzo's court, see Chastel, André, Art et Humanismc à Florence an temps de Laurent le Magnifiqne (Paris, 1982)Google Scholar with further bibliography; Bierman, Harmut, “Lo sviluppo della villa toscana sotto l'influenza umanistica della corte di Lorenzo il Magnifico,” Bollettino del Centra intemazionale distudid'architettura Andrea Palladia, 11 (1969)Google Scholar, 36-46; and Foster, Philip, A Study of Lorenzo de’ Medici's Villa at Poggio a Caiano (New York, 1975)Google Scholar.

6 The attribution to Giuliano was made on the basis of style. See Marchini, Giuseppe, Giuliano da Sangallo (Florence, 1942)Google Scholar, and Sanpaolesi, Paolo, “La casa fiorentina di B. Scala,” Studien zur toskanischen Kunst, Festschrift für L. H. Heydenreich (Munich, 1964)Google Scholar, pp. 275-88.

7 The recent literature on Lorenzo's patronage has focused on his knowledge and architectural expertise. Some scholars have even suggested that his role in the innovations of works like Poggio a Caiano or Santa Maria della Carceri may have equaled or outweighed Giuliano's. Scala's house helps put this in perspective for it reveals Giuliano's interest in several ideas whose ultimate realization took place in works associated with Lorenzo before Giuliano's association with Lorenzo. For the recent literature, see Martelli, M.,“I pensieri architettonici del Magnifico,” Commentari, 17 (1966)Google Scholar, 107-111; Kent, F. W., “Lorenzo's Acquisition of Poggio a Caiano in 1474 and an Early Reference to His Architectural Expertise, “ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 250-257; idem, “New Light on Lorenzo de Medici's Convent at Porta San Gallo,” Burlington Magazine, 124 (1982), 292-94; Morselli, Piero, La chicsa di Santa Maria delta Carceri in Prato (Florence, 1982)Google Scholar.

8 On Bartolomeo's personality, see Brown, Scala, passim.

91 The main work on Giuliano is still Marchini, Giuliano. See also von Fabriczy, Cornelius, “Giuliano da Sangallo: Chronologischer Prospekt,“Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Ktinstsammlungen, 23 (1902)Google Scholar, 1-42; idem, Die Handzeichnungen Giuliano's da San Gallo (Stuttgart, 1902); Huelsen, Christian.ed., Il libro di Giuliano da Sangallo: Codice Vaticano Barberiniano latino 4424, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1910)Google Scholar.

10 On Giuliano in Rome, see Fabriczy, , “Giuliano,” Iff., and Eugène Müntz, “Les arts à la cour des Papes,” Melanges d'archéolgie et d'histoire (Rome, 1884)Google Scholar, IV. When Giuliano first returned to Tuscany, it was to work on the fortifications of Colle Val d'Elsa. See Severini, Giancarlo, Architetture militari di Giuliano da Sangallo (Pisa, 1970)Google Scholar, p. 17.

11 The quality of execution in several parts of the house (the carving of the fifteenthcentury capitals, the execution of the vaults) is quite low. This suggests that Giuliano left the execution of details to others. There are no documents concerning payments to Giuliano, though Bartolomeo's financial dealings were usually in his favor. For instance, his house on Borgo Pinti was bought at a price set by Giuliano de’ Medici and financed in his favor. See Linda Pellecchia, “Observations on the Scala Palace: Giuliano da Sangallo and Antiquity, “unpub. diss. (Harvard University), 1983, ioff., andBrown, Scala, pp. 229ff.

12 This same kind of shared interest must have informed Giuliano's relationship with Lorenzo. In the competition for Poggio a Caiano, related by Giorgio Vasari (Le vita de' piueccellentipittori,scultoriedarcliitetti,ed. GaetanoMilanesi, IV [Florence, 1880], p. 270), many architects submitted designs, but only one architect, Giuliano, designed something so new and so close to what Lorenzo had in mind that he was chosen. Only Giuliano was able to transform Lorenzo's desires into architecture.

13 The exact date of the building of Scala's house cannot be ascertained with certainty. The documentary evidence (notarial records of land acquisition and tax records recording the transformation of several pieces of property into one unified lot with a main house and several service buildings) allow one to conclude only that the house was built sometime after 1473, when Bartolomeo acquired the main piece of property, and 1480, when he and his family were living in the house. See app. I for a summary of the main land transactions.

14 The palace passed out of the hands of the Scala family as early as the late sixteenth century. It was bought by Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici, later Pope Leo XI, and from him passed to the Gherardesca family who enlarged the palace to the north and south, basically encapsulating the original fifteenth-century structure within the later extensions. See app. II for my reconstruction and these later additions.

15 On the urban development of the northern section of Florence, see Elam, Caroline, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Urban Development of Renaissance Florence,” Art History,, 1 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 43-66. The land sale documents themselves attest to the farm-like atmosphere, referring to “podere” and “poderuzzi.“

16 On the low prices of land in this area, see ibid., 43ff.

17 Bartolomeo refers to his garden in his 1480 tax declaration, reporting that on a certain piece of land he made “el vivaio, el monte, e fossoni, e via, e pratello.” See app. I.

18 The building in Buonsignori's map appears as a rectangle with a courtyard at its center. A thin wall connects two taller wings on the street and garden side. The type is generic rather than specific: Buonsignori uses the juxtaposition of a tall street facade flanked by a lower back in several other buildings in the area. His Scala depiction is unusual, however, because he uses the same motif on the garden side and creates the courtyard by connecting the two facades with low walls.

19 The courtyard itself had been redecorated in the late sixteenth century. The painting on the upper floor around the windows, the small painted frieze beneath the stucco panels of the attic, the stucco masks above the pilasters, the capitals of most of the pilasters, and the spandrels of the arches are later. On the sixteenth-century decoration see von Isselt, Dorina Van Sasse, “II cardinale Alessandro de’ Medici committente dello Stradano (1585-1587),” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz, 24 (1980)Google Scholar, 203-236. See app. II for a discussion of the fifteenth-century appearance of the courtyard. The plan of Scala's original house is basically visible within the core of the Gherardesca palace (fig. 16). For a discussion of the reconstruction, see app. II.

20 The piers of the palace were damaged during the 1966 flood. Photographs taken at the time and the restoration reports reveals no evidence of inner columns. The piers are solid brick.

21 The iconography and attribution of the frieze are discussed by Alessandro Parronchi, “The Language of Architecture and the Language of Sculpture, “Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 27(1964), 108-136,andChastel, Artethumanismc,pp. 154ff.

22 Giuliano drew several triumphal arches in his sketchbooks. See, for instance, his drawing of the Arch of Constantine, Huelsen, Libra, fol. 19V.

23 On Pliny's descriptions of his villas, see Tanzer, Helen, The Villas of Pliny the Younger (New York, 1924)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Alberti, , De re aedificatoria, ed. Portoghesi (Milan, 1966)Google Scholar, II, p. 791.

25 Poliziano, Angelo, Prose volgari inedite epoesie latine egreche, ed. Ildefonso Del Lungo (Florence, 1867)Google Scholar, pp. 273-274. For a discussion of the date, see Parronchi, “Language of Humanism,” 110, and Brown, Scala, p. 212.

26 Brown, Scala, p. 17, discovered the letter written to Filelfo, in which Scala writes: “I set out in the afternoon for Fiesole where Giovanni was rusticating, absorbed in his building… . “ O n the Villa Medici in Fiesole, see Bargellini, Clara and Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey, “Sources for a Reconstruction of the Villa Medici, Fiesole,” Burlington Magazine, 3 (1969)Google Scholar, 597-605.

27 For a detailed discussion of the influence of the Vitruvian domus on the Scala palace see my forthcoming article, “The Misunderstood Vitruvius: The Interpretation of the Atrium in Quattrocento Theory and Practice.” Sanpaolesi, “Casa fiorentina,” was the first to note the unusual aspect of the courtyard.

28 I have regularized the plan in my reconstruction. There are few right angles in the courtyard because the foundations of the earlier farmhouse were used, see fig. 16. I would like to thank Howard Burns and Diane Zervas for their help in measuring the palace. The measurements of the rooms show that the four corner rooms were originally four almost identical squares. The two rooms on the south measure 5280 x 5710 and 5205 x 5775 millimeters. The rooms on the north have been altered and slightly enlarged. The wall thicknesses in this area are greater than in the rest of the palace. Continuing the line of the old walls would result in a room 5850 millimeters deep. The other dimension cannot be determined because the original wall to the north was removed. The remaining room in the north-east corner could not be measured because of the presence of machinery, but continuing the old wall results in a hypothetical dimension of about 5850 mm. Given the closeness of this dimension to those in the rooms of the south, it seems fair to surmise the presence of four identical corner rooms. The use of four square corner rooms ties the Scala palace to villas such as that of Giuliano da Maiano at Poggio Reale in Naples, a type that ultimately goes back to the four tower villas of Antiquity. See Ackerman, James, “Sources of the Renaissance Villa,” Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art (Princeton, NJ, 1963)Google Scholar, II, pp. 6-18.

29 di Giorgio, Francesco, Trattati di Architecture!, ed. Corrado Maltese (Milan, 1967)Google Scholar, Il, f. 21 (pi. 201). It is known that Francesco was influenced by Vitruvius. Between the two redactions of his own treatise, he translated Vitruvius's De Arcliitectura. The drawing reproduced here comes from the second redaction of Francesco's treatise, usually dated to the early 1490s, and thus post-dating the Scala palace, which was inhabited by 1480. Francesco depicts a similar plan with a central room likewise labelled “sala he [sic] atrio” in his earlier version, Trattati, I, f. 18v (pi. 32), which slightly precedes the Scala palace. The dating of Francesco's work is controversial. See Corredo Maltese, ed., Trattati, I. pp. xxviiff.; Parronchi, “Sulla composizione dei Trattati attribuiti a Francesco di Giorgio Martini,” Atti e memorie dell'Accademia Toscana di Scienza e Lettere, ‘La Colombaria', 37(1971), 165-230; Betts, Richard, “On the Chronology of Francesco diGiorgio's Treatises: New Evidence From an Unpublished Manuscript, “ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 36 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 3-14; and Scaglia, Gustina, Il “Vitruvio Magliabechiano“ di Francesco di Giorgio Martini (Florence, 1985)Google Scholar, pp. 3off.

30 For a discussion of the atrium in the work of Francesco di Giorgio, see my forthcoming article, “Misunderstood Vitruvius.“

31 Alberti's treatise was not published until 1485, but several of its ideas circulated before publication. Shortly before beginning the Scala palace, Giuliano had returned from Rome where Alberti formed part of the small but intense humanist community. On this community, see Krautheimer, Richard with Trude Krautheimer-Hess, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton, NJ, 1970)Google Scholar, I, pp. 315ff.

32 AIberti, De re, V, p. 17 (Portoghesi, I. p. 417).

33 On the meaning of the frieze, see Parronchi, “Language of Humanism.“

34 A]berti, De re, IX, p. 4 (Portoghesi, II, p. 802).

35 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXXV.ii.6. There were originally niches for sculpture on the backs of the piers of the Scala courtyard, see fig. 10.

36 Alberti, De re, V, p. xvii (Portoghesi, I, p. 419).

37 Bierman, “Das Haus eines vornehmen Römers; Giuliano da Sangallos Modell fur Ferdinand I, König von Neapel,” Sitzungsberichte kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 15 (1966-67), 10-14, was the first to notice the influence of the Vitruvian ancient house on the King ofNaples plan. For Vitruvius's influence on Lorenzo de’ Medici's villa for the Via Laura in Florence, see Pellecchia, “Observations,” 571T., and my forthcoming article, “Misunderstood Vitruvius.” I realize that the chapels in the King ofNaples and Via Laura plans are not located on the ground floor. But they are on the entrance level, not on the piano nobile, and they are on axis with the entrance. These later plans by Giuliano, for richer and princely patrons, are more complex and considerably larger. Yet in mice, the entrance—courtyard—chapel sequence is that of the Scala palace.

38 Vitruvius, De Architectural libri decern, ed. Fra Giocondo (Venice, 1511), f. 64.

39 Scala got permission from the Florentine archbishop in 1475 to build a chapel in his house, see app. I. Like the rest of the house, the chapel was redecorated in the sixteenth century.

40 See Howard Saalman and Mattox, Philip, “The First Medici Palace, “Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 44 (1985)Google Scholar, 329-345, esp. app. IX, for a discussion of the chapel rights given to Cosimo de’ Medici in 1422. The concession was given directly by Pope Martin V to express attachment to the Medici family. In itself, this is an indication that the concession of chapels was not commonplace or without significance. Toward the end of the fifteenth century in Florence, the number of private chapels seems to increase. However, the numbers are still extremely limited. Philip Mattox, working on his diss. “The Domestic Chapel in the Renaissance, 1400-1600” (Yale University), generously shared some of his findings with me. They indicate that toward the latter part of the Quattrocento a few patrons in the Medici orbit (the Minerbetti, the Nerli, and the Nori) had chapels in their private palaces. In each case, the chapels were located on the piano nobile, as was that of the Medici palace. It is not clear where the chapel granted to Cosimo in 1422 was located. With the exception of that of the more famous Medici palace, these chapels are no longer extant.

4 lOn cardinals’ palaces, see Frommel, Christoph L., Der römische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance (Tübingen, 1973)Google Scholar, pp. 74ff. Chapels were relatively common in the palaces of heads of state. Besides the ones in the Medici palace in Florence and the ducal palace in Urbino, there were chapels in the princely residences in Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara. See Beltrami, Luca, Il Castello di Milano (Milan, 1894)Google Scholar, p. 296, for the chapel built for G. M. Sforza in the Castello Sforzesco. There was a chapel in the ducal palace in Mantua in the fourteenth century; see Paccagnini, Giovanni, Il Palazzo Ducale di Mantova (Turin, 1969)Google Scholar, p. 16. Werner Gundesheimer kindly called my attention to the presence of a chapel in the ducal palace in Ferrara.

42 Barrel vaults were used before this for the androne but not for courtyards.

43 The vaults of the ambulatory were redone by Giuseppe Poggi in the nineteenth century. However, the vaults of two ground floor rooms (fig. 5A, B) on the east side of the palace, whose patterns are based on the original ambulatory vaults, are fifteenth-century (figs. 12, 14).

44 The stucco vaults of the Cappella del Perdono and the Tempietto delle Muse in the ducal palace in Urbino may be slightly earlier. Their technique, however, is different: they were first cast on the ground and then assembled. Sanpaolesi, “Casa fiorentina,“ assumed that the Scala vaults were executed the same way, but in fact they were made by pressing molds into wet stucco. See Pellecchia, “Observations,” I32ff.

45 Huelsen, Libra, fig. 39, and Falb, Rodolfo, Il taccuino senese di Giuliano da Sangallo (Siena, 1899)Google Scholar, pi. 14.

46 Vasari, Vite, IV, p. 291.

47 The size of the barrel vault in the salone of Poggio a Caiano is always cited. In fact, Vasari says that Lorenzo did not believe that Giuliano could vault the space with his new technique, and Giuliano put him at ease by vaulting a room in his own house: “Volendo poi fare una volta alia sala grande di detto palazzo nel modo che noi chiamiamo a botte, non credeva Lorenzo che per la distanzia si potesse girare; onde Giuliano, che fabbricava in Fiorenza una sua casa, volt6 la sala sua a similutudine di quella, per far capace la volonta del Magnifico Lorenzo” (Vasari, Vite, IV, p. 271). The plan of Giuliano's house is modelled on that of Poggio with a large vaulted space on the ground floor, but the land was acquired only in the 1490s. Thus it could not have preceded Giuliano's work at Poggio. Of the six extant fifteenth-century stucco decorated vaults — the ducal palace in Urbino, the Delia Rovere palace in Savona, the Scala palace in Florence, Giuliano's own house in Florence, and two in Poggio a Caiano—Giuliano designed five. Of course, there may have been others, now destroyed. The impressive vault in the Villa Tovaglia in Florence is terra cotta. Stucco, ubiquitous in the fifteenth century, was used primarily for making inexpensive casts of religious images, especially Madonnas. However, during the course of the fifteenth century, the meaning of the material itself was transformed. No longer was it merely a cheap substitute for marble, but rather, by virtue of its association with the antique, it became prestigious per se. This was especially true of its use on vaults where it was a self-conscious revival of ancient stucco vaults.

48 The vault of the salone, executed after Giuliano's death, was based on his design. The same pattern, which derives from an antique vault, had been used earlier for the vaults in his own house on Borgo Pinti and for those of the Delia Rovere palace in Savona.

49 On the important events in Scala's life, see Brown, Scala, and Manni, Bartholotnaei Scalae, as cited above in n. 4.

50 Quoted from Brown, Scala, p. 217.

51 Pulci referred to him as such in a sonnet. See Parronchi, “Language of Humanism,“ 109.

52 This coat of arms was moved to its present location in the eighteenth century. There is no indication in the document about its original location. See Archivio di Stato, Florence (hereafter, ASF), Carte Gherardesca, G xxvii, no. 13, f. 5.

53 “Who should be surprised that I am blinded without my sun, lost without my leader and shipwrecked without my pole-star?” Quoted by Brown, Scala, p. 94.

54 Cox-Rearick, Janet, “Themes of Time and Rule at Poggio a Caiano: The Portico Frieze of Lorenzo il Magnifico,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Instituts in Florenz, 26 (1982)Google Scholar, 170.

55 The sunflower symbolizes love of something superior. According to the sixteenthcentury writer Valeriano, it can refer either to the relation between earthly and celestial things or to the secret power that ties something low to something higher. This meaning derives from Ovid, Metamoiphosis, IV, 226-270, where Clytie, lover of the sun, is transformed into a flower whose devotion is apparent in the way it follows the sun through its daily course. See de Tervarent, Guy, Attributs etsymboies dans I'artprofane, 1450-1600 (Geneva, 1959)Google Scholar. The most famous use of the sunflower emblem in the fifteenth century can be found on the medal of Lodovico Gonzaga by Pisanello. See Hill, George F. and Pollard, J. Graham, Renaissance Medals from the Kress Collection (London, 1967)Google Scholar, p. 10, no. 16. See also Praz, Mario, “The Gonzaga Devices,” in The Splendours of the Gonzaga, ed. D. S. Chambers and Jane Martineau (London, 1982)Google Scholar, pp. 65ff. The way in which individuals in the fifteenth century used the devices of other, more powerful families is not clear. There is some evidence that permission was needed to use the device of another family. On the other hand, there are instances when the patent was either not given or does not survive. See Preyer, Brenda, “The Ruccellai Palace,” Giovanni Ruccellai ed il suo Zibaldone. A Florentine Patrician and his Palace, ed. Perosa (London, 1981)Google Scholar, II, pp. 198ff., and Ames-Lewis, Francis, The Library and Manuscripts of Piero di Cosimo d’ Medici (New York, 1984)Google Scholar. In a vault executed slightly after the Scala vaults, in the villa of the Del Tovaglia family in Florence, there are Gonzaga and Este devices. While Agnolo Del Tovaglia was granted the right to use the Gonzaga device, there is no extant patent from the Este. See Brown, Beverly, “Leonardo and the Tale of Three Villas: Poggio a Caiano, the Villa Tovaglia in Florence, and Poggio Reale in Mantua,” Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’ Europa del ‘500 (Florence, 1983)Google Scholar, III, pp. 1053ft”. Yet Scala's vault is still unusual for its apparently specific meaning. Scala uses not only his own device and that of the Medici, but also a purely symbolic device, the sunflower, to clarify the patron/client relationship. This would conform to the findings of Ames-Lewis, Library, and ibid., “Early Medici Devices, “Joumalofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 43 (1979), 127-30. According to him, devices which in the first half of the fifteenth century generally had little or no symbolic meaning began to be more personal and to have specific meanings under Lorenzo de'Medici. On Lorenzo's devices, see Kliemann, Julian, “ Vertumnus and Pomona,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Instituts in Florenz, 16 (1972)Google Scholar, 293-328, and Cox-Rearick, , Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art (Princeton, N.J., 1984)Google Scholar.

56 “Una chasa per mio abitare,… e el luogho dove ò murato e dove me sono chonsumato.“ See app. I.

57 Scala was proud of the service quarters attacked to his house. The well was ingeniously designed for convenience and shelter and could be used from either side of the courtyard. In his tax declaration, he referred also to a kitchen, a washing house, a study, stables, a loggia, and a chapel. See app. I. 58Parronchi first demonstrated the tie between the subject matter of the panels and Scala's Apologues in “Language of Humanism”, 108ff. Earlier Chastel had suggested that the frieze had an autobiographical significance; Art et humanisme, pp. I54tf. 59Quoted from Parronchi, “Language of Humanism,” 121f.