Two famous books, the Taccuino Senese and the grand Codex Barberini of around 1500, constitute the material point of departure for Cammy Brothers's survey of the drawings of the Florentine architect Giuliano da Sangallo, while she centers her thematic focus in their relation to the ruins of ancient Rome. This turns out to be a highly productive framework for Brothers's attractively laid out, abundantly illustrated, and well-written volume. Brothers applies a novel attention to the significance of the media and material of the drawings, not only investigating their qualities and function individually but also as part of the ingeniously composed pages of parchment. Remarkably varied in terms of drawing modes, the manuscripts display an interest in entire buildings and their plans, in ornamental details such as capitals and entablatures, and in the fragmentation of masonry.
Giuliano da Sangallo's preoccupation with representing the temporality of buildings, even exaggerated in inventive, imaginary, ruinous elevations, was remarkable and innovative at the time. In addition to this iconographical feature, he explored the radically new methods of architectural representation of ca. 1500: plans and sections. He even invented a strange variant of sections by simultaneously representing the interiors and exteriors of buildings, combining elevations with ruinous, fragmented cutaways. In addition to the many varieties of representational modes, Giuliano applied a strategy of spectacular, almost grotesque hybrid composition onto the pages. He not only accumulated a multitude of individual elements but also juxtaposed the various drawing methods with building parts in different scales, prompting new figurations to appear to the eyes of the reader.
Brothers approaches these endeavors of Giuliano by discussing his relation to antiquity and to Roman ruins, and the way his drawings speak to or influenced his practice as an architect. She positions him within the theoretical landmarks of the time, Alberti's De re aedificatoria on the one side (1485) and the first printed and illustrated treatises, beginning with Serlio's (1537), on the other. The analyses are informed by the important recognition of the value that architects placed on the appropriation of the past, far from a modernist concept of originality as dependent on the creation of works from scratch.
All in all, the attention to the actual work of one specific architect is a major strength of the book. But, building mainly on English language scholarship, Brothers's book does, perhaps, not fully exploit or confront the knowledge forwarded in German architectural history and theory. On the other hand, Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome is not a book that aims at suggesting overarching theoretical or cultural historical explanations or seeks to characterize the general cultural conditions and ideologies informing image production or historical consciousness at the time. Although the study shows Brothers's precise awareness of Giuliano's remarkably broad, inclusive concept of antiquity, her concentration on close readings of his drawings is probably the reason why the potential perspectives brought to the fore by her observations are only unfolded to a certain extent.
For instance, Brothers points repeatedly to the fact that Giuliano not only made drawings of buildings from ancient Rome but also recorded late antique, early Christian, and medieval buildings (and even the Gothic cathedral of Florence), and she invests quite some effort in trying to understand the broadness of his concept of antico. Nevertheless, her emphasis on Giuliano's attention to ancient Roman ruins and antiquarian interests prevents a detachment from the conventional assumption that his project revolved around the study of what we today associate with antiquity. Brothers does not pursue the consequences that factual observations of Giuliano's attention to post-antique buildings might have in an overall reassessment of the period's understanding of the past, for instance by engaging in a more general critique of a revival of antiquity as key to the period.
This call for further reflection is, however, only of minor concern and should not overshadow the fact that the book provides the reader with an impressive, comprehensive presentation and an eye-opening reading of the marvelous drawings, contextualized in a rich and intelligent discussion of their position within the architectural practice of Giuliano da Sangallo and the architectural theory of his time.
