CHAPTER ONE License and Archaeology Of Good and Bad License The term licentia (license) makes frequent appearances in the architectural texts of the Renaissance, though it is fair to say that this frequency increases noticeably with time. Leon Battista Alberti and Francesco di Giorgio Martini, the two great treatise writers of the fifteenth century, rarely find an occasion for its use, if any at all.! However, by 1537 when Sebastiano Serlio publishes his momentous Trezo libro on the architectural orders, the term is already conspicuously present and the linguistic environments within which it occurs fully formed. This is not to say that Serlio enters into any lengthy discussions of its meaning and significance for architecture, nor that he idend- fies it as a key principle or aesthetic category. The following passage from his discus- sion of the Rustic order is representative of his approach: In addition, without distancing oneself from what was done by the ancients, one could also mix and connect (communicare) this Rustic opent with the Doric, and also with the Tonic, and some- ‘times with the Corinthian, according to the wishes of who wanted to satisfy a personal fancy (Capricio). This however, would be, one must own, more di licentia than according to reason: because the architect must proceed with great modesty and reserve, especially in public build- ings and those of guvitd, where itis always praiseworthy to respect decora? [Fig. 6] Setlio here weaves license into a more complex statement and gives it no privileged semantic contexts in which theLicense and Archaeology of Florence, but also the cousin of Antonio the Younger and Giambattista Sangalo and a member of the Raphael hortegs as architect in charge of the Palazzo Pandolfiet an Florence; moreover, Pier Vettori was also part of the Raphael circle, owned Calvo’ Vite ruyius and was in active correspondence with members of the Vieei.2" Venetian involvement with archaeology was no less sustained and no less collabo- rative in character. Giangiorgio Trissino in Vicenza, Alvise Cornaro in Padova, and Daniele Barbaro in Venice, and the academies they helped form or participated in, all left a mark not only on architectural experiments (e.g., the villa Cricoli, the Odeo Cornaro, the villa Barbaro) but also on theory, for in association with architects they had also entered the arena of Vitruvian exegesis, among which the latter’ three com- mented editions constituted a high point for the genre? Moreover, these activities accompanied literary/humanistic pursuits of great significance. Alongside Tolomei, Trissino was one of the most prominent literary figures of the century deeply engaged in the debates on language, style, and alphabet. Likewise, Barbaro was 2 humanist of great stature: his architectural work was accompanied by numerous translations and editions of classical poetics and rhetoric texts as well as by works on history in which area he received particular recognition by being appointed official historian of the Republic of Venice.”> Nor was their work disconnected from the larger discourse. Fra Giocondo’s and Marcantonin Michiel’: ties to the wider Vitruvian world carly in the century, Trissino’s contacts with Rome and Milan, his relationship with Tolomei and Palladio, Serlio’s disseminating activity (which begins to gather momentum from 1528 onward), and, finally, Barbaro’s and Palladio’s tip to Rome in 1554 to examine the antiquities all indicate a broad network of contacts.74 This dizzying tessclation of the Vitruvian and archaeological enterprises marks one of the most striking aspects of the context in which architectural discourse was crafted in the Renaissance. Its dependence on a relatively small group of protagonists who appeared and reappeared in various associations with each other in different centers throughout Italy contributed much to its dissemination and, ultimately, to its unitary character in spite of geographic specificity.”> Indeed, one may speak of Vitruvianism as a form of peninsular “internationalism.” Thus, although this recuperation activity came to a virtual close in Siena, Florence, and Milan as result of political strife that extended well into the century, it bore fruit within the broader phenomenon of Vitruvianism reception by means of the reshuffling of itinerants. Such is the case of Tolomei, for example, who as diplomat and ambassador at many courts in Italy and abroad traveled extensively and whose correspondence was equally broadly based. Elsewhere, Gio- condo, Cervini, Trissino, Arrighi, the Sangallos, and many others contributed to this mosaic of relationships by entering new groups in other centers.” ‘The complexity of these relationships and their various outcomes could take up the space of a whole book. However, this overview suffices to establish four essential points. First, even if not conspicuous as an established, independently formulated copie in treatises, it is evident that the engagement with license was deeply embedded in the architectural activity of the whole period and manifested itself through the azchaeolog- ical project. The need to define modern practice involved understanding the ancients, 31License and Archarology illustrated with extant monuments and with a commentary om their departures ftom Vitruvius's precepts ~ but also an annotated version, with a dictionary of Latin words, one of Greek words, one of architectural terms in Tuscan, and, finally, individual works on ornament, ancient vases, coins, medals sculpture, painting, inseriptions, and so on. De architeaura was meant to be the center from which an almost infinite range of research ventures — architectural, antiquarian, linguistic, theoretical — were to radiate ‘outward, an opportunity for mutual illumination between theory and artistic practice, Personalities from apparently heterogeneous milieus stich as hu: dio Tolomei, Annibale Caro, Luca Contile, and Molza: Bernardino mmanist-poets Clau~ : cardinals Ippolito Medici, Maffei, and Marcello Cervini; and architects Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Guillaume Philandrier, Paciotto, and Jacopo Meleghini gravitated around the Virtii!t However, their interests were not all Vitruvian. For instance, Tolomei was a major liter~ ary figure prominently involved in the alphabet, language, and style debates of the period; Philandrier, though better remembered nowadays as an architect, had a human- ists training and indeed published an annotated edition of Quintilian’s Institutio ‘oratoria;** Maffei was active as a historian and prepared a publication based on evidence provided by ancient coins (which was not completed due to his early death); Cervini (Vatican librarian and later pope) not only had significant ties in the world of mathe- matics but also translated Cicero’ De amicitia and later annotated Tolomei’s seminal Cesano (on the Tuscan language). Indeed, after 1541 the academy changed its name to that of Academia della Poesia Nuova ~ paraphrasing one of Tolomei’s and the group's seminal works ~ a fact that indicates that poetics and the then raging language debate were among the most central and sustained interests of its members. ‘These codification and normative pursuits necessarily left their mark on the acad~ emy’ archaeological activities. Even if the strictly architectural output that can be asio~ ciated with the Virtd —Vignola’s almost textless Regola delli cinque ordini d’architettura of 1562 and Philandricr’s almost imageless Anmotationes of 1545 ~ is ultimately negligible when compared to its program, nonetheless it illustrates the Scylla of exegesis and Charybdis of visual reconstruction as the two poles between which Renaissance archaeological activity was deployed.* Moreover, the questione della lingua and textual not the only imports from the world of the humanist to rub shoulders with the architects: the history-writing activities that proliferated on the fringes of the archaeological project also impinged on its methods and focus. Historians needed visual artists just as much as the latter needed them: chronology and the geognifia antica (that is, the mapping of Roman culture) were esential for their work, and many humanists ~ among them no leser figures than Celio Caleagnini and Leandro Alberts ~ overlapped their activities and wrote on antiquities as well.“ ‘The Virtt is the best known example of a collaboration between humanists, ane quarians, and architects — that is, of the development of architectural discourse in & lit- erary ambience; it is not, however, the first or only instance but its consecration, Ae its inception, Vitruvian textual exegesis was necessarily the product of such a milieu, for the text had to be established and printed. This was finally accomplished by the humanist Giovanni Sulpicio da Veroli in 1486 when he produced the editio prineps of exegesis we a