Evans Translations From Drawing to Building

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1 . T h e C r it ic S ee s, byJ aspe r J ohns , 1% 1.

1986

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To transla te is to convey. It is (0move something without alteringit. I This is its original meaning and this is what happens in trans-latory motion. Such too, by analogy with translatory motion, thetranslation of languages. Yetthe substratum across which the senseof words is translated from language to language does not appearto have the requisite evenness and continuity; things can get bent,broken or lost on the way. The assumption that there is a uniformspace through which meaning may glide without modulation ismore than just a naive delusion, however. Only by assuming itspure and unconditional existence in the first place can any preciseknowledge of the pattern of deviations from this imaginary con-dition be gained.

I would like to suggest that something similar occurs in archi-tecture between the drawing and the building, and that a similarsuspension of cr itical disbelief is necessary in order to enable ar-chitects to perform their task at all . I would like to suggest also that,while such an enabling fiction may be made explicit, this has notbeen done in architecture, and that because of this inexplicitness acurious situation has come to pass in which, while on the one handthe drawing might be vastly overvalued, on the other the p r o p e r t i e sof drawing - its peculiar powers in relation to its putative subject,the building - are hardly recognized at all. Recognition of thedrawing's power as a medium turns out, unexpectedly, to be re-cognition of the drawing's distinctness from ::mdunlikeness to thething that is represented, rather than its likeness to it, which isneither as paradoxical nor as dissociative as it may seem.

Before embarking on the investigation of drawing'S role in archi-tecture, a few more words might be spent on language; moreparticularly, on the common antilogy that would have architecturebe like language but also independent of it. All things with con-ceptual dimension arc like language, as all grey things are likeelephants. A great deal in architecture may be language-like with-out being language. Some might say that the recent insistence that

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architecture isa language isonly the last wave of a persistent verbaltide eroding vision, bedevilling our ability to see without languageto guide our eyes (Fig. I).In the words of the poet Paul Valery, usedas the title of a recent biography of an American artist, 'seeing isforgetting the name of the thing one sees'.' Can we really be cer-tain? Might not this purism be in danger of becoming a ridiculouspiety? Having recognized that words effect vision, we are under nomoral obligation to expel them from it, even if the expulsion couldbe achieved. It is understandable that, in the interest of the integ-rity of our art, we should imagine it contaminated by other formsof communication, just as it is understandable that, in the interestof its aggrandizement, we should imagine it comparable to lan-guage. But this isonly to offer excuses for the possession of incom-patible ideas.Fastidiousness about the purity of vis ion arises from a tear thatall distinction will be lost as one category forces itself into another.We protect it because we think it in danger of being overwhelmedby a more powerful agency. With our minds fixed on the pre-dominance of language we might even risk enclosing architecturewithin its own compound, denying it communication with any-thing else to preserve its integrity. This would be possible, yet itseems very unlikely to occur because, [or architecture, even in thesolitude of pretended autonomy, there is one unfailing communi-cant, and that is the drawing.

Some English art historians have been directing attention tothe transactions between language and the visual arts: MichaelBaxandall with the early Italian humanists," T . J . Clark withFrench nineteenth-century painting,' and Norman Bryson withseventeenth- and eighteenth-century French painting.' Theirstudies, which have advanced art history into an area neverproperly investigated, show painters and commentators trying toextricate painting from language or trying to accommodate to it, inwhat was not so much a war between the verbal and the visible as


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an economy between them, full of friction though the deals backand forth may have been. I have found their work invaluable andstimulating. It seems to me, however, that this economy dominatedby the trade between two powers cannot be transferred to the studyof architecture without adaption, for the architectural drawingconsti tutes a third force that may well equal those of the artworkand its commentaries.

My own suspicion of the enormous generative part played byarchitectural drawing stems [rom a brief period of teaching in anart college." Bringing with me the conviction that architecture andthe visual arts were closely allied, I was soon struck by what seemedat the time the peculiar disadvantage under which architectslabour, never working directly with the object of their thought,always working at it through some intervening medium, almostalways the drawing, while painters and sculptors, who might spendsome time OIl preliminary sketches and maquettes, all ended upworking on the thing itself which, naturally, absorbed most of theirattention and effort. I still cannot understand, in retrospect, whythe implications of this simple observation had never been broughthome to me before. The sketch and maqueue are much closer topainting and sculpture than a drawing is to a building, and theprocess of development -- the formulation -- is rarely brought to aconclusion within these preliminary studies. Nearly always themost intense activity is the construction and manipulation of thefinal artefact, the purpose of preliminary studies being to give suf-ficient definition for final work to begin, not to provide a completedetermination in advance, as in architectural drawing. The result-ing displacement of effort and indirectness of access still seem tome to be distinguishing features of conventional architecture con-sidered as a visual art, but whether always and necessarily dis-advantageous is another question.

Two divergent definitions of the possibilities for architecture fol-low (rom the recognition of this displacement. We may choose to

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join architecture to the other visual arts more securely by insistingthat only that which the architect manipulates with his own handsis his work. It is all too clear that this new intimacy would firstrequire a divorce because, as we gained more direct access to thework, we would be relinquishing claim to the architecture thatnow flourishes within the political, economic and social order. Ifarchitecture wcre redefined in this way, it might become morescrupulous and less responsible, smaller and lesspredictable, worthless but better, as the hope would be, would it not, that in giving upgrandiose pretensions to represent and define the social world inboth its imaginative and active aspects (a project the unlikelihoodof which is comparable to the unlikelihood of compiling a legalcode that is also a good novel - an ambition that can only beconfounded in practice) architecture may, by contraction and con-centration, constitute itself anew? Well, this consolidation throughwithdrawal is already under way, and the problem is that it hasbecome exactly this: a consolidation, a restoration, a simple reloc-ation of investment within the region staked out long ago asbelonging to architecture.

What might have occurred in architecture, but did not, occurredoutside it, and indeed outside painting and sculpture, in so far asthese are categorically defined.' To insist on direct access to thework may only be to designate the drawing as the real repository ofarchitectural art. It may also be to reject drawing out of hand.

Of the works beyond the pale of architecture - earth art, per-formance, installations, constructions - which nevertheless dealwith recognizably architectural themes, several are remarkable notjust for the fact that they make little or no use of drawing, but forthe impossibility of their development through this medium.

The work of the Los Angeles artist James Turrell may be usedas an instance." The mainstay of Turrell's work through the late1960s and 1970s was the artificially lit room (Fig. 2). Most archi-tectural of these were a series of empty spaces which, if drawn up 15 7


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2. Installations at.CappStreet Project(lefi: Orca, right: Kono) ,San Francisco, byjamesTurrell, 1984.

within current architectural conventions, could only construed asindicative of witless simplicity. Their effect as installations cannone the less be completely overwhelming, Such directly apprc-hensible qualities as they possess have nothing to do with thcpresence of the artist's hands, feelings or personality. Fabricatedas they are with tremendous precision and parsimony, there is110 more trace of Turrell in these rooms than of Mies in the mostsparse of Jv 1 iesian interiors. Evoking gushes of transcendental mys-tification from some critics,' ) Turrell's work is, all the same, quiteeasy to understand and appreciate since it has to do with observersnot being able to believe their own cyes. You look into somethingwhich YOLIknow is another rectangular room with batteries offluorescent tubes on the back of the partition through which youpeer. YOLIcan se e how it works. You can put your hands into it. Youcan even see, standing out against the haze of illumination thatmoves from mauve through to pink, evidence of some carlininvestigator who took it into his head to climb into the illusion,

leaving his footprints in the otherwise spotless, spaceless interior.Even then, only by deduction can YOll maintain either the depth

of the room or the emptiness of it, for the light looks, if not solid,then incredibly dense, asif its luminosity would not so much revealthe image of anything thrust into it as devour it. Take a few stepsback and it is impossible to envisage its depth even by an act ofconscious will, a few more and the screen-like aperture throughwhich you looked seems to be standing out as a block of light inblatant contravention of what you know to be true. III The mostremarkable proper ties of Turrell's installations are local and nottransportable. The result of direct observation of the play of elec-tric light on white-painted surfaces and countless experiments insitu, they cannot be adequately illus trated or photographed aftertheir const ruction, and there is no way that even the vaguest hint oftheir effect could have originated through drawing. I n this respectTurre!l 's illuminated spaces of the 1970s and 1980s - O r c a, R a em a r,the Wedgewo r k series, etc. - were further removed from drawing andthe drawable than the earlier works in which shapes of light wereprojected onto walls through cut templates. Turrell made and pub-lished (and sold) preliminary drawings for some of these. One can-not imagine such drawings making any sense in the later works. Bycontinuing in the same medium while eliminating the projector,Turrell was effectively taking his work outside the range of thedrawing, for it was their projected shape that made works likeAf rum drawable (Fig. 3).

The drawing has intrinsic limitations of reference. Not all thingsarchitectural (and Turrell's rooms are surely architectural) can bearrived at through drawing. There must also be a penumbra ofqualities that might only be seen darkly and with great difficultythrough it. If judgement is that these qualities in and around theshadow line are more interesting than those laid forth clearly indrawing, then such drawing should be abandoned, and anotherway of working instituted.


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Returning momentarily to the recent ly vaunted status of archi-tectural drawing within the schools : to regard a drawing as a workof art as we usually understand it is to regard it as something tobe consumed by the viewer, so that his rapacious appetite for for-mulated experience may be assuaged. Any further use attributableto it is incidental and detrimental in so far as it may reduce its valueas food for consciousness. We have witnessed, over the past fifteenyears, what we think of as a rediscovery of the architectural draw-ing. This rediscovery has made drawings more consumable , butthis consumability has most often been achieved by redefining theirrepresentational role as similar to that of early twentieth-centurypaintings, in the sense of being less concerned with their relation towhat they represent than with their own constitution. And so thedrawings themselves have become the repositories of effects andthe focus of attention, while the transmutation that occurs betweendrawing and building remains to a large extent an enigma.

The second possibility flows directly from this. If one way of al-tering the definition of architecture is to insist on the architect'sdirect involvement, either calling the drawing 'art' or pushing itaside in favour of unmediated construct ion, the other would be touse the transitive, commutative properties of the drawing to bettereffect. This latter option - which I call the unpopular option - Iwish to discuss in this article.The two options, one emphasizing the corporeal properties ofthings made, the other concentrating on the disembodied prop-erties in the drawing, are diametrically opposed: in the one corner;involvement, substantiality, tangibility, presence, immediacy, directaction; in the other, disengagement, obliqueness, abstraction, medi-ation and action at a distance. They are opposed but not neces-sarily incompatible. It may be that, just as some fifteenth-centurypainters (Masaccio, Piero, Mantegna, Pinturicchio, Leonardo) com-bined the pithy irregularities of naturalism with the compositionalregularities of perspective construction, so architects might con-

I~.I3. Preparatory drawingfor Aj i 7Wl . byJamcsTurrdl.I%7.

.ceivably combine, in such a way as to enhance both, the abstractand the corporeal aspects of their work. Instead, they stand nextto each other, in an unpropitious sort of way, as alternative candi-dates. Argumentative opposition is usually st ifling. A tug of warworks better between rugby teams than between opposed conceptsor practices, yet this is the way we insist on playing games. I wouldlike to avoid this partisanship, so much more effective in drowningout sense than articulating ' i t , but it should be said that in thepresent climate the tendency is generally to place the abstract andthe instrumental within the orbit of a suspect, culpable profession-alism, al lowing the direct and experiential presence only within acovert architecture which can never be revealed fully in the former,and which shows up as so many sporadic episodes of resistance. Inconsequence the direct and experient ial appears far more ethicaland far more interesting, far more at risk and far more real than theindirect and abstract approach. This can only be acknowledged astrue to the degree that the varieties of indirectness, abstraction and

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'l. The o,'!i"r '1! J " " " l m g , byKarl F Schinkel, 1830.

4. Til' ( J r iy j " ~ / {"'JIIlil/g, byDavid 1 \ 1 1 . 1 1 1 , 171~.

instrumentality found in practice are puerile, obstructive and dull,which on the whole they are, as also are the artistic pretensions ofthe schools . A contest between two kinds of dullness cannot be ex-pected to come to much, even if it does ensure fairness.

A distinction might be made between the object of drawing aspractised in architecture and drawing as practised traditionally inWestern art. A story of the or igin of drawing, derived from Plinythe Elder" and recycled into the visual arts as subject-matter in theeighteenth century (like all stories of origins, far more revealing ofthe time of its telling than of the time of which it tells), shows thisup nicely. The story is of Diboutades tracing the shadow of herdeparting lover. If we compare versions by two neo-classical artists,one exclusively a painter , the other better known as an architect,some indicative differences become apparent.

David Allan's T he O r ig in q f P a in ti ng of 1773 (Fig. 4)shows the cou-ple in an interior, the dressed stone wall of which provides a planesurface upon which Diboutades traces the shadow made by an oillamp, placed at the same level as the sitter's head, on a ledge doseat hand. Karl F . Schinkel's unusual variation on this theme waspainted in 1830 (Fig. 5). Significantly, and in contrast to most othertreatments (as well as departing from Pliny), the architect chose,not an architectural interior for his reconstruction of the event, buta pastoral scene with shepherds and shepherdesses." In place ofthe worked surface of stone, a naturally exposed face of rock. Inplace of the lamp, the light of the sun. Both paintings, true to theoriginal s tory, show drawing as a function of projection, and bothshow quite clearly the combination of elements required: a sourceof light, a subject upon which itplays, a surface behind the subject,and something to trace with. Schinkel, however, shows the mini-mum of material artifice needed to accomplish this. To judge from 16:1his painting, the first human mark put on nature might well have

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been the line of charcoal on the rock, while in Allan's the accoutre-ments of civilization were already inplace to provide the necessarycircumstances for this late, charming and reflective accessory. Soit is perhaps equally pertinent that, while Diboutades herselfperforms the task in Allan's painting, it has been delegated to amuscular shepherd in Schinkel's.

The artifice shown by Schinkel is that of an already organizedsocial structure of deference in which is expressed also the dis-tinction between thought and labour, a distinction absent in themore intimate surroundings of Allan's painting. In Schinkel'sversion drawing precedes building, in Allan's it follows from it. Ofthe two, it was the architect who was obliged to show the firstdrawing in a pre-architectural setting, because without drawingthere could be 110 architecture, at least no classical architectureconstructed on the lines of geometrical definition. In Schinkel'swork, drawing- is, from the beginning, a divided activity, resolvableinto a prior act of thought and a consequent manual undertakingwhich the arrival of architecture would duplicate, on a much largerscale, as the difference between design and construction. In thisinstance the man is servant to the woman: she conceives; he does.

At least as important in the symptomatology is the manner oflighting. Allan uses a lamp, that is, a local, point source of illumi-nation from which issue divergent rays. Schinkel uses the sun, thatis, a source so remote that its rays have to be regarded as travellingparallel to one another past the earth. The two kinds of light cor-respond to the two types of projection, based on divergent pro-jectors, which played a crucial part in painting through thedevelopment of perspective; and parallel projection, based onparallel projectors, which has played an equally crucial, though farless well-recognized role in architecture through the developmentof orthographic projection. The painter's version lessremote, moreintimate, less differentiated; the architect 's more remote, public,insistent on differentiation. Just as we would expect, perhaps, but

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the specific expression of these tendencies in Schinkel betrays aprofessional proclivity, giving drawing a priority, potency and gen-erality not evident in Allan's rendition.

The most notable difference of all, however, is registered onlyin an oblique way in the two paintings. This has to do with thesubject-matter of the artist's work. In painting, until well intothe twentieth century, the subject was always, as in the story ofDiboutades, taken from nature. It may have suffered vast ideal-ization, distortion or transmogrification, but the subject, or some-thing like it, is held to exist prior to its representation. This is nottrue of architecture, which is brought into existence throughdrawing. The subject-matter (the building or space) will exist afterthe drawing, not before it. I could list various riders and quali-fications to this principle, which may be called the principle ofreversed directionality in drawing, to show' that it may occasionally becomplicated, but these would not alter the fact that, statisticallyspeaking, if I may put itthat way, it gives a good account. We mightsurmise, then, that the absence of an architectural setting inSchinkel's painting is a recognition of this reversal, by which thedrawing must come before the building, of solitt le consequence toAllan the painter, who follows Pliny, innocently imagining thatarchitecture developed to classical maturity without its aid.

Drawing in architecture is not done after nature, but prior toconstruction; itis not so much produced by reflection on the realityoutside the drawing, as productive of a reality that will end upoutside the drawing. The logic of classical realism is stood on itshead, and it isthrough this inversion that architectural drawing hasobtained an enormous and largely unacknowledged generativepower: by stealth. For, when I say unacknowledged, I mean un-acknowledged in principles and theory. Drawing'S hegemony overthe architectural object has never really been challenged. All thathas been understood is its distance from what it represents, henceits periodic renunciation ever since Philip Webb rejected the whims

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of paper architecture while continuing to draw prodigiously. IIThere arc all sor ts of curious reminders as to the subliminal accep-tance, beneath the level of words, of its singular priority withinthe art of architecture, if art it be, such as in architectural portraits,where, as a rule with but few exceptions, and as in Willison's por-trait of Robert Adam (Fig. 6), they are portrayed with their draw-ings, as are sculptors with their sculptures and painters wi th theircanvases, estranged, (or posterity, from the results of their labour,the clients more usually retaining the privilege of being portrayedwith the building. IIItwould take much more than an article to reveal the full extent

of drawing's intrusive role in the development of architectural(arms, or to investigate the way in which it creates a translatorymedium of this or that consistency. Three instances must suffice togive some idea of what we are deal ing with.

The importance of orthographic projection has al ready been al-luded to. Although the geometric principle of parallel projectionwas understood in late antiquity, Claudius Ptolemy having des-cribed it in a work on sundials around AD 300,15evidence of its usein architectural drawing is not found until the four teenth century.The earliest more or less consistent orthographic projection of abuilding to have survived is a large, detailed elevation of theCampanile of S. Maria del Fiore, preserved in the Opera delDuomo in Siena and thought to be a copy of an original by Giotto,produced alter 1334 (Fig. 7).'6 To say that this was the first instanceis not deny the existence of many drawings of a similar sort -plans, elevations and sections - going back to the second millen-nium Be. But the Campanile drawing required two imaginativesteps never before taken together, as far as I know. First, a com-pletely abstract conception of projector lines;" secondly, an abilityto conceive of the thing being represented (the surface of thebuilding) as n o t equivalent to the surface of representation- notquite. The corner bastions of the tower, with their chamfered sides,

G. R o b er t l Id a m , hyG. WilliMJII. c. 177075.

and the diagonal Gothic windows above are drawn obliquely butwith no indication of perspectival recession. In other detailedmedieval drawings that have survived, orthographic relations areheld for all the parts of a facade that are frontal and close to beingcoplanar, but not in surfaces receding at an angle from the pictureplane." In other words, the orthography applied only if the build-ing itself was identified by the draughtsman as sufficiently sheet-like and frontal. To maintain effectively - as did the author of thecampanile drawing - the relations between an array of invisibleparallel projectors, a plane onto which they arc projected at rightangles, and other surfaces at various angles to the plane ofprojection required, at that time, insight of a different order; agood reason, perhaps, for accepting, in the absence of firmer docu-mentary evidence, Gioseffi's contested ascription, 19 since it is ac-knowledged that as a painter Giotto gave to the presentation ofpictorial space far greater coherence than his predecessors.A comparison of the Campanile drawing with the highly devol- lG 7


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7. Elevation or projrrtlor the Campanile ofS, Maria del Flore) Florence,Giolto copyist. alier- J 33,1.

8. ggyptian drawingboard . Lef t-hand areainscr ibed around 1400 Be .

oped proto-orthography of ancient Egypt, so wellpreserved on a drawing board of around 1400 Benow in the British Museum (Fig. 8), reveals notonly greater reliance on outline in the Egyptianexample and the compensatory flattening of thefigure across the shoulders, preparing it for re-embodiment in the fossilized compressed form ofa bas-relief, but also reliance on a manual activity

the sculptor's chisel cutting straight into the faceof the cubic stone 011 which the profile was to beinseribed- to make the projectors tangible. Pr iorto the abstractions of orthographic projection,projectors could be kept in mind through thethoroughly physical realization given them in thefabrication of reliefs and sculptures."

Another choice presents itself: two quite diller-ent possibilities attendant on the use of architec-

tural drawing are discernible in the Campanile drawing. It couldrest on the simple and primitive expedient of assuming near equi-valence between the surface of the drawing and the mural surfacei t represents . Through the miracle of the flat plane, l ines transferwith alacrity from paper to stone and the wall becomes a petrifieddrawing, inscribed or embossed to lesser or greater degree. Muchof this ancient identity remains with us to this day, carried, throughclassicism, into the professional pastime we call implying depth. Toimply depth within a solid three-dimensional body isto conceive ofit as being made up of flat surfaces modulated within a thin layeryet giving the impression of being much deeper. It is to attempt tomake virtual space and real space at one and the same time and inthe same place - a sophisticated idea utilizing simple technicalmeans. In Palladia's sketch of the S. Petronio facade (Fig. 9) theclose alignment (but not quite identity) between drawing andbuilding is at once obvious. This is the kind of architecture thatso much fascinated Alberti: a massive, monumental architecture 16 9


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9. Facade drawing forS. Petronio) llologna,by Andrea Palladio,1572-9.

engendered from the etiolated, reduced, bodiless elements of ' linesand angles which comprise and form thc face of the building';" anarchitecture made through drawing and made of the same speciesof illusion as is to be found in drawing. For into i ts patterns of linesstopping and starling we project, by a well-understood reflex ofoverdeterrnination," a deeper space. And injust the same way weproject into the solid buildings of Alberti, Bramante, Raphael,Giul io Romano and Palladio, borne along by the same absorbingreflex of overdetermination, the illusions of drawing.

I feel as uncomfortable discussing implied depth, which hasbecome one of architecture's most hallowed shibboleths, as I dowhen wearing someone else's suit. It i s nevertheless necessary todo so, if only to point out how the pursuit of this particular illusionhas retarded architectural vision by keeping it res tricted withinthe confines of particular conventions. Yet to assert that these con-ventions were historically uninterest ing or fruitless would be toadopt an easy and false posture of disdain. In fact they were

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responsible for establishing the drawing as a viable medium, allow-ing the architect to spill his imagination onto it, sure in the know-ledge that much of the effect would travel.

Only with this reassurance of sufIicient affinity between paperand wall could the drawing have become the locus of the archi-tect's activity, capable of absorbing all his attentions and thentransporting his ideas into buildings without undue disfigurement.Still, if i ts advantage was the ease of translation, its disadvantagestcrnmed Irom the same source: too close a l ikeness, too cautious aliaison, too much bound up in the elaboration of Irontalities.

It may seem obvious that only when fighting this tendency,seeing outside the drawing technique, his imagination soaringabove the confines of the medium, can an architect create fullyembodied three-dimensional forms. Obvious it most certainlyseems, because everyone believes it to be true. It is also demon-strably false. I come now to the second possibility at tendant on theusc of parallel projection. The assurance and relative precis ionwith which the splayed surfaces were projectively determined inthe Campanile drawing indicates that the draughts man did notneed to imprison JOHns within orthography. Although the corres-pondence of frontal surface and sheet was still dominant, there isa t least a hint that through the rigour of the technique, not despiteit, the represented surfaces might prise themselves from the surfaceof representation, floating free from their captivity in paper - no,attempts at vivid phrasing can do so much damage. Rigorous pro-jection does not free anything, not in the sense of emancipation.Things are just made more manipulable within the scope of thedrawing. l-or any material object to obtain freedom is for itshandler to lose control of it, and that docs not happen.

Think of a sheet of paper sprouting thousands of imaginaryorthogonals from its surface. In conventional architectural draw-ing, conservative and fearful of losing conformity, they would notneed to be very 101lg before meeting up with the edges of the

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imaginary scaled-down surface behind the paper to which the linesof the drawing correspond, and, as in the Egyptian sculptor'sclevational drawing, they are often identified with the direction ofincision into the stone Of, more recently, with the direction ofmultiplied layering in service of phenomenal transparency; ineither event, they act as guide rails into the blindness of an as yetunrealized dimension short ones securely attached at both ends.What if they were longer and more abstract? Would it strain thearchitect 's power of visualization? Would it endanger his control?Would itjeopardize translation?

The next example I would like to consider involves one detail of asmall building by Philibert de l'Orme. De l'Orme, a truly fascin-ating subject, did more to wrest orthographic projection fromthe pre~?minantly painterly usage of earlier practitioners (Piero,Raphael, perhaps Giotto) than anyone, and his work deserves bel-ter elucidation than I am able to give it in this article. For the sakeof the argument, however, this one incident will have to elo.

In the dome of the Royal Chapel at Anet, a chateau west of Parisenlarged for Diane de Poi tiers by de l'Orme after 1547, can be seena net of lines, not exactly ribs and not exactly coffers, neither spiralnor radial (Fig. 10) . They arc nevertheless laid out and carvedwith unusual precision. Moreover, their properties, hard at first todescribe in stylistic, geometric or structural terms, are directlyaccessible to vision. Most noticeable of all i s the continuous ex-pansion of lozenges, rib thicknesses and angles of intersection asthey extend down from the oculus towards the base of the dome.The effect is of a coherent diffusion and enlargement or, con-versely, of concentration, remoteness and rotary accelerationtowards the lantern. There has never been anything quite like itand, although there are similarly patterned apse heads (as in theportico of Peruzzi's Palazzo Massimo, Rome), Roman coffers (as in

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10. Royal Chapel, AI1(' I,b y P hilib er t d e I'Onnc,

t J'n :12. View into dome.

the Temple of Venus in Rome outside the Domus Aurea) andpavements (as in Michelangelo's Campidoglio pavement, possiblydesigned in 1538, though not laid tillmuch later), which de l 'Ormecould have known about, there is one crucial difference. While allthese others were determined metrically, de I'Orrnc's was deter-mined projectively. We know this because he tells us so:Ccux qui vourlrout prendre la peinc, coguoistront cc que ie dy par la voutespheriquc, laquelle i'ay faict faire cn la Chapelle du chasteau d'Annct.avecqucs plusieurs sortes de branches rernpantcs au contraire l'un del'autrc, & laisant par mesme moyen leurs compartiments qui sont aplomb& perpcndiculc, (k~~\15 lc plan & pave de ladicte Chappelle."

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This statement suggests that the pattern in the paving iss imilar tothat in the dome, and since this is exactly what we find on the floorof And and since de l 'Orme has specified perpendicular lines thatproject into each other, we might let the case rest, as indeed hiscommentators have."

Words are such powerful things, and when they correspond tovisual impressions - the floor looks like the dome - they mayreasonably stand as proof. Strange to say, this was all an elaboratehoax by de I'Orrne, or at least I cannot think of any other ex-planation for why he should have gone to such lengths to cover histracks," More interesting than whether it was a hoax or not is whyno one noticed the difference. And far more interesting than eitheris the method he did use to derive the criss-cross ing curves underthe dome.

One reason it was not recognized is that all the drawings made ofthe chapel from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century aremanifestly incorrect , unable always to transfer the tracery of thedome, or even the pattern of the floor, without gross bungling(Fig. 11), though the rest of each of the drawings is quite com-petent." Yet a look at the patterns in the dome and on the floor ofthe actu;;l building would be enough to convince anyone of theimpossibility of de I'Orrne's claim. Simply count the number ofintersections along one of the eighteen longitudinal lines of thedome, and then count the number of intersections along a cor-responding radius on the floor. In the dome there are eight, on thefloor six. This alone is conclusive proof that no parallel projectioncould map the one into the other. De l'Orrnc's deception was of apecul iar and uncharacteristic sort, because he was doing far morethan he owned to, not less.

Another aspect of the difficulty of seeing through the claim isthefugitive character of our third term, the drawing, and its virtual ab-sence from our account of the making of architecture. Invoking it,I shall now try to reconstruct the procedure adopted by de l'Ormcfor making the tracery of curves."

Put out of mind, for the moment, the floor, and look only at thedome. First, notice how the curved ribs approach the oculus ring,glance across it, and return, making eighteen continuous loopsaround it (in fact the stone wreath around the oculus overlaps the

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lines of tangency - see postscript at the end of this article). Thennotice how the returning ends of the same loops, as they descend,meet at points along the equator of the dome (obscured by thecornice in the photograph). \ ,y'emay then think of the network asmade up of eighteen identical teardrop-shaped rings eccentricallyplaced on the surface of the hemispheres as if spun round its ver-tical axis. These are obviously complex, three-dimensional curves,neither circular nor ellipt ical. The most useful clue so far is in thelact that they make closed loops. How could these complex curvesbe defined on the spherical surface with such precision? It wascertainly 110tthrough the expedient of dividing the: hemisphereitself into rings of latitude and lines of longitude and theninterpolating diagonal curves - the procedure adopted, as far as Ican tell , by every other archi tect faced with a similar problem" - asno handy gradation or latitudes could have procured tangencyaround the oculus. On the other hand, de l'Orme possessed an un-usual and, within architecture , perhaps uniquely vivid compre-

17 6

12. Suggested plan fort he t ra ce ry o f t he domeof the Royal Chapel,Anet, drawn by theauthor.

I I . P la n an d perspectives ec tio n o f th e R O Y4 i1Chapel, Anet. Engravingbyj-A. du Cerceau.

hension of projective relations, as can be seen from the P re m ie r T o m ede l 'Archi t ec t u re that he published in 1567,29 packed with abstrusestereotomic diagrams involving projections of nameless exoticcurvatures. One of the remarkable features of these is that everylas t one has its origin in a circle. But, as the circ les are collapsed,elongated, ramped then projected onto cones, cylinders or spheresat glancing angles , they metamorphose into thoroughly plastic,volatile shapes, commensurable only through the procedure ofprojection itself. This is the other significant clue.

Is there, then, a format of ci rcles on a plane surface that would,through parallel projection onto a hemisphere, transform intoa nest of teardrops with the requisite number of intersections?The answer is yes, and it turns out to be the simplest possible ar-rangement: an annular envelope of circles (Fig. 12).This annularenvelope, I suggest, is the real plan of the dome. Each one of thecircles within the envelope would produce, under projection,another closed curve, but of quite different shape. The easiest way

II III

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penetrating ability to visualize spatial relations. This ability wasdoubtless enhanced by the practice of projective geometry, but notpurchased with it. Still, it would be as crude to insist on the archi-tect's unfettered imagination as the true source of forms, as itwould to portray the drawing technique alone as the fount of for-mal invention. The point isthat the imagination and the techniqueworked well together, the one enlarging the other, and that theforms in question - and there are many more, not only in del'Orrnc's work, but in French architecture through to the end ofthe eighteenth century could not have arisen other than throughprojection. A study of de l 'Orme's usc of parallel projection showsdrawing expanding beyond the reach of unaided imagination.

This, then, was architectural drawing in a new mode, moreabstract in appearance, more penetrating in effect, capable of amore unsettling, less predictable interaction with the conventionalinventory of forms of which monumental buildings are normallycomposed, destructive also of metric proportionality, the foun-dation of classical architecture (seebelow), and suggestive of a per-verse epistemology in which ideas are not put in things by art, butreleased I i ' O I l 1 them. Accordingly, to fabricate would be to makethought possible, not to delimit it by making things represent theirown origin (as tiresome a restriction in art as in social life}

The pattern of the dome ribs at Anet does have a provenance. Asomewhat dubious iconography may even be sketched out. Acker-man, in his study of Michelangelo's Campidoglio pavement, founda medieval astronomical chart in a similar pattern of twelve rings,indicating lunar revolutions during the course of a year. It is poss-ible, though by no means certain, that an investigation of sourceswould reveal links between the solar and lunar charts, otherdiagrams of this form, the Carnpidoglio pavement and Anet." Itmight even divulge an informing symbolism that would explain the

HlO increased number of rings at Anet. Although this has not yet beendone, let us assume that the quest for symbolic meaning would

yield persuasive results. Where would this symbolism reside, if notin the envelope of circles, which was really no more than anexpendable piece of formwork for the transfigured phenomenon ofthe dome? Would we not be forced to concede, in the circum-stances, that the symbolism was a mere ingredient, lost in form, notcarried in it?

What comes out is not always the same as what goes in. Archi-tecture has nevertheless been thought of as an attempt at maxi-mum preservation in which both meaning and likeness arctransported from idea through drawing to building with minimumloss. This is the doctrine of essentialism. Such essentialism washeld to be paradigmatic throughout the classical period. It washeld to in architectural texts, but not always in architecture. Thenotable thing about the working technique used by de l'Orme,which could only be written about from within the limits of archi-tecturaljheory as a way of moving truth hum here to there, was inthe enchanting transfigurations it performed. Curiously, the plia-bility of forms was made possible by a homogenization of space.Orthographic projection isthe language translator's dream. With-in its axioms the most complex figures may be moved at will intoperfectly congruent formations anywhere else, yet this rigidlydefined homogeneity made distortion measurable. Itwas this capa-bility that de l 'Orme exploited.

Orthographic projection played its part as one of numeroustechniques used byartists and architects to counteract the rampantinstrumentality of essentialism," which would have art be a formof haulage, transporting incorporeal ideas into corporeal expres-sions. And there is an amusing irony in the prospect of the rigidbunch of spectral parallels along which lines were pushed inorthographic projection, disturbing the rigidly graded conceptualspace through which ideas were pushed into things.

The theme of this article is translation, and I am now talkingabout transportation. There are all those other identically prefixed

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l B : . !

nouns too: transfiguration, transformation, transition, transmi-gration, transfer, transmission, transmogrification, transmutation,transposition, transubstantiation, t ranscendence, any of whichwould sit happily over the blind spot between the drawing and itsobject, because we can never be quite certain, before the event,how things will travel and what will happen to them on the way. Wemay, though, like de 1'Orme, try to take advantage of the situationby extending their journey, maintaining sufficient control in transitso that more remote destinations may be reached. I retain thisinane parable, as it gives some idea of what I believe to be thelargely unrecognized possibility within drawing. One infidelitydocs stand out, however: these destinations are not like exotic, far-away places waiting to be discovered; they are merely potentialitiesthat might be brought into existence through a given medium.But always standing in the way arc the pieties of essentialism andpersistence (thc confusion of longevity with profundity). Whatevermodernism's much ventilated destructive achievements, it made nomark on these. In the region of drawing they operate eitherthrough insistence on a true and irreducible expressiveness, or in-sistence on perspectival realism, or in the demand that only puregeometric forms or ratios be employed.

As regards the last, numerous analyses have been published,from the seventeenth century to the present day, divulging thesecrets of the world's greatest works of architecture in the presenceor underlying proportions. Without denying either the presence ofor the need for proportionality in architecture, attention might bedirected to certain misconceptions. Not all proportionality isreducible to ratio, yet it is only as ratio that it has been admittedinto architectural theory. A ratio is a comparison between twonumbers, as I' - 1 2 or : < ; , . Since numbers, having no tangible realitythemselves, must be wilfully pushed into things, we have to ask howratio call be made sensible in architecture; the answer leads back toour point of departure, the drawing.

While the simplest means of expressing a ratio outside of num-ber is as the division of a line, the second most simple expression isas an area, length to breadth. In this surface-making form, ratioresides in architecture. Ratios thus expressed fill a sheet like LordNorth filled a chair: squarely. And it has to be a sheet of paper withno rucks or folds, and i t has to be viewed frontally, otherwise theproportionality degenerates. The less Euclidean the plane, or themore oblique the point of view, the more degenerate the form.Nevertheless, as long as the surface of the building maintainssufficient identity with the sheet of paper, proportional ratios maybe transferred with little loss. The very architects who used thisapproximate identity to such advantage, from Alberti to Palladioand later, were preoccupied with establishing a canon of pro-portions. They were also keenly aware of the dangers that lurkedin the third dimension, ready to degrade the beauty constructed sopainstakingly in the flat. 35 But, although this was a perplexingdifficulty, it was in accord with the entropie account of value givenin the doctrine of essent ialism. Things were supposed to degradeas they moved from idea to object. It was a difficulty easy toarticulate in theory, whereas the transfiguring capability in thedrawing was a potential advantage that was not .

To judge from the nostalgic and at the same time dogmaticcharacter of much twentieth-century literature on architecturalproportion, all that has been well and truly 'lost' is any sense of theintrinsic limitation of the idea, one remarkable demonstra tion ofthis regained innocence being the analysis supplied by MatilaGhyka of Helen Wills's face to prove that her beauty was foundedin the golden ratio. jG The analysis isnot of the rotund, undulating,folded, punctured surface we call a face, but of quite another sur-facc, onto which the face was flattened by the process of photo-graphy (Fig. 14).I present this as an inverted parody of de l 'Orme'sprocedure at Anet. The existing, alluring, complex curvature ofWills's face is projected through a camera lens onto a fiat surface

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14. Three stages o r thep r op o rt io n a l a n a ly s is o rHelen \Vilb,'s ran', fromIf. Nomine (fahy ~latilaG h y ka , 1 9 31 .

upon which is then inscribed an unprepossessing visor of linesconstructed from basie elements of plane geometry. Start from theend and work backwards, and you get the spun fretwork in theAnet chapel dome. I n Ghyka's analysis, basic plane geometryended up as a foundation; at Anet it wasjust the beginning.

De l'Onne's was not the only way; there were others, equallyefficacious. A study of other projects that ruptured the equivalencebetween drawing and building - Borromini 's S. Carlo aile QuattroFontane or Le Corbusier's Ronchamp - would show architectsworking quite differently though perhaps, in both instances, morein accord with our prejudice that architects of genius (the horsetormented by its bridle, the caged lion, to use Borromini's bestia limages of himself]" must wrest themselves free from the restrictionof geometrical drawing rather than use it. While I have no argu-ment with this point of view p er se , it has lef t us insensitive to thepotencyjhat has existed - still exists - in the precis ion of the draw-ing, which is also capable of disengaging architecture from thosesame stolid conformities of shape, propriety and essence, but fromwithin the medium normal ly used to enforce them.

Two current advertisements: a TV commercial for householdpaint which shows the frenetic and messy antics of a barbarousGlaswegian artist whose studio is all the while being painted spot-less white by a meticulous, imperturbable decorator; a newspaperad for the Youth Opportunities Programme that shows a lout spray-ing 'Spurs' onto a wall, later transfigured into a white-coated ap-prentice painting a trim little nameplate for the same football club.Here isthe absurd public prejudice in favour of neatness: neatnessas a sign of civilization. There isa counter-prejudice, a reaction, acultured expiation no less limiting, really, which operates in favourof the unpremeditated and unregulated as signs of art and feeling,Neither will do. Yet there issomething about the way people work.Itwould be possible, I think, to write a history of Western archi-

tecture that would have little to do with either style or signification,IBS

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1 5. ., h e A nc ie n t q / Days ,by William Blake.Frontispiece to Europe:, ( P r o ph e cy , 1794.

concentrating instead on the manner of working. A large part ofthis history would bc concerned with the gap between drawing andbuilding. In it the drawing would be considered not so much a workof art or a truck for pushing ideas from place to place, but as thelocale of subterfuges and evasions that one way or another getround the enormous weight of convention that has always beenarchitecture's greatest security and at the same time its greatestliability This is one of my ambitions: the history of Blake's ar-chitcct geometer has been written a hundred times (Fig. 15); Iwould like to write the history of Giacinta Brandi 's (Fig. 1 6 ) , : l A not,I hasten (0 add, because she is so young and pretty, but because ofthe uncharacteris tic expression on her face and in her posture. It isthe kind or expression normally reserved in seventeenth-centurypainting Jar prostitutes and courtesans. The picture's subject isuncertain, its tit le a modern supposition resting on the fact that she

I ( H i holds dividers, nothing more. One might ask what such a figure isexpected (0 do with the instrument she shows us.

16. L 'ArcJ ll k l l ura (?) ,by Ciacinto Brandi.seventeenth century


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POSTSCRlP'rI wrote this article before visiting Anet and seeing the dome andfloor or the chapel. It seems to be as I described it, with the ex-ception of one detail which had escaped my notice in the photo-graphs avai lable to me. Aller my return, another photograph - onethat I had taken showed this up. It is easier to discern projectiverelations between two such surfaces in photographs than in thebuilding itse lf, where they cannot both be held in view at the sametime, and it is only the recollection of apparent similarity thatcarries the idea of their relation within the building. (Given thedilliculty of direct comparison, de l'Orme's modification of pro-jective equivalence to make the two surfaces look more alike is allthe more effective and all the more artful.) The anomaly in myaccount of the chapel dome concerns the relation of the eighteenribs looping round th~ lantern ring. I had thought that they passacross the edge of the lantern ring tangentially and seen from thefloor they give every appearance of doing so --but they do not. Infact the lantern ring cuts a little way into the edge of the pattern ofintersections, el iminating the final circle of half lozenges. Evi-dently this was another of de 'l'Ormc's modifications of projectiveequivalence, because the marble inlay on the floor does includethis part of the pattern. It is possible that this particular modi-fication had less to do with the forging of apparent likenessbetween dome and floor than with the technical difficulty ofcutting such acute angles in the more friable stone of the dome.

ISH

NOTESI . F rom the Latin tmns la t i o , l oremove or car ry f rom one place to another .2. Lawrence Weschler, S ee in g is F or ge tt in g t he N am e of the Thing O ne Sm (Berkeley,

1982). A study of Robert Irwin.3. Michael Baxandall, Giot to an d the Orators: H u m an is t O b se ri er s o f P ain tin g i n I ta ly a nd

the D i sc o ve r y o f P i ct o ri a l Compo s i t i o n 1350-1450 (Oxford, 1971).4. T.J . Clark, T he Im ag e o f the P eo ple (London, 1973); T h e A b s o lu t e B o u rg e o is (London,

19 72 ); T he P ain tin g o f M od ern L y e (London, 19M).5. Norman Bryson, 11'&l'd& Image: French Pai! l tmg 'i/' the A r u i . / I , I l R~l { ime (Cambriclge,

1 98 1) ; V is io n & P ai nti ng : T he L og ic q [ the Gaze (London, 1983).6. Bennington College, Vermunt.7. The most s timulating account of this s lipping-over of the categorical boundaries

isRosalind Krauss's 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field', October 8 (1979); also in:Krauss, Th e Or ig in a li ty o f t heAuan t -Garde a n d O i li er M o d er n is t My t h s (BOSIOI1,9115).

8. Other s might in clude Walter de Maria, Robert Irwin, Go rdon Malta-Clark,DonaldJudd, Robert Smithson, Michae l Heize r, Chr is to , Robert Morr is , DanF lavin , DeWain Valent ine, Mario Merz , Juhn Atken, Sarah Bradpiccc, DavidMach, , a.ndso on. The quest ion wi th these a rt ist s i snot whethe r they usc draw-ings (some do), but how they use them and why.Above all , the quest ion is to whatextent the drawing, if used as a means of investigation, imparts s ignificant prop-e rti es to the th ing i t represents, Many of the works of the a rt ist s l is ted , I ,h ieh aregeometric and apparently reducible to drawing, arc not , s ince Lheypossess prop-erties of substance and luminosity which, though they Illay be mimicked indrawing, cannot be developed in investigative drawing. To imagine that they canisa fruit less i llus ion now being fostered in architectural schoo Is.

9. This is true, for instance, of Kay 1.arson's otherwise excellent review of Turrell 'sWhitney retrospective in A rt Forum,january 1981,1'1" 30-33.

10. I am conscious of how similar my description is to Barbara Haskell 's descriptionof L a a r , another of Turrell 's installat ions , which appeared in A rt in A m e r i c a , May1981,1'1' .90-99. I knew of Haskell 's art icle before I saw Turrell 's work lor myselfand even read i tout in lectures. I then made a ll c flort lowri te about thi s type ofinstallat ion differently , hut found I could not do so to any effect. This iscertainlyan indication of my indebtedness to Barbara Haskell. It may also indicate aninescapable consi stency in Turrel l' s work . See abo Kay Larson, op. c it ., andSuzaan Boettger, Ar t Forum , September 1981, pp. 118-1 'l.

I I. Pl iny the Elder , Natura l History, vol. xxxv, para. 151. Sec also K.Jex-Blakc, Th eH id er P li ny 's C ha pt er s o n t he H is to ry o f A rt (London, 1896). The s tory adapted by t lu:painte rs was recorded byPliny asof the origin of model l ing (Diboutadcs' lather; apotter, afterwards t il ling ill the outline of the head with clay to make a rel ief).

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12. Schinkel's paint ing isuncharacterist ic within the genre. Although it is acceptedas illustrating the Dihoutades s tory , in which Pliny describes the shadow lallingon a wall , t he complete absence of a rchi tecture is , a s far Iknow, unique, exceptlor an early variant by Joachim von Sandrart, 1675. Schinkel seems to haveconllated the Pliny anecdote (awoman as the inventor) with Sandrart' s shepherdtracing the shadow of his sheep on the ground. See K R Schink~l:Arihuekiur,Mnlerei, Kim!(~ntJerbe (Berlin, 1981), catalogue entry 207a, p. 267; and RobertRosenblum, 'The Origin of Paint ing' , Ar t Bulietin, Dec. 1957, pp. 279-90.

13. This p.l1' l,cluxwas pointed out by Lethaby, one of Webb's greatest admirers. SeeW . R . Lethaby, l 'hilif} IYebb an d his J 1 f o r k (London, 1979), pp. 117-25. 'There a retwo ideals' , he writes, ' sound, honest, human building, or bri ll iant drawings ofexhibition designs.'

14 .A dist inction has to be made between those por trai ts of a rti st s in which the toolrepresented the occupatiou (paintbrush, chisel or dividers) and those in whichthe work itself was sliowu.

15. G.T Toolruer , 'Claudius Ptolemy', in Dictionary q[ Sc im t t ji c B io graph y , edited byGillespie, vul . xi, PI' . IBb if.; and Claudii Ptolemaei, L i be r d e A n a lemma te (Rome,1%2), which includes many diagrams.

Is. Decio Gioselli, CioL lo Archuetto (Milan, 1%3), pp. 82-4. Close inspection revealssome minor inconsistencies in project ion, For example, the facets of the cornerbastions that arc decorated with squares of dark marble inlay arc shown with thevertical strips of inlay registering the same width in frontal and oblique planes. Tna few of the lower panel s, however , the proportional reduc tion on the obl iquesurfaces was shown correctly.

190

17. I t i s int erest ing tha t the SIOryof the orig in of Greek geometry, a lso included inPliny, isvery similar to that of the origin of drawing. It tel ls or Thales finding theheight of an Egyptian pyramid by measuring the length of its shadow on theground and comparing it to the shadow made at the same time of day by asmaller vertical of known height. To recognize the formal equivalence betweenthese two things requires, asMeserve points out, imaginary lines to be conceivedasjoining the tops of the verticals with the ends of their shadows on the ground,thus inaugurat ing a geometry of abstract l ines . The impercipience in the story ,claiming that the abstract l ine was discovered ill the measurement of a building,the const ruct ion of which would have requi red tha t knowledge beforehand, isdiscussed by Serres. Sec Bruce Meserve, F un da m en ta l C on ce pt! in G eo m et ry (NewYork, 19(3), Pl' . ~22-3; and Michel Serres, 'Mathematics and Philosophy: WhatThales Saw ... ' , in Hermes (Baltimore, 19(2), pp. B4-96.

18. One of the f inest examples of thi s type i s a lso in the Opera de l Duomo in Siena,a drawing of the Siena Baptistery facade made around 1370, probably byDomenico Agost ino, The deeply recessed portals and ais le windows depart fromorthographic projection. Sec Jolll' White, A rt a n d A rc hi te ct ur e i n I ta ly 1 25 0- 14 00

(Harrnondsworth, 1966), p. :127and plate 154. White also discusses the earlies tItalian drawing of this type, the Orvieio Cathedral facade by Lorenzo Maitani,about 1310 (p. 292).

19. Edi Baccheschi, L 'O pe ra C om p le ta d i G io uo (Milan, 1966), p. 126. Baccheschi con-tests the attribution; however, White (supra, p. 172) accepts it as probable whileTrachtenberg argues strongly that it is Giotto's scheme and may even be hisdrawing (M. Trachtenberg, T he C am p an i le qf F l or en c e C a th e dr a l: G io u o' s T o w er (NewYork, 1971), pp. 21-48).

20. According to Panofskv, th is was the case wi th not only Egypti an reli efs but al sosculptures in the round. See Erwin Panofsky, 'The History of the Theory ofHuman Proport ions as a Reflect ion of the History of Styles' , i n M ea nin g m theVi sua l A r t s (New York, 19.15),pp. 60-62.

~. L. B. Alberti, T he T en B oo ks of Architecture, translated by Leoni, edited by Rykwert(London, 1955), book i ,chapter i .

22. E.H. Gombrich, A rt a nd Illu sio n (London, 1972), part iii, especially 'TheAmbiguities of the Third Dimension', PI'. 204-44.

23. 'Those who would take t .he trouhle, wi ll underst and what I have done with thespherical vault that 1had to make for the chapel at Anet, with several sorts ofbranches inclined in contrary directions and forming by this means compart-ments that are plumb and perpendicula r above the plan and paving of the saidchapel.' De l'Orrne, L e P re mi er T om e de I'Architecture (Paris, 1567), chapter xi, p. 112.

24. The most comprehensive recent work on de l'Orme isAnthony Blunt's Philibertd e F O rm e (London, 1958). Blunt noticed and accepted the project ive relat ion inquestion Ip . 43).

25. De l'Orme, having noted the projec tion of the f loor into the dome, refer red thereader to a simi lar proposa l, which he proceeded to demons trate and expla in .Thi s did involve project ion of a plane surface into a spherical surface (supra,chapter xii , pp. 112-13), but i twas a much simpler pattern of concentric squareson a pavement whose effec ts in the dome could qui te easi ly be visuali zed f romthe plan alone.

26. The perspective section published by de l'Orrne himself, primitive, like most ofhis perspectives, showed the tracery inaccurately and did not indicate the floorpattern (al though t.here is one variant of this which does include the pavementand shows it with the same number of intersections as the dome). No ortho-graphic drawings of the chapel by de l'Orrnc survive. The plan publi shed byAndrouet du Cerccau in L e s p l us e x ce l le n ts baJlimmtt d e F r an c e, vol. 2 (Paris, 1607),showed the floor nearly as laid (wrong number of arcs, right type of config-uration), but the superimposition of the lantern plan obscured the most cri ticalarea of the pattern. The plan from the survey published by Rudophc Pfnor illM o n og ra p hi c d u C hiit ea u d 'A ne t (Brus se ls, IH67) , to a ll appearances much moreaccurate, preserved the topological characteris tics of the nest of curves, but did

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not draw them as circular arcs, while in the section both the curves and theirinlel1'tTli(llls in th dome fail to correspond 10 the pattern as constructed.

'27. H lu nt n ot ed the ingenious nature of the coffering pattern, i ts departure l iom theusual melhod of compar tmenting domes using lines of l at itude and longitude,and the ill:l(..-IIl"l1CY1" available drawings, yet despite these perspicacious observ-ations his OWIl account went quickly awry. He wrote: ' through each of the 16 (sic)points on the oculus two great circles arc drawn, l inking itwith two points on theequator separated lrom it on ground plan by what appears to be an angle oflBOo, .What Blunt did was togive a description of du Cerceau's plan of the pave-ment (witl: its s ixteen pairs of branches, not eighteen, cal ling the arcs great cir-c les and not t aking into arvouut t he superimposi tion of the lante rn plan in thedll en ,""au cir:1wing. which ;mclilc( gave r ise to the ef fect s he descr ibed in thispassage. In other words, he was describing part of"a drawing of the l1oor,not thewhole of the dome (greal circles could not in any case meet twice on a hemi-spherical surface unless both intersect ions were on the rim). See Blunt , supra, Pl'.:19-'1-2.l'or my own invcstigatious 1 have uscd a crude photogrammet ry, withphotographs of the dome ami 1I00r from the COilway Library , Courtauld In-s tiuuc, and ill Country L i f e , 16May 1908, PI '. 70: /-4. The method, in myhands , i snot foolproof but it i s probably adequate. Cer tainly it g ives far more rel iableresults than could be obtained liom existing drawings.

19'2

28. I f a sphere is d iv ided as is a t er rest ri al g lobe , wi th l ines of equal longitude andlatitude, and the diagonals arc joined, a pattern of this type emerges (seeFig. I Iin this art icle, Irorn W. Jamnitzer, Perspectioa Corporum Regu lmium (Nuremberg,I:l()B), ~~ri~~G, plate v). II diflcrs s ignificantly from the arrangement at Anet,however, in thar all the spirall ing diagonals radiate from the (Jules. At Ane t thisarea iscompletely empty of curves. A s imple metric divis ion also gives the pat-tern of Michelangelo's Campidoglio pavement. An oval constructed with majorand minor arcs o r equal length made the divison of each of the [our componentcurves into six equal parts along the perimeter an easy matter, Radii were joined10 these Irom the centre of the oval, and then these radii were themselves dividedinto six(qll.t1parts, Joining these tugether produced a spider's web of concentricovals M11I." radial l ines . Alternating diagonals within the network produced thepattern. '\I'\llin, all the diagonals converged on the centre.

29. De I'Orme"s su.rcntomv requires a separate s tudy. His was the first publication ofthe technique which maintained a dis tinct presence ill French architecture wellinto Ihe eighleenth century a 1 1 ( 1 WJ~ systematically taught well into the nine-tceuth. S",.J.-M. Perousc de Montclos, L'Arclu iecture a f a F i a n ca i se (Paris, 1982),part, ~ and 3, especially pp. flO-!J5.

30. Tbe hiPP"lwdc was one of tile few curves, other than the circle and the conicsc rt iuns, t luu was wel l est ablished in ancient Greek gcomr t ry, i ts proper ti eshaving been inves tiga ted by the mathematic ian Ludoxus in the fourth centuryBC. Sec Carl Boycr,;( IIistoiy Q ( Mathemillier (New York, 1968), p. 102. It i s an

open question whether this was known to de l'Orrne and, if i twas , how i tcon-tr ibuted to his use of i t in the chapel dome.

31. This in te rpre tat ion accords wi th the decreased number of in terscc tiuns Oi l thepavement. More importantly , i t accords with the morphology of the pavementlozenges. 11 1 the envelope of cirdes Ihave proposed as the basis of the domet race ry the lozenges a re broadest in the middle of the annular r ing and flattentowards the inner and outer rims. The pavement asbuil t, by increasing the radiusof the ci rcl es and extending the oute r r im of the envelope, p lo ts only s ix of theorig inal e ight r ings of lozenges onto the ava il able f loor space. The fac t that thefour th and f if th r ings of lozenges (numbered f rom the oculus outwards) a re thesame yroportion, while the sixth (outermost) ring is noticeably flatter andcomparable in proport ion to the third ring, supports this conjecture, s ince this isexactly the property of the full eight-ring envelope of curves. Not only docs thismake the Iloor pattern look more like the expansive dome pattern, but thcproject ing cornice below the dome cuts the lower r im of the dome it se lf homview, obscuring much of the lowest ring of lozenges and making its observabledensi ty even more nearly equivalent to that of the floor.

32. De l 'Orrne, P r em i er T o me , p. 33. Ye tde I 'Orrne was nowhere near as insis tent onthe perfect ion of the circle as other s ixteenth-century writers on architecture,preferring to concentrate his praise on the figure of the cross .

33. James "So Ackerman, T he A r di ue ct ur e of Michelal1gelo (Harrnoudsworrh, !9B6),pp. 167-8. 1am grateful also to Richard Patterson [or information on this.

34. I t is now often taken for granted that ideal ism and es sent ial ism save us f rom thekind of instrumentali ty that comes with posit ivism. This they mayor Illay 1I0tdo.But I would insis t that they bring with them other kinds of instrumentali ty andother varieties of subject ion just as unsavoury I would insis t also that only somekinds of instrumentality are unsavoury.

35. Thus Albert i, who had done more than anyone to propagate knowledge of per-spec tive in his book on painting , accused i t of d istor tion in his book on archi-tecture (The Ten Boo ks on Architecture (1955), p . 22) . In the ensuing centurie s,proport ion, i ts inevitable dis tort ion by the eye, and its pract ical 'adjustment ' tocounter the optical deceptions of three-dimensional. embodiment were discussedby numerous authors . Claude Perrault gave a brilliant though highly critical ac-count of both proport ion and adjustment in Or do n na n ce d es c in q f .s p ec es d e C o lo n ne s(Paris, 1683) (Treat~an tk H'ut Ordos , t ranslated byjohn james (London, 1708)).

36. Matila Chyka, Le Nombr e d'Or (Paris, 1931), p. 55 and plates 18-20.37. Joseph Connors, Borromini a nd t he R om a n O ra to ry (Boston, 1978), p. 3. Connors's

lecture on S. Carlo al the Architectural Association ill 1982 was very informativeabout Borrornini's use of drawing.

38. Renate Cuuuso, L 'o pe ra c am p/ et a d el Caravaggio (Milan, 1967), PI'. IOB-9.193

Documents

Evans Translations From Drawing to Building