ENGLISH VERSION Roland Frèart de Chambray, Parallèle de l'architecture antique avec la moderne suivi de Idée de la perfection de la peinture, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 2005

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR THE ITALIAN VERSION

Roland Fréart de Chambray
Parallèle de l’architecture antique avec la moderne
suivi de 

Idée de la perfection de la peinture
[Comparison of the old and modern architectures, followed by The idea of perfection in paiting]

Edited by Frédérique Lemerle-Pauwels e Milovan Stanić

École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 2005
Isbn 2-84056-155-7

Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/traite/Images/LES1545Index.asp

[1] After a "general introduction ", pages 19-165 are devoted to the Parallel of ancient architecture with the modern and those from 167 to 258 to the Idea on the Perfection in Painting. This review is only examining the Parallel.

[2] Text of the back cover:

"Roland Fréart Chambray (1606-1674) was one of the key figures of arts administration in France in 1636-1645 years. Clerk of François Sublet de Noyers, his cousin and powerful Superintendent of Buildings, he participated in missions in France and Italy, in order to enhance and illustrate the magnificence of the king and the state. He was responsible for collecting Italian antiquities and ordering castings of Roman sculptures to decorate the royal houses. After a period of intense activity, Chambray devoted himself to writing and publishing books. He wrote the Parallel of ancient architecture with the modern in 1650 and the Idea of the perfection of painting in 1662, two fundamental texts for art theory in the Seventeenth century. 

The Parallel, illustrated with a considerable body of etchings and based on the use of great architectural treatises of the Renaissance, presents itself as a real controversy text claiming the superiority of the ancients architects over the modern ones, and makes of his author the modern defender of ancient architecture. In the Idea of Perfection, Chambray defines the basic principles of painting, based on a reading of the most important aesthetic treaties and seeking to confront etchings of works by Raphael and Michelangelo. He criticizes the ‘technicians’ of the art of painting but also the Mannerist and founds a theory of art conceived as a rational thought, where science and geometry outweigh the senses. Frédérique Lemerle-Pauwels and Milovan Stanić introduce this work recalling the political, institutional, family and artistic context of the treaties, as well as their aesthetic issues." 

The frontespiece of the book
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/traite/Images/LES1545Index.asp

[3] It should be noted that Roland Fréart de Chambray was the younger brother of Paul Fréart de Chantelou, renowned collector and connoisseur of art. The latter left us, among other things, a journal on the trip made by Bernini in France in 1665. Roland often followed Paul in his Italian missions, starting with a visit to Rome in 1635: "they met Poussin and other artists like Charles Errard, which would later become a close collaborator of Roland" (p. 11) . From a subsequent trip (1640) Roland (p. 12) "also reported an album of drawings from the most beautiful ancient statues he had seen in Rome. Moreover, he also reported on proportions he had measured with Mons. Errard on the original statues in Rome in the year 1640, and on a copy of the manuscript treaty by Leonardo da Vinci about painting, based on a copy in possession of Cassiano dal Pozzo. He was the one who published in 1651 the first French version of the treaty, which he translated himself". It should be remembered that the same year, du Fresne had published, also in Paris, the first Italian version of the Treaty of Leonardo). One year before the Treaty, Fréart de Chambray published the Parallel, with engravings by Charles Errard. The Idée de la perfection de la peinture appeared only in 1662, followed a year later by the less fortunate Perspective of Euclid.

Callimachus inventing the Corinthian  capital
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/traite/Images/LES1545Index.asp

[4] It has already been mentioned that, in its Parallel, Roland claims the superiority of the ancients over the moderns, and more generally, of the Greeks over the Romans, including in the field of architecture. The Parallel consists of two parts: in one (and this is without doubt the most substantial section) he contrasted the classic styles of the Greeks (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian); in the other one those of the Latins (Tuscan and Composite). For each of the Greek orders, Chambray offers examples of some prestigious buildings designed to represent them, as well as the interpretative approach by ten great architects, grouped in pairs. The first four are from Italy: (i) Palladio and Scamozzi, (ii) Serlio and Vignola, (iii) Daniele Barbaro and Pietro Cataneo, and (iv) Leon Battista Alberti and Giuseppe Viola Zanini . The last couple consists of two French architects, Jean Bullant and Philibert De l'Orme. As to the Latin models, whose inferiority is openly stated by Fréart de Chambray, he reports only the models of Palladio, Scamozzi, Serlio and Vignola. "The Parallel is ... not a treaty on architectural orders in the traditional sense of the term. The proclaimed superiority of ancients over moderns, the affirmation of the primacy of the Greek orders, the range and ultimately the choice of modern authors, give the book its polemical and innovating feature. Reacting to the architectural ‘libertinism’ of his time, Chambray defines an aesthetic based on clarity, convenience and grandeur, which in his eyes has Palladio as the best modern representative" (p. 22). 

The Corinthian Order according Palladio and Scamozzi
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/traite/Images/LES1545Index.asp

[5] Correctly Frédérique Lemerle-Pauwels questions the fortune of the treaty of Fréart de Chambray. There is no doubt that, at least from a practical and operational point of view, the Parallel had a fairly small impact: the precepts of Vignola continued to prevail, as they were simpler and more pleasing to those buying or financing art. Considerations on the fortune should therefore be switched to the floor of the theory of art: "the Academy of Architecture - which had been given, since its inception in 1671, the mission of working to restore the beautiful architecture - devoted his early work to examine the various treaties. The examination took place in the same order as in the Parallel...". And yet the members of the Academy (and with them all those who confronted themselves with the Treaty in the following years) cautiously refrained from adhering to the thesis of Chambray. Rather, they used the script as a useful anthology, to be consulted to ensure they would update their own cultural basis. The Parallel experienced however a revival in the mid- 1700s: “ultimately, Chambray - who had been a stalwart of the Ancients and a relentless critic of architectural extravagance of Michelangelo - revealed himself as a neo-classical avant la lettre" (p. 40).

The Corinthian Order according Bullant and De l'Orme
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/traite/Images/LES1545Index.asp

[6] For an anonymous writing compiled in Rome, especially to refute the thesis by Fréart de Chambray, see Introduzione alli Cinque Ordini dell’Architettura. Trattato anonimo della fine del Seicento, a cura di Mario Curti e Paola Zampa (Roma, Archivio Guido Izzi, 1995).