Sebastiano Serlio in Lyon. Architecture and printing. Edited by Sylvie Deswarte Rosa. Part One

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie.
[Sebastiano Serlio in Lyon. Architecture and printing] 

Volume 1. Le Traité d’Architecture de Sebastiano Serlio. Une grande entreprise éditoriale au XVIe siècle

Edited by Sylvie Deswarte Rosa

Lyon, Mèmoire Active, 2004

Front.cover of the first edition of Book IV (1537)
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/B272296201_A101Index.asp

[1] Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie (Sebastiano Serlio in Lyon. Architecture and printing) is not just the title of a book, but a research program that involved dozens of experts and has had various qualifying moments: from an international conference to an exhibition held in Lyon in 1998, to include the planned publication of four volumes on the work of Serlio and the reality of Lyon at that time. The table below displays the plan of publications. This review refers to the first volume only.

• Volume 1. Le Traité d’Architecture de Sebastiano Serlio. Une grande entreprise éditoriale au XVIe siècle (The Treatise of Architecture by Sebastiano Serlio. A key editorial endeavour in the sixteenth century);

• Volume 2. Bibliographia Serliana. Catalogue des éditions imprimées des livres du traité d’architecture de Sebastiano Serlio (1537-1681) (Bibliography on Serlio. Catalogue of the printed editions of the books of Treatise of Architecture by Sebastiano Serlio) (1537-1681));

• Volume 3. Vie Intellectuelle et Imprimerie à Lyon au milieu du XVIe siècle (Intellectual life and printing in Lyon in the middle of the sixteenth century);

• Volume 4. L’Architecture à Lyon au milieu du XVIe siècle (Architecture in Lyon in the middle of the sixteenth century).

The table of the Five Orders of Architecture (Book IV, 1537 edition)
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/B272296201_A101Index.asp

[2] Text of back cover:

"The first volume of the work ‘Sebastiano Serlio in Lyon, Architecture and Typography’ is devoted entirely to the prolonged editorial endeavour (1537-1575) of Serlio’s architectural treatise in seven books, one of the most important achievements of this kind and at this level in the sixteenth century. The volume also reconstructs the history of its editions and translations, its antecedents and its repercussions in the theory of architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. You will also find an overview of the architecture books, printed and illustrated, after the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) and the crucial work of Fra Giocondo on De Architectura by Vitruvius (1511), including the treatises of the first quarter of the seventeenth century and that of Pierre Le Muet, the Manière de Bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes – On the manner to build up, for all kinds of people (1623). This overview should be read together with its natural complement, the Bibliographia Serliana (Bibliography on Serlio) compiled by Magali Vène, published in the second volume of this work. In this way, one will be able to follow step by step the ventures of Serlio’s Treatise, which left a deep imprint in the history of architecture through almost four centuries, as well as a deep imprint in the history of book printing. Because of the new role dedicated to the engraved images, and the breadth of its program in seven books - to which later the Extraordinario Libro (Extraordinary Book) was added in Lyon - the Treatise occupies a special place in the publications of the Renaissance. It is precisely in the city of Lyon, the ancient Lugdunum, capital of the Gauls, and the large printing centre chosen by the Serlio towards the end of his life, that we go back to the history of this extraordinary print.”

Doric façade - Book IV (1537 edition)
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/B272296201_A101Index.asp

[3] The volume contains around fifty essays, which give a good idea of the amplitude of the project and the amount of potential work streams that the consideration of the volume offers (and it also betrays its only limit, i.e. the risk of getting lost between the thousand notions that are offered to the reader). We will try, in a totally inadequate way, to fix some fundamental concepts on which there seems to be a need to dwell, after having briefly summarized the publishing history of Serlio’s Treaty. Sebastiano Serlio moved to Venice in 1528. In the same year, he published a series of nine engravings on copper, involving architectural elements of the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders. It is not known whether he had already planned his Treatise; some indications suggest that a draft treaty was already in the phase of design since at least 1531 (see. p. 36); certainly, it was an important precedent. In 1537, at Francesco Marcolini’s printing house, the Book IV of the Treatise was published, which concerned the General rules of architecture over the five manners of the buildings. From that moment, the series of the orders, as presented by Serlio (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite) became in fact the only one which architecture officials would think of. They all will give so much for granted the succession of orders, that they will take as true (and it was not true) that the same had been proposed in those terms by Vitruvius (and not by Serlio). In the presentation to readers written by Serlio at the beginning of Book IV, the Bologna-born architect presented clearly the overall design of the Treatise. They consisted of seven books, as follows:

• Book I: "I will treat of principles of geometry, and of the various intersections of lines...";

• Book II: "I will show much about perspective, in drawing and in words...";

• Book III: it was dedicated to Roman antiquities, but also presented models of "modern" Rome of Bramante and Raphael;

• Book IV: as already mentioned, here were discussed the architectural orders and their rules;

• Book V: it was dedicated to churches;

• Book VI: on housing for all kinds of people;

• Book VII: on "incidents" that can happen to architects and the ways to overcome them.

Herewith, Serlio had outlined what would eventually be the project of his lifetime. Also in Venice, three years later (we are in 1540), and always by Marcolini’s publishing house, it was produced the Book III, which was dedicated to antiquity, but where also appeared some of the finest achievements of "modern" Rome. The following year, the architect left Venice and travelled to Paris, to reach the court of Francis I, who appointed him as royal architect. In Paris, Serlio published simultaneously the Books I (geometry) and II (on perspective); we are in 1545. Two years later, it was the turn of the Book V (the churches). All three books have the distinction of being printed in a bilingual text (Italian and French), with translation into French by Jean Martin, a French humanist who later will also provide translations of De Architectura by Vitruvius and De Re aedificatoria by Leon Battista Alberti. Serlio’s fortune was however about to end; Francis I died in 1547 and two years later also passed away his sister, Margaret of Navarre, who was the real protector of Serlio at court. Sebastian moved to Lyon in 1549. Here Serlio will be able to publish only the Extraordinario Libro (Extraordinary Book), a work conceived outside the framework of the original treaty (hence the term ‘extraordinary’), a collection of tables presenting fifty models of portals (the fortune of the work was as extraordinary as the title of the book, which was used as a real "catalogue" of portals, among which clients could choose the solutions they liked most). Actually, the architect from Bologna had also already brought to an advanced state of preparation the manuscripts of the Book VI and VII and further work dedicated to the Castrametatio, i.e. the organization of a military camp as reported by Polybius. Sebastiano, however, was by now an old man on the edge of poverty, which had lost any hope of completing the publication of the Treaty. In this context, it was valuable the intervention of Jacopo Strada, a merchant from Mantua acting with the sponsorship of the rich German banker Hans Jakob Fugger. The arrival of Jacopo was godsend. Serlio completed the manuscript of the Book VII, and in 1553, shortly before his death, he sold it to Strada, along with other manuscripts and his collection of drawings. In this way the Bolognese architect had a reasonable assurance, while feeling closer to the end, that his project would be completed. In reality, things did not go exactly in this manner. Strada did not manage to seriously devote time to the publication of Serlio’s manuscripts if not in the seventies. The Book VII was finally printed 1575; the publication materialised in Frankfurt, in a bilingual Italian and Latin version. On that occasion, Strada reminded the reader of the circumstances that had allowed him to get hold of Serlio’s manuscripts and, in a totally inaccurate way, called Book VIII the manuscript dedicated to Castrametatio. And yet, neither the Book VI nor VIII would be eventually produced, in fact until today (see about it the edition of the Books VI, VII and VIII proposed by Francesco Paolo Fiore in 1994). Remember, however, that the Book VI had an influence on his contemporaries, particularly in France. Indeed, it is now known that the manuscript sold to Jacopo Strada was the one currently kept at the Bavarian State Library in Monaco; however, there was also a second manuscript, drafted earlier (see. p. 163), that remained in France until the end of the seventeenth century and that was definitely in possession, for example, of Jacques Ie Androuet Du Cerceau (his handwriting can be recognised on the sheets), who without any doubt was strongly influenced by it.

Ionic façade - Book IV (1537 edition)
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/B272296201_A101Index.asp

[4] The Treatise of Sebastiano Serlio appears in many ways as a crucial junction in the theory of Renaissance architecture. The Bolognese architect wrote with a clear educational intent; he did it by acknowledging and offering the teachings of Vitruvius and Leon Battista Alberti to the public, but also acknowledging the archaeological studies of his master, Baldassare Peruzzi (and there would be those later on who, like Vasari, would substantially accuse him of plagiarism of Peruzzi’s work). Serlio, however, conceived a work that, compared to any previous printed opus was revolutionary, and the revolution consisted of the use of images. The engravings by Serlio (e.g. the famous table on the five orders published within the Rules) allowed readers to obtain an immediate understanding of the lessons by Bolognese artist, and opened the way to a new way of conceiving a treatise on architecture, where the text is increasingly servicing the image and sometimes disappears from the front of the image itself. Hence, the great fortune of Serlio’s work, its distribution across Europe and, one might say, even the germ that would lead to a rapid decline of his writings, when – on the one hand - (especially in Italy) increasingly "servile" editions of the work were produced (or, rather, issues that increasingly characterize the Treaty as a simple reference manual) and when, on the other hand, works entered in the market that benefited even more effectively from the use of the image as a method of dissemination and learning (suffice it to think of Vignola or Hans Blum).

Corinthian façade - Book IV (1537 edition)
Source: http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Images/B272296201_A101Index.asp

[5] From another point of view, one should avoid thinking about the Treatise of Serlio as a perfectly organic work, where the Bolognese architect always presented himself in the same manner to the reader. The long gestation of the work, the physical movements of Serlio between Italy and France, the inevitable influence of local customs, and the different tasks carried out in the course of his life already help to explain - writes Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa (see p. 63) - why Serlio showed himself in his treatise all "but unidirectional ... There is the Serlio new Vitruvius of Book IV, the Serlio connoisseur of ancient monuments of Book III, the Serlio with the rudiments of geometry and perspective of Books I and II claiming his heritage as painter, the Serlio architect of churches of Book V, the Serlio of the civil architecture of Books VI and VII, the licentious Serlio who enjoys the Extraordinary Book, finally the Serlio of the Castrametatio with a revival of vitruvianism". And his being adjustable helps explain how traces of Serlio’s teachings can be found in many European architects after him, who developed or extrapolated his best suited sides to them.

[6] It remains to say that the work does not shy away from investigating those that were specifically editorial aspects of Serlio’s endeavour, with specific reference to the publication of the individual Books,: "the search for a patron; the choice of the printer and publishing house; the specificity of each publishing centre: a merchant city, a university city, a place of residence of a court; the question of the translator; the respective roles of text and image; the relationship between engravers and printers"(p. 35).

In the second part of this review we will deal more closely with some of the essays published in the work.

End of Part One

Go to Part Two